The Rome example is quite interesting. Certainly, there is evidence that the Praetorian Guard killed John F. Kennedy, or was at least complicit in his death. There is no reason to believe that any presidential election has involved counting all the votes and recent elections are quite lurid in this regard. So, I could actually get behind this comparison of the bloody imperial Rome and the bloody American empire. One certainly has to suspect that the occupation of Iraq is going to continue as long as it is profitable to the people who run the empire, and not a moment longer.
With regard to people being happy with their lot, I think that is true. Most Americans think they are prosperous. They are experiencing "good times" compared to, say, the 1970s when prices were very high and lines for gasoline very long. Or to the 1980s when fewer tech gadgets were available, cell phones were bricks, and the economic boom had just started.
However, I think all that is going to come to an end. The good times have been built on a mountain of paper debt. The fiat money inflation going on right now to attempt to recover from the current credit fiasco has pushed the USA dollar to all time lows on the dollar index, to parity with the Canadian dollar - not seen since the 1970s - and to all kinds of other difficult positions. I think there is very little chance that failures of banks like Northern Rock or Netbank are going to be fewer in number. Rather, they are going to be increasingly frequent, and larger, and more difficult to bail out.
People generally don't rebel when they are feeling very prosperous. They tend to rebel when they feel oppressed. And, in economic prosperity, it is nearly impossible to get people to accept that they are oppressed.
In the next three years or so, I expect inflation to put the Dow up around 30,000, gold up around $10,000 per ounce, and silver up to $400 an ounce. Oil would likely be upwards of $100 per barrel. In fact, I think the people on this list and their friends are going to live to see the collapse of a major world currency.
In the past, the collapse of the Roman denarius, the collapse of the Byzantine solidus, and the collapse of the dinar of the Caliphate are the only similar global currency collapses. Two of these occurred due to the onslaught of the Mongol empire (which morphed into the Ottoman empire).
If you have some gold and silver, you may be able to weather the storm. But, if you think inflation is all fun, you should look into the hyperinflation in Yugoslavia in 1993, or the hyperinflation in Germany and Austria in 1919-1923. Or read Andrew Dickson White's classic on fiat money inflation in France. It isn't fun stuff. Governments fall. People suffer. Lives are exterminated. Dictators rise to power (e.g., Milosevic, Hitler, Napoleon).
