What I write about here is a combination of philosophy, history and political science with some breaks taken for current events that deal with the topic at hand: the idea of Empire, why it is--and has always been--a bad thing, and why we should seek to destroy it. While I formerly kept to a strict posting schedule of Sunday updates, now that I have an opportunity to reconsider that policy; I think now that it would be better to stay open to a more frequent posting schedule, using the Sunday updates as anchors to build around.
Now, a definition:
- EMPIRE (noun): An idea whose very existence is toxic to those who host it, as it is a parasite akin to the vampire of legend. It feeds off of its host, inducing their enthrallment by imbuing it with some measure of fleeting (and often illusory) power in the manner of a narcotics addict, and then compelling those it enthralls to destroy themselves and all around them to procure whatever it wants in exchange for most of that false power. In time, it abandons the consumed host in favor of a new victim and repeats the cycle anew. Symptoms include rigid hierarchical institutions and cultures, adherence to dogma and doctrine that dehumanize some or all of Mankind (often to convince the thralls to then do other things to them that abhorrent otherwise), a propensity for delusional thought, cult-like behavioral patterns, an increasing alienation from nature and the inherent order of the natural world and an obsession with domination over others (including the fear of being dominated by others) with no consideration for a world without domination at all.
Right now, what we see is that Empire has dispensed with the concept of using individual states (or nation-states, for that matter) as a specific host; instead, we see Empire using multiple hosts as a distributed gestalt entity so that damage to one part of its manifest being doesn't fatally compromise its operations. The United Kingdom handles the financial aspect, the United States is its face and force, with France and Germany switching off as the main intellectual whores who play Good Cop to the UK/US's Bad Cop (but nonetheless benefit from, and participate in, this incarnation). Meanwhile it maintains backups links in Russia as well as the People's Republic of China should resistance to the current Anglo-American gestalt-host become too much to overcome.
Stick around. Subscribe, follow and engage- and maybe you'll get to witness more of my journey to do the impossible: to kill an idea.
I am reminded of Philip Dick's oft-repeated line "The Empire Never Ended" in VALIS. Are you familiar with that novel?
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