[Marxism] America in the Time of Empire

[Greg McDonald]

Published on Monday, November 26, 2007 by Truthdig.com

America in the Time of Empire

by Chris Hedges

All great empires and nations decay from within. By the time they  
hobble off the world stage, overrun by the hordes at the gates or  
vanishing quietly into the pages of history books, what made them  
successful and powerful no longer has relevance. This rot takes place  
over decades, as with the Soviet Union, or, even longer, as with the  
Roman, Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires. It is often imperceptible.

Dying empires cling until the very end to the outward trappings of  
power. They mask their weakness behind a costly and technologically  
advanced military. They pursue increasingly unrealistic imperial  
ambitions. They stifle dissent with efficient and often ruthless  
mechanisms of control. They lose the capacity for empathy, which  
allows them to see themselves through the eyes of others, to create a  
world of accommodation rather than strife. The creeds and noble  
ideals of the nation become empty cliches, used to justify acts of  
greater plunder, corruption and violence. By the end, there is only a  
raw lust for power and few willing to confront it.

The most damning indicators of national decline are upon us. We have  
watched an oligarchy rise to take economic and political power. The  
top 1 percent of the population has amassed more wealth than the  
bottom 90 percent combined, creating economic disparities unseen  
since the Depression. If Hillary Rodham Clinton becomes president, we  
will see the presidency controlled by two families for the last 24  
years.

Massive debt, much of it in the hands of the Chinese, keeps piling up  
as we fund absurd imperial projects and useless foreign wars.  
Democratic freedoms are diminished in the name of national security.  
And the erosion of basic services, from education to health care to  
public housing, has left tens of millions of citizens in despair. The  
displacement of genuine debate and civil and political discourse with  
the noise and glitter of public spectacle and entertainment has left  
us ignorant of the outside world, and blind to how it perceives us.  
We are fed trivia and celebrity gossip in place of news.

An increasing number of voices, especially within the military, are  
speaking to this stark deterioration. They describe a political class  
that no longer knows how to separate personal gain from the common  
good, a class driving the nation into the ground.

“There has been a glaring and unfortunate display of incompetent  
strategic leadership within our national leaders,” retired Lt. Gen.  
Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of forces in Iraq, recently  
told the New York Times, adding that civilian officials have been  
“derelict in their duties” and guilty of a “lust for power.”

The American working class, once the most prosperous on Earth, has  
been politically disempowered, impoverished and abandoned.  
Manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas. State and federal  
assistance programs have been slashed. The corporations, those that  
orchestrated the flight of jobs and the abolishment of workers’  
rights, control every federal agency in Washington, including the  
Department of Labor. They have dismantled the regulations that had  
made the country’s managed capitalism a success for ordinary men and  
women. The Democratic and Republican Parties now take corporate money  
and do the bidding of corporate interests.

Philadelphia is a textbook example. The city has seen a precipitous  
decline in manufacturing jobs, jobs that allowed households to live  
comfortably on one salary. The city had 35 percent of its workforce  
employed in the manufacturing sector in 1950, perhaps the zenith of  
the American empire. Thirty years later, this had fallen to 20  
percent. Today it is 8.8 percent. Commensurate jobs, jobs that offer  
benefits, health care and most important enough money to provide hope  
for the future, no longer exist. The former manufacturing centers  
from Flint, Mich., to Youngstown, Ohio, are open sores, testaments to  
a growing internal collapse.

The United States has gone from being the world’s largest creditor to  
its largest debtor. As of September 2006, the country was, for the  
first time in a century, paying out more than it received in  
investments. Trillions of dollars go into defense while the nation’s  
infrastructure, from levees in New Orleans to highway bridges in  
Minnesota, collapses. We spend almost as much on military power as  
the rest of the world combined, while Social Security and Medicare  
entitlements are jeopardized because of huge deficits. Money is  
available for war, but not for the simple necessities of daily life.

Nothing makes these diseased priorities more starkly clear than what  
the White House did last week. On the same day, Tuesday, President  
Bush vetoed a domestic spending bill for education, job training and  
health programs, yet signed another bill giving the Pentagon about  
$471 billion for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. All this in the  
shadow of a Joint Economic Committee report suggesting that the wars  
in Iraq and Afghanistan have been twice as expensive than previously  
imagined, almost $1.5 trillion.

The decision to measure the strength of the state in military terms  
is fatal. It leads to a growing cynicism among a disenchanted  
citizenry and a Hobbesian ethic of individual gain at the expense of  
everyone else. Few want to fight and die for a Halliburton or an  
Exxon. This is why we do not have a draft. It is why taxes have not  
been raised and we borrow to fund the war. It is why the state has  
organized, and spends billions to maintain, a mercenary army in Iraq.  
We leave the fighting and dying mostly to our poor and hired killers.  
No nationwide sacrifices are required. We will worry about it later.

It all amounts to a tacit complicity on the part of a passive  
population. This permits the oligarchy to squander capital and lives.  
It creates a world where we speak exclusively in the language of  
violence. It has plunged us into an endless cycle of war and conflict  
that is draining away the vitality, resources and promise of the nation.

It signals the twilight of our empire.

This column was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.