Selected quotes from Morris Berman and
DARK AGES AMERICA: The Final Phase of Empire

On the American people:
“All in all, the great mass of our countrymen talk, act, and ‘reason’ as though their crania contained chopped liver rather than gray matter.” (p. 295)

On American democracy:
“We retain the rhetoric of liberal democracy, but in concrete terms this supposed democracy gets enacted as the commodity culture, in which freedom of choice really means Wendy’s versus Burger King.” (p. 73)

On George W. Bush:
“His excitement over being able to wield power, to kill people, as a substitute for dealing with his considerable ‘inner demons’ is quite palpable.” (p. 298)

On daily American life:
“...a society whose real motto is not ‘In God We Trust’ but rather...‘What’s in It for Me?”
(p. 239)

“The truth is that things are so far gone now that we don’t even have a public language for...the life of craft and commitment, for the long-lost world of civic responsibility.”
(p. 75)

On 9/11:
“9/11 was a wake-up call that was not understood and that went unheeded. It was America’s last chance to try to pull away from (or, at least, decelerate) a downward trajectory, a chance that was completely blown. A scenario of steady decline is probably all that is left to us at this point; we will not get another chance.” (p. 82)

“The damage of September 11 is nothing compared to the damage we did and are currently doing to ourselves as a result of our reaction to that event. In a bizarre kind of way, Rumsfeld, Perle, Abrams, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Feith, and their ilk are bin Laden’s comrades in arms.”

On the “Clash of Civilizations”:
“If the United States is not intentionally the enemy of Islamic civilization, it is doing a pretty good job of imitating a nation that is.” (p. 187)

On the “shock and awe” strategy for invading Iraq:
“This kind of sadism always has an odd sexual feel to it; I couldn’t help thinking how the politics of empire had finally rotted out the American soul. When a civilization finally hollows itself out, there is nothing much left for it to do except...get off on the cruelty you can visit on the powerless.” (p. 213)

On terrorism:
“...one could argue that the terrorists are already winning, in that they have managed to push us further along the downward trajectory we were already on.” (p. 10)

On the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank:
“This...is where the Jews have wound up, after five thousand years of persecution? All I can feel is a sense of sadness and shame.” (p. 198)