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Enter the Empire
By
Manuel Valenzuela
Comfort and
Masquerades
05/01/07 "ICH"
-- - -The wealthiest nation-state the world has ever seen
has for the last sixty years been standing atop the upper crust
of humankind, basking in the splendor of unfathomable richness,
enjoying unprecedented standards of living, accumulating power
and control at tremendous speed and becoming, at the expense of
the planet and its inhabitants, the latest incarnation of Rome.
America, that city on a hill, from where modern man’s guiding
light emanates, that nation anointed by man’s imaginary deity,
has, since the end of World War II, become the most powerful
nation humankind has ever produced.
Today, 300 million people live inside its borders, enjoying
levels of comfort and luxury never before seen. America has for
the last two centuries become the nation whose attractiveness
has become a magnet to millions upon millions of immigrants from
all corners of the globe. No other nation on Earth has the
wealth of the United States, and only a few countries come close
to matching its immense power. It is this enormous wealth and
comfort, leaps beyond that of most nations, along with myriad
number of freedoms and rights for decades granted its people,
that compel humans everywhere to try to migrate inside its
borders.
Indeed, while most people of the world, billions strong, still
struggle to subsist and survive on a daily basis, scrapping to
eat, clothe and house themselves, living in shantytowns and
slums and shacks and ghettos and cardboard huts, lacking the
basic infrastructure and investments for adequate living, most
citizens of the new Rome face no such hurdles or difficulties.
To the millions residing inside the bowels of the Empire, the
obstacles, anxieties and problems facing billions never become
an issue or a reality that must be confronted on a personal and
daily basis. Indeed, the gap between Americans’ standards of
living and that of most of the world’s people is enormous to the
point of absurdity.
Most Americans do not go hungry, they do not subsist on two or
five dollars a day, or anywhere close to that, having to toil in
sweatshops or relying for food on the scavenger techniques of
family members combing through a landfill. They do not have to
combat embedded corruption or the complete looting of their
treasure. Americans have not had to live in tyranny, in
dictatorship, in despotism, having to suffer the consequences of
turmoil, of disease, mass drought and internal strife. They
have not had to suffer through insecurity, war, and state
sanctioned rape and murder.
Americans enjoy liberties, freedoms and rights that few peoples
are allowed to possess in their native lands. In fact, it is
those nation-states that are under the grip of America, those
with puppet regimes loyal to the Empire and not their people,
that paradoxically are prevented from enjoying the freedoms and
rights and liberties that the Empire bestows upon its populace.
It is those American sponsored dictators, royalty and puppet
politicians that are often cited for fostering and nurturing the
worst violations of human rights. It is in those foreign lands
dominated by America where one is likely to find that democracy
is non-existent and the rights of the people easily expendable.
Yet, it is those freedoms that Americans take for granted that
are in many instances denied to billions, and it is those rights
strongly desired by billions that are presently being eroded in
America by the indifference of millions. For, in reality, the
Empire has rarely, if ever, cared for the rights and freedoms of
the peoples of the world, though to hear her words would be to
believe the opposite. Actions, however, speak louder than
words. And in her actions, the Empire has shown an indifference
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for billions of
human beings. This truth can be seen in Africa, Asia and Latin
America, where for years billions of people have been held
captive – much to their detriment and suffering – to America and
her puppets and proctors.
To the elite that control the Empire, the principles of the
American Constitution and Bill of Rights are but a hollow
illusion designed to wet the pants of human beings everywhere,
especially to the citizens of the Empire itself. Like much of
what America stands for, with its glazed and revisionist
history, its self-created exceptionalism, its fictional values
and beliefs, these documents are but a myth used as a tool to
pacify and retain a compliant people. By offering the necessary
amount of freedoms and rights, by allowing us to have liberties
we demand, the elite placate the fire within us, containing a
populace that is better controlled through calmness than by
anger and animosity. Content with our conditioned illusions and
myths, our belief that we live in the greatest nation the world
has ever seen, we are less likely to stir trouble, even as the
Empire decimates and subjugates the planet.
There is no doubt that those living inside the belly of the
Empire have a much better life than most human beings, yet it is
also true that because of this comfort level, because of our
high standards of living, we are less likely to rise in anger or
frustration. We are less likely to question the state or its
elite, thereby helping to maintain a status quo where the
powerful are free to grow in power not only over the rest of the
world, but over us as well. Because we live in adequate
comfort, with few worries of survival or fears of entering
perpetual indigence, we are less likely to demand change or
confront the criminality of leaders.
Indeed, the genius behind our silent passivity, our indifference
to confront wrongdoing, our inability to detect what is being
done to us, is in the elite giving us a bigger piece of the pie
than has ever been given the masses. The elite of the Empire
has found that by granting us slightly larger crumbs, bones and
scraps than before, by willing to forego slight sums of change,
the masses can be more easily directed and controlled. By
giving us what amounts to a comfortable lifestyle, beyond the
realm of squalor and subsistence, under the illusion that we own
our own destiny, that we are not serfs or slaves to the system,
the elite have discovered a formula that in essence is the gift
that keeps on giving.
Not only do the masses remain passive and quiet, not only do
they obey commands better and become more acquiescent to the
dictates of the elite, they also become even bigger cogs in the
system itself, becoming the spark plugs of Empire, the
automatons of capitalism, consuming and producing, producing and
consuming, returning all wages earned back to their masters, all
for a little extra comfort, a little extra ego boosting. The
elite formula for success is thus an attack on our human need to
live in comfort, in attacking our inability to control our vices
such as greed, gluttony and the desire to continue accumulating
material wealth.
Thanks to the extra crumbs, bones and scraps given to us the
elite are better able to unleash the machinations of the system
upon our unsuspecting masses. Together with the continued and
purposeful dumbing down of America’s youth and the incessant
manipulation of our minds through television, the comfort level
we have today – though never before attained by human beings –
has created a populace slow to wake and slower still to
question.
The genius of all three mechanisms mentioned above, intertwined
and fused together like a new strand of mutated DNA, is that the
modern day version of Rome is free to do as it pleases, both
domestically and abroad, without suffering the repercussions and
animosity of its citizens. With its most potent enemy – the
people themselves – contained and in check, free of anger and
the flames of dissent, the elite at the helm of the Empire can
stay the course well into the future, heading straight to
long-planned goals of continued exploitation, subjugation and
control over billions of human beings.
Thus can be seen in this present incarnation of Empire building
that, unlike most nations, domestic disturbance, protest and
dissent in America remains a controllable nuisance bearing no
threat to the system. Compliant and obedient, the American
people have little to complain about, certainly no grievances to
bear or demands to be made, unlike so many billions of human
beings who take to the streets in united anger and resentment,
their flames still lit passionately with the call of injustice
or the shout of corruption. In many parts of the world, taking
to the streets to demand change remains a power not yet
extinguished. In America, this power of the people has for all
intents and purposes been made obsolete, with the fire of
protest and dissent now extinguished by a flame-retardant called
greed, gluttony and the pursuit of materialistic comfort.
Empire Addicted,
People Castrated
The materialist freedoms given over the last two centuries to
the citizens of America have allowed the nation to prosper
magnificently in the short run. However, these freedoms have
been granted without seeing or envisioning the irreparable
damage being done to it in the long term. It can be said that
in order to secure short-term prosperity and unparalleled wealth
accumulation, the long run success of the Empire has been
sacrificed, for unsustainable accumulation of wealth cannot be
maintained without destroying the very bosom that feeds it
sustenance in the first place. Thus, in a battle between saving
the environment and saving the Empire, the environment will
sadly, and to our great detriment, always lose.
The destruction of the environment, from where natural resources
are derived, later becoming the wealth and capital of the
Empire, will thus continue unabatedly until it can be exploited
no longer, for the environment is a finite resource, not an
unending stream of dollar bills coming off the printing
presses. With the depletion of the world’s environment and its
resources already under tremendous strain and pressure, the
Empire will not be able to sustain its wealth and power, forcing
it to confront the reality that the same short-term thinking
that engendered its power has now guaranteed its collapse. To
combat this potential threat to its hegemony, a nation already
saturated in arrogance will become even more predatory, more
imperialist, forced through greed and gluttony to target regions
of the planet whose resources, both human and natural, it
desperately craves.
Like a heroin addict desperately in search of a fix, a rising
Empire whose vision and greed only allowed it to see in the
exploitation of the short term will find itself in need of an
ever-greater hit, for like an addict, ever more quantities are
needed to satisfy an ever-increasing craving for a high.
Therefore, in its pursuit for the last vestiges of wealth
accumulation through resource exploitation, the Empire will be
forced to become ever more authoritarian, both at home and
abroad. It will become ever more desperate, ever more willing to
push the limits of human morality. To sustain itself, to attain
the same level of gluttony that only increases with each passing
decade, the world entire will become fair game to the war
machine of the Empire. This will of course include its citizens
as well, for most have been, are and will become expendable in
the pursuit of global hegemony.
The very freedoms and rights of the citizenry will in the
approaching future become hindrances in sustaining and expanding
the Empire, for to maintain and enhance its power well into the
future, the Empire must inevitably become even more imperialist,
more predatory, more criminal in nature. In short, in order to
sustain its ever-growing appetite, its addiction to comfort and
wealth, it must dominate ever more egregiously the nations,
peoples and resources of the world. The quest for Empire is akin
to making a deal with the devil, though the demons you create
along the way are not beholden to any deal. And, as invariably
happens, imperialism and the quest for Empire abroad results in
the loss of freedoms, rights and liberties at home, for Empire
and freedom are mutually exclusive and diametrically opposed
concepts.
In order to dominate nations and peoples, in order to rape and
pillage and exploit foreign resources and land, the Empire must
make extinct democracy at home, for the will of the people must
not be allowed to be heard. It must destroy freedoms and
rights, the better to control a population, the better to rule
an Empire. Inevitably, the Empire fears its own people most,
for only the people can put a stop to it and its imperialist
machinations. Therefore, the power granted the people must be
methodically altered or abolished, whichever is easiest to
accomplish, whichever is cheaper to implement.
Done gradually, over the course of years, quietly and without
debate, the elite thus succeed in castrating the means by which
the people can light the flame of change. Once the masses wake
to a nation without rights and freedoms, once they open their
eyes to a state without democracy and liberty, it is too late to
rise in unity. The damage has been done, the laws have been
erased, the rights have been eviscerated. Before the masses
know it, under the rubric of fear and insecurity, under the
guise of patriotism and defending the fatherland, democracy has
been replaced by authoritarianism, rights and freedoms have
given way to a police state, and liberty's death knell has begun
to sound the last cries of a nation that is no more.
In 21st century America, the so-called New American
Century, the fireworks ushering in the rise and further pursuit
of Empire began on September 11, 2001. On that day, as anybody
with an IQ of over 80 can plainly see, as has become quite
apparent to anyone still not blinded by faith or vested
interests, the World Trade Center was demolished by elements of
the American government and the military-industrial-energy
complex. Corporatist America had risen from the ashes and
pulverized concrete of lower Manhattan, unleashing the
psychological war on the American people needed to embark on a
course for naked imperialism. What had for decades been done
clandestinely through market colonialism and economic genocide
would suddenly be made visible through the unleashing of
American military might.
While imperial building through clandestine domination had
succeeded brilliantly over the years, it would only be through
military might and conquest that Empire could continue its
heavenly dictum of manifest destiny. Only through the
acquiescence of the masses could Project Empire be allowed to
flourish. Using the fear and insecurity of the people against
themselves, using the chosen Arab scapegoat as America’s new
evildoer extraordinaire, marketing the much needed protection of
the nation against dark-skinned bogeymen, the usurpation of our
freedoms and rights commenced, just as the elite had always
wished, just as had been planned.
The subsequent Patriot Act and its progeny, the acceptance of
torture and false imprisonment, the decimation of habeas corpus,
due process and the Constitution, the shredding of the Bill of
Rights, the burning of the Geneva Convention and the
marginalization of the United Nations has utterly and
devastatingly destroyed the last 200 years of human
enlightenment. Yet not surprisingly, the American people have
remained silent and passive to a one sided war against their
freedoms and rights, choosing to believe their protection from
fictional enemies is worth the complete destruction of their
cherished freedoms.
Such is the genius of comfort, materialism, television, dumbed
down education and the inside job of 9/11 that today most
Americans remain oblivious to the present state of their
country, and their lives. Through the horrific acts of 9/11,
the people consented, under the spell of hatred, in an orgy of
warmongering rapture, to the continued assault both of their
last remaining rights and to an undeclared war to build and
maintain Empire.
The consequences of this submissive act will haunt the world and
us for years to come.
Extinction and
Usurpation
With every war for resources, quest for land and battle for
geostrategic and geopolitical territory the Empire will face
growing opposition from many of its own citizens, most tired of
and opposed to war, tired of sacrificing, both treasure and
blood, and many outraged at the crimes of their government.
With growing unpopularity at what is being done, with growing
strains on the masses and with the resulting blowback from
nations and peoples being threatened, attacked and decimated,
the state will erode all those powers granted the people.
Over the course of time, the state will make extinct the
freedoms and liberties and rights that no longer serve the
interests of the Empire and its elite. For to the state and its
Establishment, those powers given the People over 200 years ago
have no more relevancy in the modern world, in the modern
America, a nation simply fulfilling its heavenly mandate of
manifest destiny. To those in power the corporatist element now
running the nation, democracy, freedom, rights and liberties are
an outmoded inconvenience, having become a hindrance in
governing what is invariably turning into an authoritarian
state. For we have become the Pax Americana, an empire to rival
and surpass Rome, fulfilling a mandate sent from the imaginary
god above.
In its pursuit of Empire, America is only laying claim to a path
she has taken since its inception, that of taking the logical
giant leap beyond her shores and borders, creating a reality far
beyond the known, or expected, creating for herself a righteous
seat beside the great empires of history, following manifest
destiny to the upper reaches of human achievement, fulfilling
the destiny her delusional elite undoubtedly have concocted for
themselves. This path to Empire, to the detriment of billions,
including millions within her borders, seems like the next step
for a nation-state that since its inception has never stopped
expanding, either economically or territorially, incorporating
greed and gluttony into its mantra, in the process laying waste
to man and land in unfathomable measures, caring nothing for
environmental degradation, carbon dioxide emissions, economic
strangulation, mass death, untold suffering and the inescapable
poverty for billions of human beings.
The United States of the Founding Fathers, of the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness has long since vanished over the last century, victim
to its own success, its own addictions and greed. It is no
more, even if it ever was, even if we believe it to still be.
Capitalism, in its most toxic stages, along with unrestrained
power and control by the elite, has made sure of that. Like a
greedy, pathological corporation, America has grown by leaps and
bounds, becoming addicted to its own hubris, its own wealth,
arrogantly wishing the destruction of competition and the
monopolization of its culture. It has undertaken a hostile
takeover of the world, exploiting, oppressing, invading and
subjugating both people and land, caring only for power and
profit, reaching out to new markets for cheap labor and
resources. Like a predatory corporation, it has bought out
regulating bodies, today controlling all aspects of the World
Bank, the IMF, WTO and the United Nations, dictating to the
world how reality will be run.
The America we believe in is no more and this reality must be
understood by the people residing inside its bowels. The
America of our youthful brainwashing, of our lifelong
conditioning, of fictional television shows, of our dreams and
ideals is a myth, a fantasy that, while ingrained deeply into
our minds, must be understood for the reality that it at present
is. It has become a Grim Reaper for millions, an economic
torturer to millions more, using both economic and financial
methods to ruin the lives of billions whose only faults lie in
being born in lands the Empire covets, underneath resources her
insides crave.
It destroys families and livelihoods through its control of
banks, corporations, governments and neoliberal institutions,
creating mass poverty and hunger, mass unemployment and
oppression, mass migration north. For it is easy to blame brown
skinned immigrants for crossing as undocumented workers,
traversing scorching hot deserts to reach a better life, risking
death and crime to seek the pursuit of happiness. For when food
runs out man must go in search of it, lest he stay to die of
hunger.
Of course to millions of the Empire’s citizens, themselves
products of migration, it is much harder to accept that it is
the Empire itself, and its consumer gluttony in particular, that
demands the exploitation of third world labor and resources, of
cheap foodstuffs, timber, oil and minerals. It is the Empire
itself that creates the conditions by which the poor of the
world are forced to migrate inside America. Unable to compete
with unfair trade practices that make farming unprofitable,
unable to secure employment because the Empire’s tentacles
destroy a nation’s safety net, unable to afford the Empire’s
products and prices, unable to make a living due to
privatization of the state’s enterprises, forced to accept the
slave wages offered by the Empire’s corporations, the poor of a
nation, especially one bordering the Empire itself, must make a
decision that to anybody with an ounce of empathy, is quite
obvious.
Such is reality for billions of humans who stand not a chance at
having a fruitful life as long as the Empire dominates and
controls human reality, all throughout the world, as long as its
citizens continue to believe it is American exceptionalism, not
its market colonialism and economic genocide, that are the true
reason for the migration of today’s undesirables and
untouchables into America. It is this delusion, that America is
the great city on a hill, the true beacon of light for the
world, and not the reality that it is the great birth mother of
human suffering and indigence, that must be made extinct.
Empire or no empire, whether from developed or undeveloped
lands, we are all humans, bleeding the same color, suffering the
same fears, experiencing the same emotions. We, all 6.7 billion
of us, are stuck in this little planet. We are all in this
human reality together.
Delusions of Manifest
Destiny
What began as a great experiment in human enlightenment has
turned into a genetically modified monster, going from late 18th
century miracle to a phenomenon on steroids, catapulting beyond
its own age, wisdom and control, becoming an overgrown
Frankenstein now unleashing terror upon the world. Once a state
among nations, America has become an Empire among client states,
its massive tentacles reaching to all corners of the planet.
America is indeed an Empire, transforming itself over the last
sixty years into a giant monolith, becoming a schoolyard bully,
an insecure tyrant, pretending to be humankind’s salvation,
clandestinely assuring our collapse.
Its militancy continues to grow, with 750 military bases
worldwide. It invests more on military spending than the entire
world combined, obviously preferring the nurturing of soldiers
than the education of its people. For years it has abandoned
the needs of its people, showing the world that its priorities
lie in expansion, exploitation and in dumbing down its citizenry
than in providing healthcare and education, even as it is the
wealthiest nation on the planet. It has made it known that it
prefers to lead through aggression and military might than in
the ability and intelligence of its people. It has shown that it
cares nothing for its citizens, seeing them as expendable
automatons, mere cogs in a system of unsustainable production
and consumption. To the elite, we are collateral damage in
pursuit of Empire, whether we die in new Pearl Harbors or in the
inevitable blowback of an Empire gone awry.
The Empire, thinking itself exceptional and omnipotent, has
begun overextending itself throughout the world. It has begun
to rub shoulders with powerful and potential adversaries. It
has unleashed forces in Central Asia that might invariably
become the harbinger of armed conflict between itself and Russia
and China. The world’s last remaining oil fields will soon
become battlefields between the world’s heavyweights, for the
age of resource wars is upon us. Soon the dwindling supplies of
natural resources, with oil and water being the most important,
will create violent competitions among nations and peoples, for
embedded in our nature is the instinct of survival. In the next
few decades we will witness war like we have never seen it, with
the Empire at the helm, eager to conquer and destroy, eager to
defend puppets and tyrants, ready to exploit and control the
last vestiges of humankind’s resources.
The exploitation of Africa, central Asia and perhaps South
America is setting the world on a collision course with an
enormous iceberg whose giant size we cannot yet see, or fathom.
Wars between the Empire and would-be superpowers, with the
potential to end all life on Earth at the push of a few buttons,
could be an inevitable result of the confrontation that is
slowly, but surely, growing and heating up. This trend can be
seen, and is readily apparent, through a pattern of behavior
that the Empire is exhibiting, thinking itself the heir to Rome,
an unbeatable entity whose reign will last a millennia. This
hubris can be seen through threats, intimidation tactics,
over-extension into lands controlled by others and through its
reckless endeavor to upset the global balance of states. With
such arrogance, greed and an addiction to its consumerist and
capitalist system, with so little regard for history and its
many lessons, can war with Russia or China be far behind? Will
future wars of aggression against third-world nations rich in
natural resources continue?
Will the American people ever wake up to the destruction of
their cherished rights and freedoms, knowing that one more 9/11
false flag type incident will be enough for the elite to make
extinct all remaining illusions of liberty and democracy? The
lust for Empire in America has blinded the elite to reality, and
its people to the approaching storm. The world entire has
realized the danger to the world of the unrivaled superpower,
hijacked by greed and addiction to vice.
Rising superpowers are aware they are being targeted and
threatened, for what was the Iraq invasion turned debacle but a
preemptive move against Russia, China, India and the European
Union, designed to control Iraq’s vast oil fields? What is the
approaching storm in Iran but the continuation of the Empire’s
power grab of natural resources, of putting in place those
nations who have not fallen in line with the Empire’s vision of
the future? What is Afghanistan but a beachhead into central
Asia, a pipeline route to vast oil fields, a grand prize in the
great chess match between nations?
In the grand chessboard of geostrategic and geopolitical
realpolitik, the invasion and occupation of Iraq served notice
that the Empire was declaring the 21st century
America’s century, fully willing to embark on a most ominous
journey of resource acquisition and control, through war, if it
had to, through peace, if rivals acquiesced and submitted,
bending down to kiss the royal ring of Empire. Iraq was and is
seen as a new American colony, its oil now belonging to the
Anglo-American enterprise, its 100 acre embassy, larger than
Vatican City, serving to remind the world that Iraq will never
be abandoned, it will never be relinquished. Its prize, besides
the oil fields, is the geostrategic location it provides,
opening up a giant military presence in the Middle East and
central Asia. The availability of its two rivers, providing
enormous amounts of water to the Arab world, assures America of
control over the Middle East in this respect as well.
The endgame, of course, is Empire, the inevitable continuation
of manifest destiny, begun long ago, traversing through time and
space, exterminating everything in its way. The opportunity to
be recorded in history as a rival to Rome has also become a
large incentive to those whose egos are larger than their
intellect. The endgame, as always in the system called
capitalism, is resource control, human exploitation, wealth
maximization, competitor extermination and power unrivaled.
This is the new ideology of the new America, not your
grandfather’s or mother’s nation, not the country of innocence,
of yesteryear, of tradition, altruism and virtue. The new
America is the Pax Americana, where to see its reality one must
look at its actions, not its public relations, its trends, not
its words. In this new America you and I are mere numbers, cogs
in the system, the collateral damage in the pursuit of Empire.
In this new America, profit is put ahead of people, the rights
of corporations are placed in front of those of humans and the
freedoms and liberties we once enjoyed are mere hindrances and
obstacles to those wishing to destroy the very fabric of what
once was a great beacon on a hill.
Enter the Empire, but be made aware, through its door lies a new
paradigm, a new America, land of the meek, home of the slave.
Through rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air nations are
attacked, thousands of people are killed. In the dawn’s early
light can we see the carcass of dying freedoms and rights, of a
democracy that is but a mirage of control, a predetermined
manipulation. In the new America We the People have become We
the Sheeple. The government of, by and for the People is now a
government of, by and for the Corporations. We are ruled by
corporatists and criminals, and soon a police state we will
have.
Enter the Empire at your own risk, for she cares not an ounce
for you or me, her beauty destroyed by greed and gluttony, her
virtue made extinct by fascists and elites. Her foundations
have crumbled, her pillars have collapsed. Where once was a
city on a hill today only ruins of a once great nation stand,
buried in the indifference and laziness and passivity of her
once great people. The beacon of light that once shone bright
no longer lights the world, for its flame now stands
extinguished, its warm and comfortable glow made extinct by our
own delusions of exceptionalism.
America is the Empire called, inevitably destined to fall, just
as all Empire’s fall, a result of her greed, gluttony and
arrogance, of her ignorance and her abandonment of the People.
For while in the short term the Empire may seem prodigious and
powerful, unrivaled and unmatched, history and the human
condition teach us that in the long term she will overreach,
overextend, become ever-more corrupted and become, invariably,
the latest victim to her imperial hubris, the last creature to
suffer her unwelcome fate.
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