THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING OF CLASS WAR----Episode 3

                                                       THE ROOTS OF EMPIRE

   In 1941, magazine magnate Henry Luce declared the twentieth century the "AMERICAN CENTURY." Little could he have imagined how true that would be, writing before the defeat of Germany and Japan, the advent of the atomic bomb, the boom in U.S. postwar production, the rise and institutionalization of the military-industrial complex, the development of the Internet, the transmogrification of the United States into a national security state, and the country's "victory'[sic] in the Cold War. 

   But, Luce's vision of unfettered U. S. hegemony has always been a contested one. Vice President Henry Wallace urged the United States to instead usher in what he called "THE CENTURY OF THE COMMON MAN." Wallace, whom realists dismissed as a "dreamer" and a "visionary," laid out a blueprint for a world of science -------and technology--based abundance, a world banning colonialism and economic exploitation, a world of peace and shared prosperity. Unfortunately, the postwar world has conformed much more closely to Luce's imperial vision than Wallace's progressive one. More recently, in 1997, a new generation of proponents of U.S. global supremacy, who would go on to constitute the neoconservative "brain [sic] trust" of the disastrous George W. Bush presidency, called for the establishment of a "new American Century." It was a perspective that gained many adherents in the earlier years of the twenty-first century, before the calamitous consequences of the United States' latest wars became widely recognized. 
   
   The United States' run as the globe's 800-pound gorilla ---the most powerful and dominant nation the world has ever seen ---has been marked by proud achievements and terrible disappointments. It is the latter ---- the darker side of U.S. history --- that this missive explores. The missive doesn't try to tell all of U.S. history. That would be an impossible task. There are libraries full of books dedicated to the things the United States has done right and public school curricula are required to print only U.S. achievements. This brief missive focuses a spotlight on what the U.S, has done wrong----the ways the country has betrayed its mission. Many thinking Americans are profoundly disturbed by the direction of U. S. policy at a time when the United States was recently at war in three Muslim countries and carrying out drone attacks, best viewed as targeted assassinations,  in at least six others.  Why does our country have military bases in every region of the globe, totaling more than a thousand by realistic counts ? Why does the United States spend as much money on its military as the rest of the world COMBINED ? Why does it still possess thousands of nuclear weapons, many on hair-trigger alert, even though no nation poses an imminent threat ? WHY IS THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR GREATER IN THE UNITED STATES THAN IN ANY OTHER DEVELOPED COUNTRY,  AND WHY IS THE UNITED STATES THE ONLY ADVANCED NATION WITHOUT A UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE PROGRAM ? 

   Why do such a tiny number of people ---- whether the figure is currently 300 or 500 or 2,000 --- control more wealth than the world's poorest 3 billion ?  Why are a tiny minority of wealthy Americans allowed to exert so much control over U.S. domestic politics, foreign policy, and media while the great masses see a diminution of their real power and standards of living ? Why have Americans submitted to levels of surveillance, government intrusion, abuse of civil liberties,  and loss of privacy that would have appalled the Founding Brothers and earlier generations ? Why does the United States have a lower percentage of unionized workers than any other advanced industrial democracy ? Why, in our country, are those who are driven by personal greed and narrow self-interest empowered over those who extol social values like kindness, generosity, compassion, sharing, empathy, and community building ? And why has it become so hard for the great majority of Americans to imagine a different, perhaps even a better, future than the one defined by current policy initiatives and social values ? 

   Historically, a few great Americans have endeavored to put the country back on the right track. For example, President John Quincy Adams, on July 4, 1821, condemned British colonialism and declared that the United States "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy" lest she "involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force." The United States, Adams warned, might "become the dictatress of the world but she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." 

   Adams presciently foresaw what would befall the United States if it sacrificed its republican spirit on the altar of empire. Compounding the problem is Americans' persistent denial of their imperial past and the ways in which it shapes present policy. For empires, the past is just another overseas territory ripe for reconstruction, even reinvention. Americans refuse to live in history even though empire must always do so. In Waiting for  the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee wrote : "Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire : how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster : the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one." 

    MORE TO COME