Empire Is Finally a Disappearing Illusion

Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls
By Siv O'Neall, Jan 24, 2008

A World Out of Joint

If there is not a restoration of some balance of power, the world will sink into a maelstrom of screwed-up governance, callous disregard for the people and a state of permanent war. The chief purpose of our neocon government is to give the Empire undisputed power and to make the giant corporations the multi-billionaire kings of this lopsided world.

Quality of life counts for nothing. The general wellbeing of the billions of people in the world, their health and education are of no importance. Job security and the fair treatment of workers are of no consequence. The good life as we know it will be gone forever, and very soon, if there is no change in the direction the present trend is leading us.

Only greed and lust for power and profit on the part of the tiny minority of sociopathic men and women who run the corporations and thus control the politicians will set the rules for the governance of the world. Everything else, everything of any human value will be deleted, annulled. There is no profit? The tyrants are not interested.

Free markets and deregulation

Neoliberalism began to take hold of the economy around 1980 with Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the U.S., both hell-bent on redirecting the economy for the profit of the already wealthy, creating free markets all over the globe and deregulating trade and money speculation so as to set no limits for the further enrichment of the greedy.

The money would have to come from somewhere. Simple. The powerless workers would have to become increasingly powerless, the lower classes would have to become less and less educated and capable of standing up for their interests. The middle classes would have to give up their secure lives so the financial elite could bathe in champagne and blithely ignore the hardship of the working classes.

The Empire is born

Since the end of World War II especially, but actually since at least a hundred years earlier, the United States has seen itself as the undisputed Herrenvolk[1] who gave itself the right to invade and plunder countries of its own choice, defenseless countries with resources that the U.S. industrialists coveted. They saw it as their innate right to exploit countries and peoples who were unable to defend themselves, economically and militarily. Americans, the Herrenvolk, struck out and conquered, ignored international treaties, ignored the force of nationalistic feelings, ignored the rights of sovereign nations to govern themselves, to run their own economy and to solve their own internal and external disputes. Feelings of national pride and human dignity were totally disregarded and this, in the long run, will no doubt be their downfall.

How long can the Empire last?

The United States is completely set on dominating the world economically and militarily and to that purpose it has over 700 military bases in over 160 countries spread all over the globe[2]. Between this global presence and the mindboggling cost of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, paid for by the U.S. tax payers, the treasury has run dry and now that the U.S. is trillions in debt, mostly to Japan and China, what is the future going to be like? The tax breaks for the superrich, which started in the Clinton era and have been senselessly increased during the past seven years of misrule, are of course one of the reasons for the explosive state of the U.S. economy today. Huge tax breaks during a time of increased spending on the military seems to be a political expedient totally lacking any trace of common sense, an opportunist policy that is going to backfire one day very soon.

Considering the position the United States has put itself in, beyond all intention to cooperate with the rest of the world and totally refusing to look at the true complexity of today's situation, it does not seem likely that the United States will ever again regain its superpower status.

But will the planet survive long enough for the rest of the world, the suppressed masses, to wake up, to gather strength and to put up powerful resistance? Will 'We the people' have a chance to protect our human rights, get our dignity back, stand up to the tyrants? Those robots who act like Pavlov's dog when they see profit ahead. Profit is King. We the people have to prove to those mindless lackeys of the Empire that the world is ungovernable without the support of the masses. The blatant arrogance of the present masters of the Empire will one day soon blow up in their faces, the day it becomes obvious that the United States is not the only or even the foremost powerhouse in the world. The blindness to reality of those self-assured kings will precede their fall.

Break the people's spirit

The present power holders are all set on depriving the people of their dignity and hope for a better life, at home and abroad. Take away people's dignity and you break their spirit. Tyrants throughout the ages have known this basic fact. Today's tyrants see the people as being of no importance, as having no rights. Money makes might and right. Keep the people poor and ignorant, take away their human rights, their democratic rights, their right to a vote that is sure to be counted. In fact, do away with democracy as the founding fathers meant it, and every step of improvement added to the Constitution in later days, such as the rights to vote for black people and for women.[3] That is the way we are headed in the United States under the present rule of callous robots. Those tyrants maneuver endlessly to deprive the people of any true understanding of what is being taken away from them, of how they are increasingly shut out of access to oxygen and to the living life.

Where did equality go?

Human beings as equals should not be just an empty word but the word equal should be given a true and distinct meaning. Not since the days of slavery has there been less equality in the United States. And it has been very intentionally crushed. Let us finally show up the emptiness of the word. Do away with the doublespeak of our so-called leaders who talk constantly of freedom and democracy but who mean neither. Never has a word been emptier than the neocon talk of bringing democracy to Iraq and the Middle East while it is gradually being lost at home. There is no equality in the United States and there is less and less freedom.

Stifle the efforts of the tyrants

Give the people back the right to a valid education, universal health care, job security and hope for a better future. Stamp out the self-taken right of a callous minority to run the earth and selfishly deplete its resources without the slightest thought of tomorrow. Take away their mindless and imagined right to trample on everybody else's rights to lead a peaceful life in dignity. We must restore international laws of justice and national integrity. We must restore the people's right to lead a life worth living and put an end to the slavery that the present leaders want to condemn us to.

There is however a big BUT. In order to achieve any of these imperative changes we need a lot of courage and cooperation. We must stand up to the tyrants, show our power by the force of our numbers. But first of all people must be informed of the rights that are taken away from them. People must wake up to reality. We must put an end to the docile acceptance of the powers grabbed by an ignorant man who calls himself a 'war president'. What war? The phony 'war on terror' that was so conveniently invented after September 11.

There are places in the world, especially in Latin America, where we can see a glimmer of hope. But change must come soon, before that glimmer of hope that must expand to the rest of the world gets snuffed out and drowned.

Also, several increasingly powerful nations, such as China and India and other Asian countries are rising up and challenging the global power of the United States. The unilateral superiority of the U.S. seems to already be a phenomenon of the past. With the U.S. economy foundering and its military overextended, it should be possible to deflate the propaganda balloon and make the world see the limits of U.S. power and the lack of realism behind its arrogance.

Considering the blind and deaf majority of the members of Congress, it is going to be a true challenge to get the country's lawmakers to draw the necessary conclusions from the state of the world at this critical time and to get them to see that the Empire is already a disappearing illusion. It only exists in their wishful thinking and in their eagerness to go on putting corporate money in their pockets.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls – it tolls for the Empire.


[1] The master race – the Nazi vision of the superiority of Arians
[2] Iraq is currently one of about 160 nations around the world that hosts a total of 700 U.S. military bases and a number of other smaller outposts. See here.
Also see: With more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving across the planet and military bases spread across each continent, it's time to face up to the fact that our American democracy has spawned a global empire. The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic"…" The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737." See here.
[3] Amendment XV in 1870 (race) and amendment XIX in 1920 (sex)


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