History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us. – Johan Huizinga
Those of you who were paying attention in world history class may remember that the Western Roman Empire ended on September 4th, 476 AD with the accession of Flavius Odoacer as King of Italy, and that the Eastern Roman Empire was thereafter known as the Byzantine Empire. But this is merely a convenient lie invented by historians; to the citizens of Rome, Italy, areas of Europe still dominated by either Eastern or Western Empires and foreign governments who had dealings with the Romans, 476 was very much like 474 and 475 had been, and nobody noticed much change in the years 477-493, either. To be sure, the Empire under Odoacer was quite a different place than it had been under Augustus, but then the same could be said of the Empire under Hadrian, Constantine, Honorius or Justinian. The laws, structures and political realities had changed dramatically (and not for the better) since the end of the Republic, yet even when the vast territory was divided in two (temporarily, then later permanently) it was still called the Roman Empire, and its people still thought of their government as continuous with what had gone before. The term “Byzantine Empire” for the eastern half is a total fiction; it was still referred to both officially and in popular use as the Roman Empire (even after its territory had shrunk to only part of the area of modern Turkey) until Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. And even then, Germanic kings who had been granted the title of Roman Emperor by Papal edict continued to use it until the last of them, Francis II, abdicated the title to Napoleon in 1806.
By the 14th century it would have been obvious to all but the dullest historians that neither the German nor the Greek pretenders to the title of “Roman Empire” were remotely the same as the original entity which had borne that name, and unconnected to it by anything other than a long and winding chain of historical events. But it would not have been so obvious to an historian of the 10th century, and one of the 6th would probably have violently disputed the claim (at least in the case of the Eastern Empire). Modern scholars looking at the events from over a millennium later decided that after 476, things began to change so dramatically and so quickly that a different name needed to be applied to the political entities existing after that date so as to make the difference clearer for purposes of study and discussion. But the people living at that time had no such historical perspective; few of them would have agreed that the differences between Odoacer’s reign and that of Julius Nepos were any more meaningful than those between the reigns of Constantine and Constantius, and probably less significant than the difference between the reigns of Diocletian and Aurelian. They were emotionally invested in the name “Roman”, and the changes in both the Empire and its people had been so gradual that only by viewing the events from a period completely removed from them could a meaningful line be drawn between “Roman” and “Post-Roman”.
Rome is an especially prominent and striking example, but by no means the only one; except in cases where a culture is completely overrun by wholly alien invaders (as in the case of the European conquest of the Americas), most lines drawn between historical periods and most names given them by historians are rather arbitrary and only make sense to people of later eras. Those living at the time see no seismic shift, no change of identity; the English still considered themselves English after the Norman Conquest, and the lives of peasants were largely the same in 1067 as they had been in 1065…but historians regard the unified England of the late 11th century as a different thing from the Anglo-Saxon realm of a generation before, and not only because the rulers were speaking a different language.
Exactly two months short of exactly 1300 years after what we now think of as the end of the Roman Empire, a group of colonies belonging to a country which had itself once been a Roman province declared themselves independent of their parent nation. And though colonies, provinces and other dependent entities had done this sort of thing many times before, what made this one unique in world history was that the revolutionaries were not merely the followers of a rival monarch determined to wrest the territory from its legal ruler by military force; instead, they were philosophically-inclined sons of the Enlightenment who argued that human beings had certain unalienable rights which no ruler, no matter what his titles or antecedents, had the right to abrogate. This was such a new idea that historians recognized it as a dividing line as soon as the British government did, five years later…but for the average working man, not much really changed, and for the slaves absolutely nothing did. Even most of the laws of the states and cities of the new country were the same laws they had before the revolution…laws based on traditions dating back to the time when almost no educated person would have agreed that the Roman Empire was a thing of the past.
But less than a hundred years later, that began to change; the United States now bears more resemblance to the bloated, top-heavy, militaristic, moribund Roman state inherited by Odoacer than the lean, minimal government conceived of by the Founders. Yet for now, the people of the US are still so emotionally invested in the label “American” and so blindly devoted to worship-words like “freedom” that they are unable to recognize that we’ve already crossed the line future historians will draw between the American Republic and the American Empire. When did we pass from one to the other? Alas, I’m in the same forest as you are; only the perspective of time will allow us to determine that. Perhaps they’ll draw it at the end of the Cold War; perhaps even earlier, at the end of World War II. Maybe they’ll make it simple for student memorization by setting it at the beginning of the 21st century. But one way or another, it is insulting to the Founders’ memory to associate any patriotic feelings you have for the memory of the nation they created with the repressive fascist police state that now occupies its territory; the 4th of July is now a memorial rather than a celebration, and the Spirit of ‘76 is nothing but a ghost.
I don’t know if you have ever listened to the Greaseman radio show. (Probably not—it was based from Washington, D.C. and I don’t think it was ever syndicated in New Orleans.) Anyway, one day a fan called who was a U.S. soldier who had been stationed overseas. Without irony, he described the job that he and his fellow soldiers had as “fighting for king and country” and explicitly compared American enlisted men to British soldiers at the height of the British Empire.
What I think is more telling is that not only did the Grease not argue with the man, no subsequent caller argued that America wasn’t an empire or that it shouldn’t be an empire.
As an outsider I always wonder how this was supposed to work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
I can tell you – because I’ve been in them. 😛
They’re basically fenced off areas near say … a political convention. You’ll see one designated place for speeches and protests to take place outside the Republican and Democratic conventions.
Usually there’ll be a schedule for when different groups can use it.
It’s just there to provide an organized means of protest to prevent something like the ’68 Democratic Convention fiasco from recurring.
Do I have a problem with this arrangement? No, not really. The protests get covered by local and national news and it keeps people separated and safe.
Let’s take for instance … a “Gay Pride” convention held in Texas somewhere – where “Gay Pride” doesn’t sell. You would very likely have more protesters showing up at that event than you would people attending the convention. And some of the crowd might be violent. Therefore – the 1st amendment rights of the people attending the convention would be threatened (along with their lives) by the majority protesters.
It’s not ideal, I’ll give you that – but something has to give to protect everyone’s 1st amendment rights. When the shit goes down – no one will care to observe these “free speech zones” … so it’s not like they’re going to prevent actual revolts by the people.
By the way … these “zones” may be eventually stricken down.
SCOTUS just ruled against abortion clinic “buffer zones” (just in the last week or so).
Really – that’s all a “Free Speech” zone is … so I fail to see how it should be treated differently than abortion clinics – if that’s how the justices see the law.
According to Mark Twain it was when the US annexed the Philippines from Spain and committed multiple atrocities against Filipino civilians – including those who had been struggling for independence from Spain for generations.
I’d be more inclined to say it started in the early 19th Century. 1823 to be precise.
The British like to say they acquired their empire in a fit of absent mindedness and the seed of truth to that is that the Crown was strategically compelled to seize much of it after the East India Company had made such a botch of ruling the people it had conquered with mercenaries and treaties. But the Monroe Doctrine was a deliberately formulated policy that indefinitely committed the US to colonialism and neo-colonialism in Latin America. It made the US Empire inevitable.
No-one was in any doubt that the Japanese SE-Asian Co-prosperity Sphere was an imperialist policy but Americans like to forget it was first suggested to them by Teddy Roosevelt and modeled on the Monroe Doctrine. Roosevelt himself was the one who consolidated the annexation of the Philippines after McKinley sucked a slug and his former cavalry militia, The Rough Riders, was responsible for some of the worst atrocities against Philippine civilians in Mindanao – albeit perhaps not as bad as the atrocities they faced under the Roosevelt inspired Co-prosperity Sphere.
It was WWII that resulted in Australia vassalage passing from the clutches of the British Empire to those of the US Empire. I wonder if it will take WWIII for us to fall from the collapsing US Empire to the rising Chinese Empire.
I think I can get behind your date, but I do disagree on one count- I don’t think we have a rising Chinese empire, mostly because we have more of a cultural empire now than a political one, and in no way is Chinese culture pushing out American culture.
I think the arc of cultural imperial power tends to lag well behind that of economic, military and political power. Ancient Roman and Greek culture still heavily influence us today but no-one would seriously argue their empires still exist (though I guess you could argue that the Vatican is heir to the Roman Empire and Imperial Christianity is it’s most powerful cultural remnant).
Chinese cultural hegemony may still be a dot on the horizon to white Americans but it’s far more evident in this part of the world – especially to Asians. The US still has a stranglehold on Anglosphere culture, but what would you expect?
Very interesting and thought provoking analysis Maggie. Amy and I look forward to reading your posts daily. I am certain that the American Republic became mortally ill at the start of the war between the States and died with the surrender of Lee in April 1865.
The march towards the progressive socialist state we now enjoy began with the the repressive reconstruction ot the Southern States, took a mighty leap forward with advent of the Federal Reserve and the imposition of the federal income tax in 1913 requiring individuals to pay tribute to the progressive federal State. I believe the progressive socialist state was firmly established by 1933 when president Roosevelt was able to confiscate most of the privately owned gold in the United States by executive order in 1933.
I was all down hill after that.
Good point. There’s a lot to be said for the claim that American colonialism started when the North colonised the South after the Civil War.
Where you go wrong is where US libertarians always get it wrong. Washington has never been the main driving force behind US imperialism, it’s always been the corporations. The yankee carpetbaggers in the South, United Fruits in Latin America, Unocal & Texaco in the Middle East … General Electric and McDonnell-Douglas making the world safe for General Motors and McDonalds.
Most of the world laughs when Americans refer to their government as ‘socialist’. If the comment about the merger of government and corporations falsely attributed to Mussolini is true the US is not socialist, it’s corporatist. Or fascist.
I understand what you’re saying but I’m having a serious problem trying to resolve how or why the corporations picked Obama to represent their interests.
No doubt – he’s done well by some of them … but he’s only done well by the corporations who bow to him. The others … like say … Gibson Guitars … he’s persecuted.
Green corporations – he’s showered them with affection. Oil corporations – the most powerful corporations there are – he hasn’t done so well by.
That’s the only flaw I see in your analysis. I just can’t resolve that and, it seems to be a fatal flaw in your hypothesis (to me).
Also – the roll of unions.
At every turn – save the SCOTUS – this government bends over backwards for unions. That’s another problem I have with your assertion that the US is purely a “corporatist” power.
I’m not claiming that every corporation is joined together to run US policy. As always the main enemy of corporations is other corporations and if it’s in the interest of a bigger, more powerful one to shaft Gibson then it will happen.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to with regards to oil companies – the financial penalties some of them have faced under Obama might look big to us but they’re penny ante stuff to the likes of Unocal. What Obama has done is continued to destabilise Af-Pak and thereby nobble the Iran-Pakistan-India-China pipeline – which is worth far more to Western oil companies than a few hundred million in fines or taxes. Mad King George’s imperial overreach in Afghanistan was never about terrorism or educating girls, it was always about pipelines and always for the benefit of oil companies. His dream of a US controlled TAPI pipeline might have died in the dust of Helmand but the continued isolation of the Iranian hydrocarbon market and the control of shipping lanes and pipeline routes to China continues unabated under Obama.
Presidents aren’t particularly relevant to US policy anymore (if they ever were). They are simply marketing mascots for their parties so there is no need for the corporations to micromanage them. It’s the lobbyists and mainstream media that matter and they – along with an adequate number of elected and unelected political office holders – are fully in the corporate pockets.
As for US unions. If they aren’t largely the lapdogs of corporate power how come they have proved themselves so hopelessly inept at gaining better rights or conditions for their members. As with the ‘socialist’ label, non-Americans find it pretty amusing that Americans think their unions have power (unless they’re Mafia affiliated of course).
Or public-sector; police unions and teacher unions are the main reasons their respective industries treat those subjected to them so abominably.
I’m still having a hard time with this. The President isn’t relevant … he’s controlled by the corporations? Yet he pulled us out of the Iraq war (which corporate interest did he do that for?). And yeah – it was he who pulled us out – not Congress.
Same is going on in Afghanistan – he’s agreed to a two year surrender – pretty much by himself. How does this help the military industrial complex?
When Obama bailed out GM and put the stockholder’s interests behind that of the UAW – what corporate interest did that serve? He even gave the UAW a seat on the board.
Also – how are all corporate interests the same? A certain number of them would necessarily have to have the same interests in order to join in a conspiracy to run the government.
I think … that an argument could definitely be made that Congress is controlled by corporations and special interests – but then the Unions also throw money into Congress … and the things they ask for are vastly different and counter to what you would think corporations desire.
On the one hand … people on other sides of this argument tell me the state is controlled by white male Christians and moralists – but on another side they tell me it’s the corporations.
It just seems to me that people do a lot of “shape shifting” in their positions. On the one hand … I know people who LOVE Obama and yet, to suit a different argument they’ll argue that the government is controlled by corporations. Well – if that’s true then the only CONSISTENT argument is that Obama is controlled by the corporations – yet, I see him do a lot of things that don’t seem to jibe with corporate interest.
My own feeling is this …
The US government is controlled in “chaotic fashion” by special interests – which include Corporations and Unions and other special interest groups who throw money into the system. No one group has a “monopoly” on the government and the pendulum swings back and forth and occasionally one interest wins on one day – and another on another day.
This leaves the US in a state of complete chaos – because you never know which way an issue is going to go.
And the biggest problem is this – THE PEOPLE no longer control the government – and that’s the way it was supposed to be.
I think you people who argue that corporations control the government are fractionally right – but you’re disregarding the other interests – like labor Unions who have a powerful impact also.
And you probably do that because you like the Unions more than you like the Corps.
But the fact is … it’s all of them – not acting necessarily in concert – but definitely having a net effect of removing control from the people that is the problem.
The ground wars in Iraq and Af-Pak were lost. Corporations know when to cut their losses and get out. The main mission in Iraq was accomplished when Saddam’s Euro denominated oil bourse was shut down but yeah, the oil companies would have loved a much bigger slice of the pillage. It was never going to be stable enough on the ground there for them to move in and claim it though.
And even as Obama winds down ground troops in Afghanistan he continues to escalate the drone war that keeps the various Talibans stirred up and ensures that Baluchistan (home of the Quetta Shura) will never be stable enough to run a pipeline through. The prevention of the pipeline is good for western oil companies and the drone war is good for the military industrial complex. They learned in Vietnam that the party ends when enough grunts have come home wrapped in flags.
As opposed to simply letting it fail you mean? I’d have thought the corporate interests were quite obvious. And I bet the GM board will be very grateful for a UAW delegate to scapegoat the next time they fuck up too.
I don’t know much about the UAW but if it’s anything like the manufacturing sector unions in Australia it will talk the talk from time to time but an occasional ‘donation’ to key union officials will ensure it will never cause problems on the GM board even if it wasn’t heavily outvoted by anti-worker interests. All of the real activist unions in Australia were destroyed via amalgamation or deregistration by the Hawke Labor government in the 1980s. Hawke had been head of the ACTU (umbrella body for Australian unions) so he was given the job of destroying their power. I doubt a non-Labor leadership could have got away with it. The supposed ‘worker’s party’ (the first one in the world to form a government BTW) was put in power to screw the workers for the benefit of big business. Is it really that different in the US?
They’re not and they don’t. Where their interests converge – which is in more areas than they would have you believe – they simply pull together. No conspiracy needed. When they don’t they duke it out. The winners get to make policy. They are no more a conspiracy of corporations than the election of Obama was a conspiracy of voters (which isn’t to say they never conspire – mostly they just never need to).
So while Unocal and Texaco might argue over who gets to destroy an ecosystem to harvest more hydrocarbon they can definitely agree that Western oil companies should have access to pipelines – not Chinese or Iranian ones. So that’s what happens. At least until the US empire finally collapses in it’s unsustainable efforts to prop up uncompetitive companies.
They haven’t been doing so well for a long time though, have they? How many reps do you think are in a union pocket compared to how many are in a corporate one? How many lobbyists and think tanks are controlled by unions? How many media outlets?
That’s because so many talking heads are white male Christian moralists. But the important ones are also in the corporate pocket (or so dumb they can be made to dance to the corporate tune for free). Most people aren’t good at abstraction. They think power must rest in something material like a person or a gun. Corporate or state power is a bit too nebulous for them to get their heads around so they’ll point to a CEO or politician instead. They probably talk back to the television too.
I can agree with that. But certain special interests have a disproportionate influence on certain areas of policy. Corporations don’t monopolise foreign policy but they do dominate it. And it’s foreign policy makes empires, not how much paid sick leave a steel worker is entitled to.
If anything I hate the unions even more than the corporations. At least big companies don’t pretend to be there for the benefit of workers. I bet I hate Marxism at least as much as you do too. But I hate corporations more because unlike Marxism they ain’t dead yet.
This is an observation detached from reality.
The ground war in Iraq was not lost – in fact, we doubled down with the surge and produced a very stable situation. Obama pulled those troops over the OBJECTIONS of the “corporate” powers. Cheney … McRage … all those who no one would argue are “corporate” politicians argued to high heavens that we should stay.
So the guy who’s in the oval office right now IS NOT controlled by corporate interests. What he is … is an example of UNION control – since that’s where his power base is.
This all agrees with my argument that the US government is NOT controlled by corporate interests alone – but by a competing matrix of corporate, labor, and other special interests that are in a constant state of “tug-o-war”. That’s the point that Liberals and Conservatives MISS.
Krulac, you’re forgetting the most powerful interest group – the politicians themselves. It’s in their interest to have ever-bigger government with more power for themselves and more reasons that businesses and other groups have to buy votes just to protect themselves. It is in their interest to create more and more opportunities to take one person’s money and buy another person’s vote. It is in their interest to create murky laws and regulations that often require Congressional intervention to clarify, or to bend according to political considerations. Campaign finance laws protect the ones in power – who can often recruit the media to provide free publicity, simply by holding a press conference – from any challengers who have to raise money by donations simply to get the word out that they are running.
Or look at who is exempted by Congress from insider trading laws – the Congressmen, who frequently become millionaires in a few years, even while running expenses that exceed their paycheck.
Every now and then the voters in one district figure out what’s going on, and an incumbent is thrown out – which the lapdog media always report as a shocking upset. For the latest example, see Eric Cantor. But the odds are that in four years his replacement will have turned into yet another pork-grabbing, freedom-denying establishmentarian.
Don’t often find myself agreeing with your thoughts, but this one I do!
Fascist, definitely. It’s the term I always use for the modern American governance structure.
Amy … I think I love you! 🙂
This has remarkable summary power and I like everything about heem EXCEPT for the use of the term (American) “Empire”. While it may now be suffocating, bloated and top-heavy indeed, the US in no way meets the criteria of anything we could rightly call an empire. This is little more than the hope that, by calling something a Name, it will fulfil all of our expectations falling therefrom..
You are also drawing imaginary lines according to an arbitrary measure of significance. What fantasies are you trying to maintain?
The truth is actually between you two. It’s not an “Empire” … but it’s damn close.
In other words, *empire” as metaphor just too damn handy to dispense with right now
This article is spot on.
I am VERY vested in the label “American” – that’s my tribe and it’s my identity. That won’t change no matter what. “American”, to me, doesn’t relate at all to the government we have – but to the people in this tribe.
Wondering if you saw this …
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/07/military-already-using-facebook-track-moods/87793/
That bothers me. What tyrants in the past never really had was a real-time feedback mechanism to give them a readout on the people they oppress. Just how far can you push a population before it reaches a tipping point and revolts? Usually tyrants … isolated from the people … really didn’t know.
Now a tyrant may soon have a tool to tell him how far he can go. Sooo … he can push up the tipping point … retreat a bit … push again … etc and can manipulate populations indefinitely.
I’ll give Amy this- After the American civil war, the north perhaps ought to not been so eager to bring the south back into the nation, where it has been a millstone around the neck of the nation, and impediment to progress since.
I see it as really being clear that things had changed more recently- After Ronald Reagan, it was clear that the average american no longer mattered to the corporate American state.
Are we an empire? More like a corporation, doing hostile takeovers of other places.
As a Southerner – I agree completely. 😀
And here’s another issue – and I don’t mean to pick on you but I hear this a lot from progressives and socialists.
Say you did cut the South loose … by your own admission, the government is controlled by corporations. How do you expect to “progress” when you’re saddled with a government controlled by corporations?
The other thing I would ask is this … how can progressives say that government is controlled by corporations … and then take one breath and say that the solution to that is to give government (i.e. corporations) more power?
Some people think if government has enough power it will be able to shake off corporate shackles. I think if that ever happened you’d just be exchanging one kind of domination for an even more powerful one. You would then get a reaction that would see even more power flowing back to corporations and they would be reinstated with an even firmer grip than before. Bipolar power structures aren’t pendulums, they’re ratchets. They may swing backwards and forwards but they just keep twisting your nuts ever harder.
Maybe a tripolar power structure would work whereby any one faction that started getting too far ahead would be ganged up on by the other two, but I’ve no idea how to get there from here. And even then the people would be left on the sidelines to scrabble for scraps.
IMHO we’ve got to dismantle all institutions that can become centres of power and set up a social structure that makes it hard for any new ones to emerge. I can think of a few approaches that seem to offer a way forward but again I don’t know how we can shake the grip of our current institutions without shaking society to pieces. I suspect that when the US Empire collapses it will take the Samson option and pull human civilisation down with it. Maybe even the entire human race.
Tripolar power structure… Yeah, we tried that (Legislature, Executive, Judiciary). How’d it work out for us?
The process of dismantling has already begun, thanks to the dawn of the age of decentralization (Internet, Bitcoin, etc.) but how long it will take is unknown.
Pretty well until the corporations became powerful enough to buy off and overwhelm the other three power centres. The so called ‘fourth estate’ of the structure – the media – was always a corporate catspaw and at least since the days of Hearst the First was able to get the other arms to swing to its tune.
The Spanish-American War that led to the annexation of the Philippines was one of Hearst’s babies (Remember The Maine. But forget all the lies Hearst and Pulitzer told about it).
To answer your questions- I don’t expect to progress while the nation is controlled by corporations. Not in the least.
Nor do I think ore government is the answer. see, that’s the mistake most people make in thinking of socialism, that it requires a big government structure.
What I would be in favor of is much like what cabrogal mentions, writing the founding laws to prevent entities from gaining concentrated power over, write freedom for people right into the founding documents, (You could claim that the founding fathers did this- they didn’t, really, they were very concerned about keeping men of property in control. They added the bill of rights as an afterthought.) I’d also write environmental protection, and equality in.
I’ve give power to the people, and demand responsibility from them.
Socialism doesn’t mean the government runs everything, it means the people do.
What an utterly fascinating and incisive post!
What then is an “Empire”? Does it mean a state ruled by an Emperor, or is it more of a process, one of expanding the state’s “sphere of influence” outside its borders, a process which would include colonisation?
If it’s a state ruled by an Emperor (Empress), then the British Empire began in the mid-nineteenth century, when Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. (Of course this was a sop to her, so that she wouldn’t be outranked by the German Kaiser.)
If it’s a process, you could say that the English Empire began with the subjugation of Wales, or the colonisation on Ireland, long before the Indian adventure.
As a process, you could say that the American Empire began with the Spanish-American war at the end of the 19th century, roughly, it began with the start of the 20th century.
Who then is the American Emperor? Not, I’d say, the President; perhaps it’s big business.
You mention the “Norman Conquest” in passing. Certainly, the received wisdom is that bad King William fought the Battle of Hastings against good King Harold, and won. But it’s not as simple as this. Edward the Confessor is said to have promised the crown of England to William sometime before his death; but Edward made a death bed declaration that the crown should pass to Harold. So, was Harold a usurper, with William the rightful heir, or the other way round? We were most certainly not taught in school that William was known, for obvious reasons, as William the Bastard—one of the problems he had establishing his legitimate claim to the throne.
The 4th July is an important anniversary for another very significant reason. It was on this day in 1862 that the young Alice Patience Liddell went, “all in the golden afternoon”, on a boat trip up the River Thames with the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
Re Wonderland: Yes, dear, I know. See also Cliterati day after tomorrow. 😉
I shall repeat a hundred times, “I will never, never, ever, ever get one across Maggie”. 🙂
It’s the combination of OCD, paranoia, less need for sleep and no need to be gainfully employed that gives me the edge. 😉
On second thoughts, i realised that a more condign punishment for my imprudence would be to write out lines. I’m half way through my 1000 sentence of Ego numquam, numquam, semper, semper melior capto Maggie. I’ve got writer’s cramp. 🙁
So you believe that Obama and both the Democratic Senate and Republican House are controlled by corporations?
I’m sorry – I just don’t see it.
You MIGHT make an argument that the Republicans are controlled by corporatists … but they are a minority party in Congress.
So if the “Emperor” is Shell Oil … why does the “Emperor” allow someone like Obama to sit on his throne and throw goodies to labor?
I don’t know it, I really don’t know enough about US politics. But I certainly get the impression that politics in the US (and in the UK) are heavily influenced by corporations behind the scenes. And, I’m not at all a conspiracy theorist.
If you agree that the US is now an Empire, who would you say is (are) the Emperor?
Well I believe we are “Empire” because of the global control we exercise and the powerful effect we have on cultures overseas. This is similar to the Roman Empire.
But we are a crumbling Empire.
And the UK – after September – may not be an “Empire” at all! I hope the Scots don’t secede and I don’t think they will – but even if they don’t, it won’t be the end of the issue.
I think there is a similarity to dying fruit-trees: When they notice they are going down, they will make one last great effort and carry fruit like never before. The US empire is making one last determined bid to control the whole world, via the NSA. It does not have the military might it would take.
I can only hope that the empire is indeed crumbling or we are going to get what the Nazis had as a wet dream.
It surprises and irks me that certain people say that George W Bush went into Iraq for oil while not seeing a problem with Willy J Clinton going into Bosnia and Serbia and killing thousands of civilians. I have never believed that W went into that country for oil when there is plenty of evidence to prove otherwise. It reeks of hypocrisy and partisan hackwork. In case you are wondering, I don’t like George W Bush myself, but don’t like the leftists either.
As for this very post, it is very obvious that this country is in decline a la Detroit, with Texas being the exception. American Exceptionalism is nothing more than a joke these days. How bad of a joke? It is hard for me to say. On the other hand, I have to give credit to the Fireweed Universe City guys for taking charge and making the choice to suck far less. (Maybe all of Louisiana should take this approach.) https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/36614-the-truth-about-detroits-bankruptcy/
I”m a bit flabbergasted that the “repressive reconstruction” of the south and the end of the Civil War are credited with the end of American freedom, let alone the seemingly obligatory union bashing.
Pre-1865 chattel slavery was an abomination far, far beyond anything practiced today. People were bought, sold, beaten, raped, and murdered with impunity. That is not liberty by any stretch of the imagination.
Reconstruction attempted to fix that and provide voting rights for the freed slaves. It was blocked by a guerrilla war, mostly waged by the KKK, that by the mid 1870’s had managed to depose freely elected governors and impose the Jim Crow laws, a situation that was finalized with the 1876 Presidential election, where Hayes made an explicit bargain to gain the Presidency and in return guarantee federal non-interference with Jim Crow and the KKK.
The end result was that in the South, the former slaves were put back in a state of quasi-slavery with the sharecropping system. Meanwhile, in the North, the corporate barons imposed a similar system on the working class, where “company towns” created a new form of serfdom. Any resistance was met with lynchings and the KKK in the South, and in the north troops of armed thugs (Pinkerton was the biggest provider) backed by police and armed troops.
The 1920’s and 1930’s saw that change, as unions finally gain enough power to get things like safe working conditions and the eight-hour day, and later in the 1950’s and 1960’s with the civil rights movement.
There has been a countering force of intrusions into personal lives, starting with the temperance movement culminating in the Narcotics Act in 1914, (alcohol) Prohibition in 1920, and the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937, but while those were nominally enacted to “protect the innocent”, the underlying motivation was again to subjugate minorities that served as a pool of cheap labor and/or provide a pretense for deportation. The Narcotics Act was aimed squared at Chinese and Filipinos, Prohibition at African-Americans, and the Marijuana Tax Act at the Hispanic/Native American population in the Southwest.
The fight for sexual rights, labor rights, and civil rights are all part and parcel of the same struggle, and it’s never been easy. There was never a idyllic utopia in the history of the United States. It’s become better over time, but only through struggle and solidarity.
Since we’re talking about the Roman Empire, let’s remember what happened there. A new religion – State Christianity, which bore only a nominal resemblance to the genuine, early Apostolic Christianity – took over the Empire. Martin Larson’s The Story of Christian Origins provides much telling detail. Even the rhetoric of the State Church zealots sounds a lot like the “progressive” rhetoric of today. A two-column comparison of the ideals, tactics, and propaganda of the fourth century State Church and 21st century leftists, using Larson’s book, reveals much.
In our time, a new religion has taken over our nation. Call it Messianic Socialism, or Socialist Absolutism. Over the decades since the Frankfurt School true believers began worming their way into American institutions, this new religion has infiltrated government, education, the media, the great foundations, and the entertainment industry. It has used various high-sounding ideals to control more and more aspects of American life. Look at what’s been done in the name of “civil rights” – young whites, especially young white men – are now kept out of jobs they’re qualified for and even the universities that were founded to educate them, all by government decree.
Now, we’re like socialist Europe. Everything is either compulsory or forbidden – unless you belong to a protected class like illegal aliens. Yes, there is crony capitalism, but under such a statist regime how could there be any other kind?
And sorry Maggie, it isn’t fascism. No fascist country ever heard of would have diluted the ethnic composition of the country to reduce the power of its founding race, thrown open its borders to all comers, or tolerated the spectacle and the lawlessness of its inner cities the way we do.
It’s fascism. Just because the first few fascist governments had a strong racist component doesn’t mean all of them must; it’s not one of the defining characteristics. Strong national identity, yes; basing that on ethnicity, not necessarily.
Maggie’s right again.
Mussolini’s fascism wasn’t racist by European standards of its time – at least not until the alliance with Germany was activated in 1940.
There have even been fascist thinkers who were anti-racist (e.g. Subash Chandra Bose, Mircea Eliade).