Drilling Ourselves Deep in a Hole

At one point in his masterful People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn reflects upon the unspeakable carnage wrought by the Conquistadors in South and Central America, all in the pursuit of gold, and wonders at how those obscene riches sustained imperial greatness... for barely a hundred years. All that bloodletting, enslavement, massacres -- genocide in places -- for a temporary wealth that quickly vanished on the stage of history.