What Is This Country Coming To?

Or, It's Been A Long Time Coming: The End of America as We Know It

The story of America over the past century-and-a-half is a complex one. It's not a pretty one, either. The difficulties we're encountering with our political system are often bewildering, and we're often told that things were better in The Old Days, that if only we could return to the golden age of the last century, everything would be OK. Because everyone knew back then that this was a free country and that things were good. The cops were friendly and courteous and trustworthy; politicians looked out for the interests of common people; businessmen were upstanding members of the community; everyone looked out for each other. People were honest, upstanding citizens; they voted conscientiously; apple pie and motherhood were the order of the day; streets were clean; doors did not need to be locked. The list of things that were different back then is a very long one, and does not bear repeating in its entirety here. We all have some version of it.

Now, we're in an age of cynicism, greed, and disillusionment with the prevailing order. Sex scandals, fiscal and moral corruption, crime, drugs, and petty partisan politics are commonplace. Economic downturns have eroded the standard of living of the American working classes (from unskilled to paraprofessional and even professional occupations). We live in constant fear of something awful happening, whether it be a natural disaster (fire, earthquake, hurricane, etc.) or a terrorist attack. We are constantly being told that we must be protected from all of the awful nastiness out there, that America requires constant vigilance against all manner of threats both internal and external.

How did we get this way? What happened to this country? Why can't we have our Golden Age back?

How can you get something back if you never had it in the first place?

This post, and many following it, will deal with the real history of America. Some of what we learned in school is true, and where that's the case, it will be dealt with. But these are only partial truths and do not present the whole picture. The desire to protect children from the darkness that surrounds us is understandable, and they are in some need of protection. Are we children, to be coddled and protected from the consequences of our own actions, our own desires? Are we not as adults entitled to the full story?

The full story, as told in numerous speeches, books, journal and magazine articles, newspaper stories, letters, diaries, and other historical sources both primary and secondary, is that America's greatness has always been much greater for a certain group of people than it has for everyone else. We've become more conscious about the racism in our past, especially directed against the children of the African diaspora, the descendants of slaves or persons captured as slaves who managed to free themselves. Some discussion has been had regarding the impact that African slave-trade had upon Africa as well.

But always there is a narrowness of vision, an intent to focus upon certain things to the total exclusion of others. If we wish to write coherent microhistories, discourses upon the histories of certain parts of the greater fabric of American history, then we must exclude some things from our focus in order to maintain coherence. However, we're always encouraged to deal only in microhistories and never to deal with the macrohistory, the framework that is constructed out of the interaction of the elements dealt with in the microhistories; but it is precisely this macrohistory that makes sense of it all and tells the tale that I am telling here.

Because history only makes sense in light of the present, a brief examination of the present world-situation with an emphasis on the role of the United States within it is necessary. The United States sits at the apex of a pyramid of global military and economic power. Through direct military intervention, supporting coups d'état, economic sanctions, and political and economic pressure, the United States has engineered a global political order in which it is clearly the most powerful state-actor. In a word, the United States has an empire, and the President is an emperor.

The relation of the other states (that is, an organized, bureaucratic government apparatus, not one of the 50 United States) and geo-political entities presently extant to this empire and their relations within it, vary. Those that choose to pursue a policy independent of the desires of the Empire are declared anathema, their leaders (and sometimes even their people) excommunicated from the True Faith, the One Holy Apostolic Church of the Free Market, and sometimes a crusade is called to bring them back into the fold (or to exterminate them). The desires of the Empire are complex in their character, but their essence, their nature, is very simple: the Empire desires access to resources and markets on terms favorable to its elites, and it desires a political system that will ensure this access on a continuing basis. Because of the historical circumstances of its development, the Empire demands access from certain states and bodies politic within those states on a basis less unfavorable to the latter; but the inherent logic of Empire demands that these privileges be inexorably abridged and attenuated as the demand for resources and market penetration by the corporations that the Imperial elite formed to organize the extraction of resources, production of goods, and distribution of those goods within the Imperial heartland.

This economic activity is the ultimate object of Imperial policy. Although not every action is calculated in terms of economic transactions, the maintenance of the economic basis of the Empire is the framework within which policy decisions are made.