Random, I know. Instead of going out this Saturday night, I am just writing utter nonsense.

But yesterday I was listening to “All This Time” by Sting, and it took me back to that semester break my freshman year in high school, in the midst of the Gulf War. (I don’t know if it’s just me having grown up, or has network TV and radio just become more incredibly asinine and juvenile? I used to be able to tell the difference between CNN and MTV back then, and I was only 14.)

As we rained terror on Baghdad (the CNN broadcasts made me think a lot of that Atari game Missile Command), I stayed at home and played Romance of the Three Kingdoms on the Nintendo (the old 8-bit version where you had to blow on the cartridge in order to get it to work) and I listened to the radio. “Ten Summoner’s Tales” had just been released so Sting was getting a lot of air time. (Just for some levity, the other songs I remember being played were “Wicked Games” by Chris Isaac and “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls.) But a passage from the lyrics resonate in a way that I can’t articulate very well. All empires fail with time, and to admit that the U.S. is in fact an empire is to admit that someday the U.S. too will fall.

The teachers told us, the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple, an edge of the empire
Garrison town,
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, ‘til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found