"The United States Was Never The Empire"

"The United States Was Never The Empire"

by Kit Knightly

"The Rocky Mountains were never the Empire. Niagara Falls was never the Empire. The Everglades were never the Empire. The winding rivers of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio were never the Empire. The Great Lakes were never the Empire. The Empire was never Los Angeles or New York. Alaska, Texas, or Hawaii.

The Empire was never the Declaration of Independence, the Stars and Stripes, or the Constitution. None of the roughly 340 million people – who live normal lives and just want to get on and be happy, like everyone else – were ever the Empire. America was never the problem. And the problem was never America.

Raytheon was never America. Neither was Pfizer, or Boeing, or Lockheed Martin, or Halliburton. The Pentagon was never America. Neither were the three-letter monsters of the CIA, NSA, or DHS. The politicians – who broke their oaths to the constitution almost as soon they swore them – were never America. The lobbyists and profiteers who paid them were never America.

The Federal Reserve was never America, Wall Street was never America. The vast corporate megaliths that own half the world and tie economies in knots with made-up money were never America.

And none of them will pay the price for what they have done in that name. America was never the Empire, it was just where the Empire lived for a while. It had other homes before, it will have others in the future. A hermit crab shedding shells as it swells.

The Nation of the United States – however you define the idea of nationhood – was as much a victim as any of us. If a “nation” is a matter of geography, then the United States had its resources plundered, its water poisoned, its skies polluted as much as anywhere else in the world. If a “nation” is a library of laws, then the United States had its constitution torn down, chewed up and shat out.

If a “nation” is a collection of shared traditions, then the United States not only saw its triplet traditions of opportunity, freedom, and democracy butchered, but witnessed their mutilated corpses strung along in a macabre puppet show for decade after decade.

And, finally, if a nation is defined by its people, well then the people of the United States were massacred in corporate wars, sickened by toxic food, poisoned with dangerous medicines, impoverished by mountains of debt, locked away in private prisons, indoctrinated by state education and brainwashed by a complicit media. Crime and violence, drugs and depression, ignorance and hopelessness.

America may be the name they used, America may be the flag they waved, but none of the Imperial Conquerors really care for name or flag, and none of their spoils ever trickled down far enough to make America rich in gold or spirit or security.

If, as seems inevitable, the coming years see the United States collapse into a quasi-failed state, with hatred and division boiling over into secession and civil war, there will be many around the world who set off fireworks and declare a victory. It will feel to some like a global Fourth of July, a worldwide independence day. Some will see karmic balance, others share bitter laughs with wounded victims turned monstrous in their need for vengeance.

Many will clap. Many will cheer. I will not be one of them. Instead, I will mourn a country founded by brilliant men with beautiful ideas. A nation that could have been great, but was not. We will be told the villain is defeated, the enemy no more. Perhaps history will end for the second time. The champagne corks will pop and a “new age of globalist enlightenment” will dawn, consigning the ”dangerous ideas” of freedom, individualism and opportunity to the ash heap of history.

The parties will last long into the night. And, as the sun rises on the broken remains of America, lashing at itself in its death throes, nothing will have changed except the mask the real rulers of the world choose to wear."

- https://off-guardian.org/

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Reader Comment By Robert Merrill: "I think this is a stimulating and perceptive reading of “America.” It is in an identity crisis right now, but it has always been for its entire existence. Kit’s comment, “If a “nation” is a collection of shared traditions, then the United States not only saw its triplet traditions of opportunity, freedom, and democracy butchered, but witnessed their mutilated corpses strung along in a macabre puppet show for decade after decade” This was never true for America, except in the minds of the Anglo-American who considered themselves the “true” Americans. There were always too many different kinds of immigrants with their own shared traditions and most often they were shunned by the “true” Americans.

African-Americans have occupied the land area for as long as any Anglo-Americans. The first slave ship arrived in 1619, while the first Anglo settlers arrived in 1607. But it took a long time for immigrants from Africa to be accepted as Americans.

The United States was the first of all nations to impose compulsory education for children between the ages of 8 to 14. The main intention was to make sure everyone learned to speak English and learned the “shared traditions” of America. In short public schooling was first and foremost a factory for producing “Americans.” Now pubic schools teach everything but Americanism.

As Kit accurately sees, America as a unified nation will collapse in the coming years, “If, as seems inevitable, the coming years see the United States collapse into a quasi-failed state, with hatred and division boiling over into secession and civil war, there will be many around the world who set off fireworks and declare a victory.”

My prediction is that it will break into a dozen or twenty new and independent nation, somewhat similar to what happened to the USSR. Some states may adopt Spanish as their official language. Or it may be that these states return to something like the original government of the Articles of Confederation, again like the way the USSR evolved into the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In my view the worst thing to happen to the US was the rise of Abe Lincoln and the assumption of total power by the regime in Washington. The US is the most diverse nation on earth on all levels — race, religion, ethnicity, cultural traditions, economic activity, and so on. It cannot exist under the tyranny of a single regime. I was born and grew up in California. We hated Washington and always wanted to be independent. I lived in Texas for a while and people there felt just the same. Now I live in Washington DC and most people want independence, too. The Washington Regime is the government of a global empire of banks, corporations, oligarchs, and militaries. It does not represent any “people”; it has no shared traditions. It is a money and war machine."