I never wanted to live in an Empire. I use to be quite content living in America, the land of the free..
When I think of an Empire I think of old stuff; kings and queens, dictators, Lots of Rules, punishments, serfs, poverty, misery, slave labor, pitchforks, dung heaps, dirt..
Geesh, that sounds like America these days. You got the 1% and the rest of us.
Maybe it's because we are living in an Empire:
The Roman empire failed, because Romans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power.
Replace Roman empire with American empire:
The American empire failed, because Americans exhausted manpower and resources in civil wars fighting amongst themselves for power.
Sure sounds like our Political World these days. While the GOP controllers distract, women, gays, religions, health, economy, media, races, with a new dilemma almost daily, the 1% Uber Rich Power Grab continues, or as many of us now know it as the Shock Doctrine keeps chugging away.
The American empire
Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions.
The New Empire is different. It happens without achieving conquest. The American military did not conquer Iraq and has been forced out politically by the puppet government that Washington established. There is no victory in Afghanistan, and after a decade the American military does not control the country.
In the New Empire success at war no longer matters. The extraction takes place by being at war. Huge sums of American taxpayers’ money have flowed into the American armaments industries and huge amounts of power into Homeland Security. The American empire works by stripping Americans of wealth and liberty.
It is ironic that under the New Empire the citizens of the empire are extracted of their wealth and liberty in order to extract lives from the targeted foreign populations.
Most of us 99 percenters know the 1% Empirists need to be dropped down a lot of notches just out of fairness in order to survive on the planet.
I mean, we in America, had become accustomed to a certain standard of living-Live and Let Live, so to speak, but that has become an old mantra. Now the mantra is more like Live Like Me or Else!
Well the 1% in charge has made it impossible for us to Rise to their standards and have decided that we need to be punished because we are unable to Get there, forgetting that the opportunities to get UP there barely exist any more.
One could break an Empire down to its many Groups within the empire where the above
new mantra Live Like Me or Else! becomes even more strident- the political, religious, gender and race groups- or fighting amongst ourselves, which makes the Big Empire very Happy, cause they can keep on doing their dastardly deeds.
I know it could be possible to unite all the 99% if the many groups would un-group even for just awhile, but that would be a whole other can of worms unfortunately- Geesh, we cannot even do it on this blog.
Sigh.
I don't like living in an Empire so I guess this is mostly just my rant for today..
Or we could adopt the Empire Penguin Society where the female penguin does the food gathering while the male penguin sits on the egg until the baby penguin hatches, then the males can go eat...