Americans’ muted reaction to the quarter-century anniversary of 9/11 reveals a waning zeal for the American imperial project. We tolerate it only because we believe it can’t end. But it can.
Honey, the bullying is what makes it an empire. Genuinely, and I hate to say this, read some theory. And no, I’m not on copium. I hate this nation, with the fire of a thousand suns. But I can’t hate something without knowing it enough to hate it. You keep conflating the nation with its people. A nation is a bundle of prioritized interests. What those interests are are irrelevant; the definition of an empire is a nation with the dominant position to enforce those interests beyond its borders. Yes, China was an empire. They were because they could exert strength abroad and steer other nations’ material conditions to align with their own. Then they weren’t. And now they’re poised to do so again, and so long as they exist as a nation, they will fall again. This is the dialectic, the propensity for power to ebb and flow as the bourgeoisie do anything they can to claw at it until it can reach the only tenable equilibrium of being held solely by the proletariat.
Honey, the bullying is what makes it an empire. Genuinely, and I hate to say this, read some theory. And no, I’m not on copium. I hate this nation, with the fire of a thousand suns. But I can’t hate something without knowing it enough to hate it. You keep conflating the nation with its people. A nation is a bundle of prioritized interests. What those interests are are irrelevant; the definition of an empire is a nation with the dominant position to enforce those interests beyond its borders. Yes, China was an empire. They were because they could exert strength abroad and steer other nations’ material conditions to align with their own. Then they weren’t. And now they’re poised to do so again, and so long as they exist as a nation, they will fall again. This is the dialectic, the propensity for power to ebb and flow as the bourgeoisie do anything they can to claw at it until it can reach the only tenable equilibrium of being held solely by the proletariat.