Gotterdammerung: n: a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder.

The United States of America is seven days short of its 225th birthday. And that, going by historical anecdotal evidence about the average age of the world’s great civilizations, sounds like the great decline is almost, if not already, here.

I see three things wrong with the above statement when applied to the context of the United States:

1. When one says “world’s great civilizations,” does one mean the present day world?

If so, it doesn’t have much else other than the United States, does it? Because time has shown that the world today consists of just two entities – America, and the rest of the world.

2. “Great?”

3. “Civilization?”

But the statement must be true regardless of what I think is wrong, because in order for something to decline, it must be at its peak prior to that (which most of us would agree was the time before Dubya).

Plus, there’s another sure sign of this decline I’m talking about.

And it’s best summarized in this quotation from an 18th century Scottish jurist and historian named Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (apparently the Scots got some time off from playing the bagpipes to write quotations in the 18th century.

Their decline is apparent today from the fact that nobody any longer exclaims “Great Scot!”).

Said Sir Alex: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”

Americans need to give themselves a pat on the back for voting for Dubya and his $1.3 trillion “give-it-back-to-the-people” tax cut plan.

But isn’t it neat what an amateur bagpipe-playing historian could predict 200 years ago? (Nostradamus was not the only person with accurate prophecies about Dubya with his “In the year 2000, the village idiot shall rule the world.”) But as you can see, the signs are indeed ominous.

First came the illusionary economic boom thanks to the Al Gore-created Internet and the explosive pseudo-growth of dot.coms. Close on its heels came Dubya and, as Sir Alex might have said, “his loose fiscal policy.” The economic downside is only one side of the decline we’re talking about here.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wanted to take you through the steps of a “great” civilization’s life cycle.

My good friend and intellectual companion, Google.com, pointed me to www.worldnewsstand.net/today/articles/thehistorycircle.htm which had this to say about this matter. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been about 200 years.

Most of these nations have progressed through the following sequence – from bondage to spiritual faith to great courage to liberty to abundance to selfishness to complacency to apathy to dependency and back again to bondage.

Coming from a nation that has been there, done that, I think I can safely hazard a guess at where exactly the United States is today in this life cycle.

The way it’s going now, in the nine step evolutionary process from revolution to devolution, the United States is just three steps away from gotterdammerung, only the twilight won’t be that of a nation of gods by then.

According to Lance Morrow (some guy quoted by Dictionary.com in its definition of gotterdammerung), you can tell a nation has been flirting with forms of gotterdammerung when you see extremes of vocabulary and behavior and an appetite for violent resolution.

Another tell-tale sign of when a civilization is flourishing is the state of the art and soul of its society.

At the height of a nation’s glory, its art, music, and philosophy were shaping enduring cultural paradigms.

Most of today’s pop(ular) art and music seem more to be escape vents for people with nothing of substance to express.

As for philosophy, the reigning one seems to be “Live like there’s no tomorrow.”

In the political process of sustaining democracy, apathy is all set to reign as head of state. In the last election, less than half the U.S. population turned up to vote.

If the prophetic words of Sir Alex are to be proven as false and the United States is looking to stop itself from becoming a dictatorship, perhaps it needs to follow the example of Australia, where voting is not so much a right as the responsibility of every citizen.

Unfortunately, the United States seems to be so obsessed with individual rights that it has lost the concept of social obligation.

While it would mean depriving the American people of an additional public holiday, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to make July 4 the official election day, since people get out of their homes to watch some of their tax money go up in smoke and sound and lights anyways.

So as you plan your road trip, and curse the calendar for making this year’s July 4 a Wednesday with no extra holiday padding it on either side, think gotterdammerung.

Narayan Devanathan is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Hyderabad, India.