To the editor:

People who condemn the extravagant spending of millions of dollars on an inauguration bash as wasting resources that could be used for more humane causes such as tsunami relief have their hearts in the right place but aren’t looking quite far enough. When historians of the future look back on this period they will see this event not as a “celebration of democracy,” as Bush himself put it in typically Orwellian terms. Rather, they will recognize it as ritualization of a corruption so deep that access and influence are openly for sale to those who can afford the six-figure price tag. This is what is being openly celebrated in such an opulent extravaganza.

In its day, the Roman Empire, too, made symbolic gestures toward its Republican roots, while wallowing in decadence and display. By the time its emperors and their courts found “true religion,” it was already too late. Through a combination of barbarian onslaught from without and the withering of productivity within, its inevitable fall was well under way.

How long we must wait for historians to be free to make such assessments of the American Empire is entirely up to us.

Stu Shafer,

Oskaloosa