All That We Can Be

[chiburb]

From the front page of DU today, another must-read from Plaid Adder...

Snip:

Well, I'll argue with anything. Yes, we raised the structure of our democracy on the foundations of an empire; and yes, at certain times in American history, the mismatch between these two structures becomes so obvious and severe that the whole thing looks like it's about to crumble. But an empire is not all we've ever been. There are also times in American history when those democratic ideals written into the Constitution become something more than a fig leaf; when a real commitment to the idea of equality and justice for all has been allowed to threaten the basic presumption of entitlement on which America was founded. Because those ideals have never been perfectly embodied in our actual government, that doesn't mean that they're not real, or that they don't matter. But if we want them to be real, if we want them to matter, we cannot indulge our imperial strain to the point where it wipes out everything else. Empire has always been part of what we are. But it does not have to be all that we can be.

And this brings me back to 2004 and Cheney's Christmas card. If his use of the E-word shocks and appalls today in a way that it didn't shock and appall when Franklin used it in 1787, it's because our own government is displaying the greed, brutality, and sheer self-destructive powerhunger that characterize imperialism more clearly than it ever has in our lifetimes. They are gorging the empire to the point where it will eventually absorb and annihilate the democracy. And although Cheney and his gang must take responsibility for that, it must also in part be attributed to the fact that there is currently no other legitimate world power capable of stopping us, or even encouraging prudent restraint. We are not just an empire right now; we are the empire. That wasn't good for the British; it wasn't good for the Romans; and it's not going to be good for us.

Left to themselves - especially under the kind of ruthless, imprudent leadership we are enjoying right now - empires expand until they are no longer sustainable. It's not encouraging to reflect that for a long time Afghanistan has been where empires go to die. The British empire found its limits there; so did the Soviets'. We may not have found our limits yet; but if we let Cheney and his friends keep doing what they're doing, we'll find them eventually. And after the rise, comes the fall.

Cheney isn't thinking about the fall, of course. Every empire believes that it will be the one to break the trend and last forever, just as every empire's citizens find ways of believing that their empire isn't really an empire at all. For the British, the lie of choice was the one Kipling set to verse in The White Man's Burden: that they didn't want all these colonial possessions, it was simply their duty to conquer the world in order to civilize it. Our lie, for a long time, has been the idea that we are bringing democracy to the places we conquer; now, we are supplementing it with a new lie, which is that the more we invade, the safer we will become. Well, we're still at orange alert even with Saddam in the can; and I'll tell you what, as long as we're The Empire, we're never going back to green. Nobody has ever loved The Empire. And if we want to be safe, we're going to have to work out a way to be something else.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/plaidder/04/08.html

[Plaid Adder]

1. Poor chiburb...

Heroically trying to start a discussion...lonely are the brave, chiburb.

Same time next week,

The Plaid Adder

[chiburb]

2. Nah, it's "richer chiburb"...

For reading your work.

And it isn't lonely at all. I'm sure many, many people read you (and Maha)and are richer for it. That they don't comment or argue isn't indicative of anything...

I hope you're in a better mood than over the holidays. I'm not, but that's another story...

See ya next Wed.

[ixion]

3. not thinking about the fall...

the leader of empires never think about the fall. Humans have pretty fair powers of conception, but no vision. That is, they can think big thoughts, but cannot project the results with any accuracy. Styrofoam is a good example. For the guy who invented it, it as this amazing new material. What he didn't see, was the effect it would have on the planet.
If, as a species, it was found we could predict the result with accuracy, that would leave only that we are a cruel, war like species that loves nothing more than conquest, bloodshed and building empires.
Something like that would leave us very low on the cosmological scale, indeed.


"The more you tighten your grasp, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
-- Princess Leia

[chiburb]

4. A Thursday kick...n/t

.

[Martin Eden]

5. Kudos to Plaid Adder

Great article!!!

Too bad it can't be reduced to a 10 word sound byte, which is about the limit of public consumption these days. Most Americans have no idea of our history, or the future we're being thrust into by the likes of Cheney.

So many excellent points were made throughout the article that's it's difficult to select one for comment, so I'll jump to the conclusion:

Nobody has ever loved The Empire. And if we want to be safe, we're going to have to work out a way to be something else.

The something else really intrigues me, and should be the focus of national debate.

As a people, we have been self-absorbed in a consumer life style that provides little or no national purpose. The Christian Right is to some extent a reaction to the perception of such moral decay, and the power elite have skillfully co-opted this movement into their corporatist and imperialist agenda.

Unless the progressive movement can expose what this agenda is leading us to become, and offer something else -- a national purpose that inspires our countrymen to work towards a future worthy of America's ideals -- we will find it very difficult to persude them to join us in defeating those who would lead us to empire and ruin.