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In The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon luridly evokes the Rome of 408 A.D., when the armies of the Goths prepared to descend upon the city.
The marks of imperial decadence appeared not only in grotesque displays of public opulence and waste, but also in the collapse of faith in reason and science.
The people of Rome, Gibbon writes, fell prey to "a puerile superstition" promoted by astrologers and to soothsayers who claimed "to read in the entrails of victims the signs of future greatness and prosperity."
Would a latter-day Gibbon describe today's America as "decadent"? I recently heard a prominent, and pro-American, French thinker (who was speaking off the record) say just that.
He was moved to use the word after watching endless news accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump's tweets alternate with endless revelations of sexual harassment.
I flinched, perhaps because a Frenchman accusing Americans of decadence seems contrary to the order of nature. And the reaction to Harvey Weinstein et al. is scarcely a sign of hysterical puritanism, as I suppose he was implying.
And yet, the shoe fit. The sensation of creeping rot evoked by that word seems terribly apt.
full: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-2017-12
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