MANUEL VALENZUELA: Empire in the Mirror

[Tace]

Empire -- A Tribe on Steroids

Manuel Valenzuela -- World News Trust

Inside the belly of the beast can the harbinger of what is to come be seen, for the internal machinations of the Pax Americana have become rusted and decrepit, its lifeblood infected and diseased by the spoils of its conquests and the narcissism of its hubris. In pursuit of unmatched wealth and power its internal organs have been infected by the malignancies of greed, arrogance and corruption, spreading from coast to coast, a haze of barrenness infiltrating every city and every town, afflicting a society 300 million strong, slowly yet invariably eroding the foundations of an Empire on fast-forward time, as if America’s domination has been accelerated, her reign compressed and her demise made absolute. Yet in her accelerated cycle can civilization once more bear witness that while the greatness of man may build empires, it is the deep flaws inherent in our nature that crumbles them as well.

What the genius of humankind helps construct the vices of the human condition will assuredly destroy, for what is history but a written record of our greatness always devastated by our weaknesses, of our vices, corruption and incurable penchant for death, violence and destruction as always laying waste to the marvels humankind is capable of constructing? What is history if not a linear pattern, repeated over and over and over again, regardless of time, location or of cultural differences, of the triumphs of humankind trumped and squashed by the mammalian passions and emotions inherent in our primate species, of our species taking a leap forward only to have us take two leaps back?

The story of America, whether as Empire or as superpower, is one of man’s penchant for absolute power, and how that power corrupts absolutely, as always without fail, along with man’s quest to continuously expand the power, wealth and reach of the tribe, usually at the behest of the leader(s), as always thanks to our inability to control our ingrained mammalian behaviors and psychology that, inasmuch as we would like to discard from our condition, remain deeply entrenched in our psyches and in our human-primate nature. We cannot compete with millions of years of evolution, after all, an existence based on epochs of survival and natural selection, on instincts and behaviors molded over eons that eventually determined who and what we are today. From our deep psychological need for a hierarchical structure in our societies, one based on rank or caste or socioeconomic status, to our almost universal acceptance -- indeed a disturbing desire -- in delineating power to an alpha male among us, usually chosen or tolerated as group leader, to the innate quest for wealth and power in men in order to attract the best possible mate for procreation to the primordial need to belong to a tribe, today categorized by the nation-state, to the insatiable protection of and desire for territory and its resources, our primate-mammalian behavior dominates every aspect of the human condition.

For what are we in reality -- without the smoking mirrors of religion and the delusions of ego by which we see and judge ourselves -- but a mammal that triumphed over all other hominid species, when such was the reality on the planet, destroying and making extinct all potential competitors through the violence and viciousness that are part of our nature and that we have seemingly perfected to an art form, until we alone remained, roaming the lands of Earth, in time becoming like locusts destroying forests and jungles and untold number of species in our quest toward becoming rulers of the planet? What are we if not a species born in violence and evolved through violence, forever bedeviled by our inability to control our animal urges, behaviors and instincts, always enslaved to the emotions of greed, ego, competition and selfishness, easily corrupted by the aura of money, materialism and wealth, frustrated by the always strong urge to copulate, controlled by our hunger to procreate, to attain the power and domination and wealth needed to successfully attract a mate and inevitably pass on our genes?

(more)

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/content/view/80/lang,en/

[applegrove]

1. Wow!

[Tace]

2. The Manuel Valenzuela Rant...

There's nothing like it!

[applegrove]

3. That is so much to swallow that I couldn't read beyond the OP. Just

too much. May be true..I don't know. I couldn't go on.

[Tace]

4. You Get The Idea

The ending offers hope for improvement of things. : )

[applegrove]

5. Well - I think a few people at the top and their patsies.. may be up to

no good. But I think the vast majority ..like Bush or some of the neocons are just deluded.

Of course the people you are describing could be described as deluded too.

I think the people down the hier-archy are just trying to survive and don't know what they do. But then sometimes that is considered more evil than the evil-doers.. Cause they should know better. True evil doesn't know any different than turning the world into its organ. Banality of evil I think it is called.