Examples to Learn From

The Power Structure of this country appears to be doing everything it can to prop up the unfortunate "election" of Donald Trump to the Presidency. It's quite a remarkable scene when you think about it.

Not only is he unsuited to the office, he's totally unprepared and obviously at sea as the reality of what he's in for engulfs him. I'd be laughing if it weren't such a dangerous situation for so many Americans and people around the world.

Truly, I don't think he expected to win the office and he was quite prepared to hector Hillary from the sidelines, probably from his own TeeVee show and network set up and run by his compadre Roger Ailes. That's what I believe they were going for and expected to do. It would make them lots of money and serve as a brake on a Hillary White House.

In other words, they expected to play the Opposition Game the way it's been played by the Right for decades -- and to profit from it handsomely.

Had that happened, there would be grumpiness and grumbling from Trump loyalists to be sure, but he would have been able to give them a whole alternate universe in which to lick their wounds and do virtual battle against The Hag -- until she was either driven from office or so tied up in knots her regime would be declared a failure. Blah blah blah. It seems to me the groundwork was already done for this enterprise, and all they needed was a Hillary victory to launch. Stars and dollar signs were in their eyes.

And then... the unthinkable happened. They were given the Presidency instead. Now there will be no launch. No dollar signs. No alt.universe for their Loyalists to play in. This is as real as it gets.

Jeebus dancing on a Ritz. Whose idea was this? Well, it is what it is, and I imagine I'll be exploring it for some time to come. I had little interest in the campaign and the candidates while that shit-show was going on, but we're here now, and my interest in what to do about it is pretty intense.

He was given the keys to the Kingdom, and he's obviously as stunned as everyone else is. The Caucasian Id has been unleashed -- to what object I don't know, but there it is. White folks running wild doing what they want to whoever they decide to Other. It's ugly now and getting uglier. The worst of it is falling on the children, the brown, the black, the differently abled, the suspected queer, the suspected Muslim, or anyone at all who doesn't fit the New Model (White) Conformity.

That id has largely been kept in check for generations, and now it's let loose again to prey at will on the different and the vulnerable. Whose idea is this? What is the freaking purpose?

The United States has long since ceased to be a 'White' country, unlike some of the revanchist nations of Europe which have been reclaiming their 'Whiteness' in the face of the brown hordes of refugees driven from their homes (by EuroAmerican Imperialist destruction) in the Middle East and North Africa.

Until 'this' happened, Americans seemed quite content not to be 'White' any more, and the election of Barack Obama (twice) was supposed to be redemptive proof. He's still a very popular president. The efforts to turn him into a caricature and to "Nigger-ize" him never worked. At least not that I ever saw, but then, I'm not keyed in to the alt.White universe. I don't know how those people think. I don't know what they believe. I don't even know who they are or where they are.

It's just alien to me.

At least from my point of view these people are simply fringe, free to believe whatever they want, but not free -- until now -- to act on it.

Now they feel they've been liberated, and their Champion is going into the White House.

America will be White and Right again! Yay!

Why would Our Betters want this to happen? Why would they allow it to happen? Why are they trying so hard to prop it up? What's the deal here?

Obama himself is part of this process of propping up the inconceivable. He's been going out of his way to be kind and generous and welcoming and helpful to the Incoming Inconceivable, extending his hand and opening his heart, yadda yadda, which is not only eye-popping, but is also deeply disturbing. WTF, Dude?

Whoa. Something's going on we don't know anything about. Things are not what they appear.  But maybe we got a hint of it when Michelle Obama so warmly embraced War Criminal George W. Bush at the opening of the Museum of African American Culture a few months ago. That was really shocking to a lot of people who sincerely believe that man should be in the dock at The Hague. Until he is, he should be shunned. But no. The Obamas and the Bushes and the Clintons -- and the Trumps? -- are all very good friends. Well, maybe the Trumps will be brought into the Circle if they ever get their act together enough to warrant inclusion. They haven't done so yet, but they're being given every opportunity. Why?

And what do we do about it?

Always we're being told just to calm down, accept the inevitable, don't fight it, everything will be fine, "he's not as bad as you think," yadda yadda, and I'm sorry, no, we're not going to just roll over for Trump, not this time...

I'm so old that I've heard this same litany about rightists installed in office -- going back to Reagan's gubernatorial victory in California in 1966. Every time, the same litany has been repeated: "Just calm down, accept it, 'he's not as bad as you think', everything will be fine." And every time it gets worse.

Every fucking time.

Reagan's election in 1966 was considered catastrophic at the time. Many innocents would be hurt. And guess what? It was and they were. Almost exactly as predicted. And so it's gone with every subsequent reiteration of Rightist Rule, over and over and over again.

And now this.

No, not again. Not when it is so obvious that something is dreadfully wrong with our electoral process, and not when he himself has no inkling of what to do now or even, seemingly, how he got this prize.

WTF?

I despise what he did during the campaign, boosting White Supremacy, inciting violence, and conning so many people into believing his bullshit. That all has violent and destructive repercussions on the innocent playing out right now. What he did was release the Caucasian Id from any restraint, sowing the wind. He will reap the whirlwind, but in the meantime a lot of people who shouldn't be hurt will be.

That's happening right now.

He told his followers to "Stop it!" as one would tell a dog, but they're not stopping. Why should they? In their mind, their victims deserve it. They lost! Oh, jeebus.

So what do we do?

Among the examples to learn from are the Water Protectors now and for months facing down Authority run amok in North Dakota. Other examples include the rebels in Ireland who ultimately defeated the British. The independence movement in India which eventually led to the exit of the British Empire. Anti-colonialists everywhere, including our own 18th Century revolution. The Zapatistas. And on and on.

Examples not to follow include SYRIZA in Greece, bless their hearts. It appears the Socialists everywhere are simply exhausted and out of steam. They have nothing much to offer any more, and they are obviously too willing to concede to their opponents almost before the struggle is engaged. Does that sound like the Democratic Party as well? Of course it does.

But make no mistake, the Democrats are just as much captive to the neoLibeCon, aristocratic ruling clique as are the Republicans, as are nearly all ruling parties throughout the West and much of the rest of the world.

The struggle we must engage in now is ultimately against that entire ruling ideology. Though we have to take it one step at a time.

I cite the examples I do because each of them based their struggle on simple principles: sovereignty, self-worth and spiritual renewal. If you think about it, that's what many of the White Rightists after too, only they want what they want in order to harm others, not to lift them up.

In other words, while the struggle we must engage in may be similar to that of the White Right, the objectives are quite different.

Strategies and tactics of where we go from here are actually very well worked out long since, the rule book of how to do it is already written. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we have to resist efforts to divide us (Shut up, Democratic "helpers" -- you're not helping!)  and we must be aware of and  remain focused on the end game -- why we fight, in other words.

We will win, though probably not in my lifetime.

You never know, though. As we've seen, things can change in a twinkling.

The Nations and Their Future -- a continuacion

I've argued in the past that de-tribalization is a necessary per-requisite for the adoption and sustenance of nationalism. Tribal societies do not -- on their own -- become "nations" (though some American Indian tribes are called "nations" in both law and custom. The one I'm most familiar with is the Cherokee Nation, but that's another story for another time.)

My premise for this series is that what are known as nation-states today are a concept and construct of Imperialism, dating back at least to Rome, and probably to well before the advent of the Roman Empire. The purpose was to establish local/regional loyalty to the distant Palace or to the Crown. The Nations might begin as Imperial Provinces, but over time the Provinces assume quasi-autonomous status and eventually, if they aren't absorbed by another Empire, they become independent of the Imperial thrall, nation-states, yet they still may be loyal to the ideals of the former ruling power.

As the Western Roman Empire disintegrated, the ruling concepts were maintained in the East, and periodic revivals of the Roman Imperial idea would occur in the West. While the disintegration of Roman rule in the West opened Europe to invasion and conquest by tribalists who had been kept outside the gates, as it were, by Roman Legions, and thus opened Europe to de-nationalization, re-tribalization in many respects, the Roman idea was never actually lost. Many of the elites of the conquering hordes from the East had already been Romanized before the fall of the Imperial state, and most of the conquered peoples were as thoroughly Romanized as any in the Empire.  The Church, too, preserved, protected and defended the Roman ideals of governance, pomp and state.

Consequently, while re-tribalization did occur subsequent to the end of Roman rule in Western Europe, there was also a counter influence tending toward de-tribalization and nationalism -- a counter influence that eventually triumphed with the establishment of nation-states more or less derived from and patterned on Roman prototypes. Of course the hundreds of years that this process took meant that very little of the nationalism that emerged in Europe after the reintroduction of the nationalist concept (beginning, I would say, in the 16th century, but accelerating in the 18th and reaching a climax in the 19th century with the unification of Germany and Italy) looked like "Rome." And yet, without the influence of the Roman Empire, nationalism might not have taken root in Europe at all. For Europeans, it seems to me, are at root as naturally tribal a people as any on Earth.

But being de-tribalized, they could be and were subject to nationalism, which is a form of enforced loyalty to a nation-state rather than to a tribe, nationalism which under certain conditions can become an impetus toward Empire.  Which was certainly the case in Europe from the 16th Century to the 20th until the whole enterprise exploded in World War II.

It was the End of Empire(s), something that is still assumed to be under way today, but I suggest that we're seeing essentially the opposite today, a reversion to Empire, but it is perhaps taking place under such an unfamiliar guise that it goes unnoticed or is not seen for what it is.

The key to re-Imperialization has been the numerous trade agreements that basically subvert and in many cases eliminate the concept of national sovereignty except to the extent the nation-state is loyal to a distant legal framework -- in effect, loyalty to a Palace and Crown, only now we're not dealing with crowned heads and their governments, we're dealing with corporate heads and their boardrooms. Much of the initial thrust during former Imperial periods was, of course, a product of the same institutions: corporations and their boardrooms, supported and defended by the Palace and Crown. The nation-states that emerged from post-imperialism remain in place, not as independent and sovereign entities but as dependencies of the sovereign corporations which assume the positions of the Imperial Palaces and Crowns of yore. The nation-states are not simply dependencies, they are factories of loyalty to their corporate overlords as well, much as was the case during previous periods of Imperial ascendency.

We're not quite there yet, but that's the trend I see emerging, and just as former Empires were imposed on both willing as well as unwilling subjects, I see a remarkable and somewhat unseemly tendency among some of those who should know better to pledge their loyalty and encourage the loyalty of others to the emerging corporate empire(s). It is as if reversion and devolution has taken hold of their minds.

Of course, I realize that a big part of my view of these trends -- and my revulsion -- is due to my age and the fact that I was socialized during the Post War de-imperialization period. To see a younger generation adopting a re-imperialization framework, and to see it happen through corporate entities which control governments, and to see it passed off as a Good Thing, is disheartening at best.

A counter movement is under way, in opposition to this trend toward corporate imperialism, but at this point it seems incredibly weak and powerless. The anti-globalist movement is certainly large, but because its foundations are for the most part based in the "non-violence" teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, it seems to be getting nowhere. Of course King and Gandhi didn't seem to be getting anywhere for a long time, either, so I don't put too much emphasis on the ultimate weakness or powerlessness of the anti-globalist movement. We can't say yet whether "people power" will be unable to thwart this new imperialism.

On the other hand, we might ask what are the positive goals of the anti-globalists; do they ultimately want to revert to a status quo ante, a return to nation-state sovereignty as it was conceived post World War II, or do they envision something else? If something else, what?

That's where I'd like to carry this consideration next time.

To be continued...

On Secession and Secessionists

This Modern Secession Movement might become intriguing as more and more entities decide to press for secession from one another.

I'm told that there are now secession movements in all fifty states. But within the states, particularly Texas -- which got the ball rolling, after all, with some of the more intemperate statements of its brain-addled governor quite some time ago -- there have arisen plenty of internal secession movements seeking to withdraw this or that city from the grip of the Other Secessionists. Well now. What have we here?

For some time, I've been writing that the Problem With America is that it is too big. It's a Domestic  Imperial State where one really ought not to be. It's an anachronism built from the detritus of the British Empire, which itself was a criminal enterprise leading to untold suffering and misery around the world. Basically, as brilliant as many of the Founding Fathers were, their underlying premise was that they could do this Continental Imperial Project better than the British, and they wanted the power and authority to engage in it without interference from London. They were prepared to take that power from London and did so.

Their Original Sins, of course, were slavery and genocide, both necessary for the Imperial Project to succeed. The political efforts to curb the excesses of these sins led to the Civil War and a temporary break up of the Union to discover whether the future of America would be corporate-Imperial or plantation/mercantile-imperial. The corporate side won.

And here we are.

Of course it's not that simple, not at all, but the outline is strong, and the problem continues to be the fact that the country is a domestic Empire that's just too damn big. The solution is to break it up.

Ah. I can already hear the screams of Imperialists: "Balkanization!" Yes, well.

The United States is really an uncomfortable amalgam of a number of culture and geographic areas into an unwieldy and nigh on ungovernable mish-mash of a nation served by an ever more remote and disconnected national government and a descending series of ever more impoverished state and local governments.

Given my druthers, the rest of the country should secede from the Old South rather than the other way around, since the South really runs this pop stand and isn't about to let go of it any time soon. So, drop kick them. I'd go farther, though, and abolish the states as well, since they are all artificial creations with no natural existence either culturally or geographically at all.

Instead, what's now the United States should be divided into affinity/geographic regions, perhaps ten of them outside the Old South. Each independent. For a time I thought that there was some merit in preserving the national existence, but now I'm not so sure.

The idea of domestic empire has become an anachronism in any case.

It's time to ponder something else again.

A real secession movement would be founded outside the South and would have as its objective freeing the People from the illiberality of the Old South. Real secessionists would want to see the chains of the Old Southern mindset broken, and our governments liberated from control by Old Southern politicians and their cruelties.

I like the idea of turning the Modern Secession Movement inside out this way.

Heh.

Today's Afghanistan Propaganda

Note: I was going to use the Moody's "Go Now" for this post, but then I found this video by Tigertown, and I fell in love with it. Just an unreconstructed hippie at heart, I guess. (Furthermore, "Tigertown" is the current appellation of the section of the coastal California city I lived in when I was just a wee tot... so the name of the band is evocative to me.)


This comes courtesy of the AP -- well, "courtesy of" since the AP tends to lack even human decency much of the time -- but I heard the framing yesterday on NPR:

Apparently Hamid Karzai gave a speech after the blowsy and stupid sounding Leon Panetta left Afghanistan in which he politely suggested that foreign troops should get out of the rural areas of Afghanistan forthwith and return to their bases. According to The Best Available Minds, however:

The demands from the Natives that NATO troops should pull out of villages and return to their bases "represent new setbacks to America's strategy for ending the 10-year-old war."

Besides which, he didn't really mean it.

Note how cleverly worded the assertion is. The demand from the Afghan goverment (such as it is) mirrors and parallels what happened in Iraq as the Imperial Forces were being removed: the troops were withdrawn from daily interaction with the IDs (Iraqi Devils) and confined to their enormous and growing bases, with only occasional joint operations conducted from time to time to ensure the Natives understood who was boss and who was still in charge. But in this case, the demand that the foreign troops get out of rural areas and leave policing them to the Afghan authorities (such as they are) -- which makes perfectly rational sense -- is met with the assertion that doing so will jeopardize the "strategy" for ending the war. Really? The implication being that Karzai is trying to prolong the war. Well, isn't that a turn about?

Furthermore, once again Karzai demanded an end to night raids -- which Panetta, at his blowsiest and stupidest, defended as necessary to "defeat al Qaida."

(Note on Panetta. He really does not seem to be up to this. Maybe he should think about returning to his think tank on the Pacific.)

Teri49 in comments links to an Afghan news source that says that after investigation and interviews with survivors and witnesses, an Afghan parliamentary probe has determined that the killing spree was conducted by two separate squads, totaling as many as twenty American soldiers. No matter how much the military lies about such things and tries to cover up the facts, it will not be possible to keep the true story from coming out eventually. As a rule, most of those who follow these matters know well enough that oppressed peoples (ie: the victims) tend to tell the truth as best they know it, whereas the perpetrators do not.

So. We'll see. But the notion that getting the foreign troops out of the rural areas and ending the night raids will somehow interfere with "ending the war" is laughable. It's as if the military is bound and determined to de-legitimize itself come hell or high water.

There's spin and then there is horseshit.

Is This The End of Empire?

I've said many, many times that the period we're in is not the End of Empire, it is the much closer to the beginning of a Neo-Imperialist Era. It was inevitable given the Neo-Con and Neo-Lib triumph over the Boogey-Man of "Socialism."

Now we're hearing lots and lots of chatter in the system about an accelerated withdrawal from the Afghanistan clusterfuck, thanks in large measure to the Latest Massacre, and there is an almost overwhelming inevitability factor to all the Pull Out Now! yakkity-yak. This is more propaganda, make no mistake. The Busheviks didn't pioneer the tactic, but they certainly made their own, and it worked for them through their whole dismal reign. The Obamanauts are no slouches when it comes to using "inevitability" tactics, either (they did it to Hillary masterfully, for example.)

There is considerable push back on the Pull Out Now! faction, however. Today's Propaganda installment from the WaPo seems to be saying what I suggested in a comment yesterday: since the Natives aren't too restless over this little "accident," it will all blow over, no harm, no foul. The Occupation and Plunder will continue unchanged. Killing and plundering the Natives is all in a day's Imperial Work. Burning of Holy Writ, however, is a capital offense according to Native standards, and in the future, our Warriors will want to watch that shit.

What we are probably witnessing is the outward appearance of an internal squabble between gung-ho Warriors in the Pentagon and Pragmatists in the White House. The Warriors never seem to want to leave the Battle Space (which has metastasized to include Everywhere Around the World) within which to kill and destroy at pleasure. The Warriors seem to have no other mentality at all. On the other hand, the Pragmatists say, 1) it's too costly to keep troops on the ground overseas in large numbers; 2) it's not necessary to do so in order to maintain hegemony; 3) the Warriors fuck up too much to ensure the efficient exploitation of colonial outposts.

On an elemental emotional level, it's likely that what drove this Massacre -- among so many massacres -- was vengeance, pure, stark, blood soaked revenge. The Natives took it upon their foolish selves to protest the "accidental" burning of the Korans; some of the more uppity of them took it upon themselves to kill a number of American troops and officers in (apparent) retaliation for this "accident." Several dozen of the riotous Afghans were shot during protests, but the troop and officer killings were not avenged -- the way any such action by colonial populations must be. It is the way Empires work and have worked from the first. Imperial Overlords cannot allow the Natives to recognize that they do have considerable power over their captors and exploiters. Any sign of Native threat to Imperial power must be put down swiftly and brutally, and any deadly act of Native resistance must be avenged, with blood and fire. This did not look like the act of a madman gone berserk. It had all the earmarks of a punitive raid.

Back in the day, Imperial forces were generally up front about what was going on, why they were punishing resistance, and the necessity of "Teaching those Wogs a Lesson." It didn't matter a whit if innocents were slaughtered in their beds. Better it should be so. That's how Empire is done. There are so many Natives and so few Imperial forces. The only way to keep the Wogs in their Place is to come down on them with immense cruelty and suffering every time they get out of line. It's the only way. Do it enough, and the Wogs learn their Place and stay in it.

I remember during the earlier years of the Iraq Occupation, horrible things were happening to innocent Iraqis all the time. There were numerous incidents of Iraqis being shot to pieces at checkpoints for not being sufficiently ...something. It was never really clear why all these hundreds of Iraqis were being shot at checkpoints -- except that the troops at the checkpoints were scared of them, and they could shoot them with impunity as long as they said they were "scared." The military justification was that the Wogs needed to learn to follow commands at these checkpoints, and if enough of them were killed for not doing so, they'd get the idea.

Something that happened all too often was that military convoys would charge through traffic jams (which were frequent because of all the checkpoints) by literally crashing into and driving over occupied vehicles caught in the jam, killing and injuring who knows how many people inside the vehicles. Iraqis were horrified at this consistent behavior of their occupiers -- the Turks and the British were never this cruel. Of course, the indifference of the Imperial American Occupiers was routine.

Sometimes when a convoy encountered traffic, they'd just start shooting. They've done it in Afghanistan as well. No doubt thousands of innocents have been killed through these actions.

But that's how Empires work. There is no interest in or concern for the well being of the subject peoples. At all.

In our latest forays, there is hardly any recognition that they are "people" -- they're barely considered to be objects.

Withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan is likely to occur sooner rather than later, simply because it's not worth the aggravation to keep them there. Killing and exploitation can be done by remote control and through surrogates these days.

It will not be a withdrawal like the one from Vietnam. Afghanistan will not be abandoned, any more than Iraq has been abandoned. No, it will be operated as a colonial outpost from the blast-wall-surrounded "diplomatic" facilities in Kabul, much as the British did after they "withdrew" from Afghanistan back in the day, and the killing and exploitation will continue with somewhat less annoyance from and by the Warriors.

Some of the push back on the Pull Out Now! meme is Pentagon Panic. The relevance of a massive Imperial military force is under siege.

We live in interesting times, but it is not the End of Empire.

Envisioning That Better Future -- Eight: The End of Empire

The Imperial route is widely seen as the natural outcome of all serious civilized human endeavor. The Empire, under this viewpoint, is not just natural, it is necessary. You cannot have civilization without it. Why just look at Europe after Rome fell. Obvious, isn't it? No civilization there again until Leonardo and Michelangelo. A thousand years of Darkness and Despair.

Except there was no pan-European empire in Leonardo's day or Michelangelo's time. In their Italy, there was no unified government; there was instead a plethora of more or less independent city-states many of which endured until the middle of the 19th Century.

Rome began as a quasi-independent city-state, as did Athens long before it. In fact, both are said to have originated as collections of neighboring hamlets that formed themselves into a political unit with no ambitions, supposedly, beyond common defense against marauders and pirates.

Both went through democratic periods, periods of tyranny, periods of prosperity, periods of suffering and collapse, and both eventually expanded their reach and rule far beyond their civic boundaries. Both were cruel masters to Natives under sway of their colonial outposts. Both faced frequent rebellion on the Peripheries of their empires; often enough, they faced rebellion right at home.

Observers at the time celebrated their Empires while some denounced and decried them. To Imperialist believers, Empire is necessary for there to even be civilization; to skeptics, Empire saps and destroys civilization because of its overwhelming human and financial costs.

The Imperial overreach of Athens was subsumed by the overreach of the Macedonians subsequent to the subjugation of Athens to Sparta. The center did not hold. But then, what of Sparta? Athens endures; Sparta is gone with the wind, as if it never was, though its legend lives on. The Macedonian empire of Alexander fragmented even before it was fully formed, and the semi-nations that took its place were themselves absorbed and acquired by Rome in the by and bye.

Nothing is forever. And no ruler is ever certain of his throne.

The American experience is of course derived in part from ideas that originated in Athens and Rome, and the impulse to Empire has been part and parcel of the American Dream since the beginning. While the foundation of the nation may have been in rebellion against the British Imperial authority, the Imperial impulse itself was maintained upon independence and it was strengthened with the establishment of the Constitution. Put another way, Empire is built in to the formulation of the State itself.

One cannot imagine a non-expansionist United States in the 19th Century. Expansion on the model of Empire was a necessity for survival. When domestic expansion ceased with the "closure of the frontier" in 1890, it was immediately picked up and renewed through overseas expansion and Imperial conquest, starting with Hawaii.

Throughout the early 20th Century, the United States not only ruled its domestic continental Empire, it had far-flung Imperial outposts in the Pacific and Caribbean that it had seized from the decadent Spanish Empire, and it ruled most of Latin America through economic sway, Native proxies, and sometimes directly through military invasion and martial law.

World War I and World War II had the consequence of breaking up the western empires, but in the process, those global conflicts gave rise to three remarkable and in some ways unprecedented domestic empires: the Soviet Union, the Republic of India and the People's Republic of China.

The European imperial outposts were jettisoned one by one and in batches, as Asia and Africa were "decolonized" and independence and self-determination was proclaimed and enshrined everywhere. Well. Sort of.

After a protracted and devastating civil war, at least partially engineered by outside forces including American, the Soviet Union fell heir to nearly the entirety of the former Russian Empire. Well, how about that. The current rump Russian Federation is a mere flickering shadow of what the Tsars and the Commissars had once ruled.

Independent India likewise emerged from a civil war that ensured the separation of Pakistan from India, and cobbled together the numerous semi-autonomous petty kingdoms of British India into a single Republic, a domestic Empire that even the mighty Brits had been unable to forge (or more likely had not wanted to see emerge.)

At the conclusion of China's long and bloody civil war, the Maoists took control of the entire domestic continental empire of China's glorious past; they also established a rigid and successful independence from alien and outside rule by anyone, including their ever-so-helpful Soviet pals.

Possibly to compensate for the loss of so much overseas territory, Western Europeans concentrated on the establishment of some sort of European continental union or domestic Empire, which is still an elusive goal. Perhaps it's not even a desirable one any more given the current financial pickle the Europeans find themselves in.

As part of that financial pickle that effects not just Europe but practically everywhere, we are witness to the rise of transnational corporate enterprises acting independently of governments, whether local, regional, national or international. Some of these enterprises are far wealthier than many nations, and they can operate with apparent impunity wherever and however they want. They capture governments -- as they have captured our own -- and operate them for their own parasitical interests in defiance of law and the People.

This parasitical and piratical practice by corporate entities roaming the globe is not entirely new, for much the same ethic of parasitism and quasi-independent extractive behavior by corporate entities was how many of the modern European empires were established in the first place. The corporations went in first and seized what they wanted; rule from the palace and throne came after.

The People are seemingly powerless before the onslaught of Empire, whether brought through military or economic conquest or through genocide and extermination.

But Empire, under any guise, should not be seen as either the promoter or savior of "civilization." For it does nothing of the kind. Civilization may or may not survive under Imperial rule, but it will definitely be altered by it, often not for the better.

In envisioning a better future, many are envisioning a future without Empire. It's natural but not easy to do it.

First thing is the recognition of Empire and its strengths and weaknesses, its durability as well as its fragility. There is a widespread myth running around on the internet and in academic circles that proposes that we are witness to the End of the American Empire which is alleged to be crumbling all around us, as it has been doing for many years. I argue this is not at all the case. The American Empire is doing fine; what we are witnessing and in the midst of is the End of the Republic, actually a much more subtle "ending" -- because the political forms and rituals of the Republic will continue indefinitely, but they will have no meaning. At best, they will be entertainment -- much as the current crop of Republican candidates for the presidential nomination are being marketed as entertainment today. At worst, they'll be empty and cynical rituals masking what's really going on, such as takes place in Congress each and every day.

The Empire, on the other hand, is going great guns (quite literally). Its imposition has been refined to such a point that it's almost automatic now. Imperial sway -- in concert with or under the control of -- transnational privateers is now a matter of remote targeting and liquidation according to parameters and protocols that most Americans (let alone their victims) know nothing of, who are in many cases not even aware they exist. Empire no longer requires invading armies and physical occupations of foreign lands.

The Libyan Thing might be instructive. There was no "invasion," for example, though many observers and commentators speak of what happened there as if there had been a physical, military invasion by Imperial Stormtroops, etc. It didn't happen, and it isn't happening now. There is no occupying force, either. There was Imperial intervention and the aerial bombardment of "forces" (let's understand that both the rebels and the Gaddafi forces -- as well as non-combatant civilians -- were subject to arbitrary Death From Above; that's just how these things are done these days) was only the most overt aspect of it. There was a whole menu of more covert Imperial interventions involved, from the relentless anti-Gaddafi propaganda campaign to international murder squads, financial and economic hits, and domestic terrorism and sabotage.

There's much Imperial chest puffing and strutting about over the success of the Libyan campaign, but it took far longer than it was supposed to, and obviously it was beset with lousy intelligence from the get go, as apparently the Imperial sponsors of the aktion had -- and perhaps still have -- no idea who among the fractious Natives they are "supporting." From the evidence, they are actually supporting none of them. Now that the nation of Libya has been successfully liquidated -- that, after all, was the point of the exercise -- the various corporate interests who sponsored the Imperial intervention are picking over the bones, with, you will note, the complicity of some of the Libyans, but by no means all of them. The Libyans may or may not continue their civil war, but the point of this exercise was to strip them of a national consciousness and of assets, and that has been accomplished rather spectacularly. And it was done without a single uniformed Imperial troop on the ground. (Set aside the murder squads for now.) Well, how about that.

The lesson for the Imperialists was that this sort of thing WORKS. And they will do it again.

A nation destroyed, a People in chaos, assets stripped, defenses neutralized, leaders exterminated. No invasion and no colonial outposts necessary. That is how the Empire will be carried forth. By comparison, the Iraq Thing seems primitive and barbaric -- and in retrospect completely unnecessary.

We are witness to the development of a New Imperialism that doesn't require the kinds of physical force that even a few years ago were considered essential for projection of power. Now, most of what's necessary can be done remotely or from overhead, by a relatively few dedicated and determined individuals with a mission and access to technology.

Once we realize that that is what the Empire means now -- and that it is doing just fine, better than ever -- and that it is the Republic that is being collapsed deliberately and with much malice aforethought, we'll begin to have a better idea how to proceed.

The OccupyTVNY interview with Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges I posted the other day can help us to focus on how truly out of touch some of even our most insightful elites tend to be. Lessig is, as I say, a nice man, but he still believes that some of the Republic's attributes are functional, even as he acknowledges the Republic has essentially been extinguished. So he advocates an Article V Constitutional Convention in response, as if it were even conceivable at this point. An Article V Convention five -- or ten -- years ago might have had some merit (I was an advocate for a while) but not now. It's too late for that. Not only is the Federal Government captive to its owners and sponsors, so are state governments (did one not pay attention to the 2010 "elections" at all?) and more and more, so are local governments. The People have been essentially and successfully shut out of their government at every level. Where there might have been support in State Legislatures for an Article V Convention (once it was explained by the right people) years ago, now there would only be a blank stare. It's too late, Larry.

Hedges understands this stark fact, and he seems to understand that none of the mechanisms of the Republic actually work on behalf of the People any more, nor can they be made to. That part of our history is over and done. A captured government does not respond to the People because it does not have to.

So what does he recommend? "Civil disobedience" -- in order to do what? Apparently to get the attention of the Rulership, and force them to accommodate the People's Interests. He witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Empire, after all, and the Revolutions that precipitated it. Surely if babushkas and the rebels assembling in the square and banging on their pots and pans could do it in the face of the implacable Soviet system, we more innovative and creative sorts can do likewise.

Yes, well, I thought that too. Years ago, I think we might have done it, but it didn't happen. There was no assembly, there were no babushkas, there was no banging on pots and pans, and there were no rebels where and when it might have made a difference.

Now it's really too late for even that to make a dent in the Imperial armor.

What to do now?

Hedges helpfully points out that in addition to civil disobedience, resisters also have to create and maintain parallel institutions and social structures that serve the People's interests in stark contrast to the failed and captured institutions of the Establishment that serve only the interests of the Mighty Few.

This parallelism is fundamental. Institutional parallelism is a characteristic of all successful separatist and revolutionary movements (and I might add it has also been characteristic of communities suffering under segregationist policies, more and more of which seem to be reinstituted day by day as more and more are ejected from the mainstream of society, and the Security State further and further encages and restricts the remainder.)

The Occupy Movement has established and maintained parallel institutions from its beginning, from communal feeding stations to People's Libraries to outreach and social service programs and more. These aspects are integral to the Movment and the Revolution at its core. As far as I know, all active Occupations utilize as much institutional parallelism as they are able. I have referred many times to the importance and necessity of the demonstration as the keystone of the success of the Movement. By providing alternatives to the failed systems of rule we are under, the Movement ensures its perpetuation.

But what of the Empire? Do we ever get free of it? Perhaps so, perhaps not. The End of Empire means the end of Imperial control in our mind's eye and of our actions and beliefs first and foremost. End that control, and whether or not a political empire continues doesn't matter. The more pressing issue of economic imperialism, which hamstrings everything else that people hope or do, though not so much what they believe, is a much tougher nut to crack (ask the Africans who saw their one hope in Libya demolished before their very eyes).

But even the ropes and strangulation of economic terrorism and imperialism can be undone, through non-cooperation among other means. Ultimately, it appears that the greed and stupidity of those who rule through economic terrorism and imperialism bring the superstructure down sooner or later, these days sooner if events in Europe are any guide.

And then?

Well, that's why we need those parallel institutions!

Yea, verily, the End Is Nigh, but it may not be quite what we anticipated.

And in case it wasn't clear, Mars is not the answer... ;-D