As I emerge from the wisdoms of the fever dreaming time I sat up straight as once again, but on a deeper level I realized what the Republicans and the poor scared folks who “want their America back” really want. It won;t come as a shocking revelation to any of you, because the revelation was more about depth than form or content. What shocked me a bit in fact was not what they want(ed) but that they honestly seem(ed) to believe that what they wanted could ever really happen. It says more about the depth of their delusions than anything else.
For what they want, and what apparently they still think they can get…..is Empire. An Empire of straight, conforming, obedient white Christians. That would rule if not conquer, the world.
They actually thought that that could happen!
That a nation of 300 million people could rule this world. Of course for that to happen, they thought (think) in their fevered dreams, America must be united. It must be united and it must be, of course, straight, white, and Christian. And willing to obey.
They apparently missed the fact that at most there are only about 100 million people in America that fit that description. With maybe a few more scattered tens of millions in Britain and Australia and Canada….more if you count the French and those other Euro-sissies. And yet in spite of these numbers, and the odds they represent….let’s be generous and say their are 500 million straight, white, obedient Christians willing to fight for their Empire….odds of 6.5 billion to 500 million, they thought that they could pull it off. Hell they thought, delusionally, that they HAD pulled it off!
So isolated and insulated and deluded were they that they actually thought America DID rule the world. And they still seem to think so, they still seem to think…really, really believe, that America and the rest of the straight white, Christian world can invade and occupy any place at anytime and “win” those occupations.
They have no idea of the unsustainable cost of Empire. They have no idea that they are vastly out numbered, both by other races and other cultures, and most importantly by people who just don’t give a shit. They actually think that “their kind” can capture and rule the entire planet.
Even in the face of the fact that we cannot even conquer and hold Iraq and Afghanistan, they are STILL proceeding on that delusion. That belief, so ridiculous on its face to anyone who actually thinks, still drives their worldview, is still so fundamentally ingrained and deeply instinctual, so deeply a part of them is just…..primal…. to the point that they do not even know that they think it. That they cannot even conceive of a world that has a different shape to it, a different reality. They will fight for this delusion to their dying breath, because they can conceive of no other world.
And that is the good news. They will never change, just as some folks in the South have never really changed their views after the Civil War. The dream of the straight, white Christian Empire that the ante-bellum south represented will never die off.
But they will.
At least as a power to be reckoned with culturally and politically.
And so we get to “move up a level” as far as what we face, as far as the degree of hatred and aggression and delusion that the new enemies of Progress represent. As the influence and paradigm of this cultural and political group wanes, we get to shed them, we get to get…..’lighter.’
It is as if we have been carrying a REALLY BIG rock on our backs. And now, or in a couple of years when they have truly made themselves irrelevant and their archaic worldview becomes to be perceived as more and more ridiculous….we get to trade that rock for a lighter one. It cannot be discounted as to how much the waning of the influence of not just our homegrown fundamentalists will change the world…including the fact that the death of our fundamentalist would be Empire will severely reduce the need, for the rest of the worlds fundamentalists to resist their Empire.
Soon we will get to put down this heavy rock we have been carrying. We will trade it for a lighter one, a less extreme, but perhaps more dangerous one….the rock of the passive aggressive ConservaDem types, who present a far less dangerous face, as they oppose the Progress of the Human Race. But who still feel that they have the Manifest Destiny Exceptionalism of God being on their side. Who knows what havoc they will wreak.
But the End of Empire is here, as people who actually think take charge and realize that while they may still desire Empire, America just cannot afford it. Cannot pull it of. That it is just NOT going to happen.
And then the question will have to be answered, if America is not an Empire destined to rule the world…..what is it?
It will be interesting to watch what “we” decide America is going to be in the 21st century. Stay Tuned!
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is sort of like trying to explain a psychedelic experience to them. They’d never comprehend it without experiencing it.
There’s a reason for the definition “mind manifesting”…
is that what they “want” is what we have fought against, the tyranny of Empires. Looking back just a mere 45 years at the civil rights movement, we are still fighting the same equality battles we fought then with different players and labels. I hate labeling people. When I see a person, sick or injured, dying, I don’t see a sex, religion, race, sexual preference…I see a human being in need. Underneath all the labels and prejudices, we all bleed the same.
Welcome back from the dreams of fever
when I get some Quiet Time, but… well, okay. Its not that I disagree, its just my focus has shifted I guess. I dont put so strong a SWC (Straight White Christian) stamp on it, its more the Have’s and Have Not’s of all races, gender, etc.
But Im also resistant to an Us v. Them frame, even though that is what it is, I know.
hmmmmm
We have to evolve, we have to prevail, and if we don’t, it’s over for everybody, all of us.
the problem is when! So much more damage can be done between now and the “then.”
Thanks, buhdy! See you’re feeling better! 🙂
they just want a nation of white people.
They want a fantasy, the Norman Rockwell, Frank Capra fantasy.
White people in small towns, picket fences, virtuous women who don’t have sex until they get married and who then become perfect housewives, rosey-cheeked white children playing with each other, etc. etc. etc.
“Empire” would make them realize there’s actually a world out there beyond our borders.
They don’t want to think about that. That’s SCARY.
This is how Rush Limbaugh made himself famous, by pushing those buttons of those people. Remember the book that put him over the top (might have been his first) was “The Way Things Ought To Be”.
That says it all. People want what they can’t have but THINK they used to have.
They never DID have it.
… a Middle Eastern country whose policies we’re not supposed to argue about here. Theocratic with a variety of ways that openly favor fundamentalists at the expense of secularists.
It’s a rebellious child of the English Colonial Empire that succeeded in producing a solid constitution but lacking any foundational values. America did not incorporate the Declaration of Independence into its Constitution. Politics may rest on the ideas of freedom, but with no moral directives.
America began its life with the most extensive, naturally preserved and bountiful land imaginable, unfortunately confiscated by adopting policies of brutal extermination.
Slaves were imported early on to work the land for narrow minded, biogted landowners and as servants for more sophisticated city folk. Early founders and scholars such as G. Washington, T. Jefferson, J. Madison and J. Monroe are typical of such persons.
Later on cheap immigrant labor and the hungry provided essential services in the industrial expansion and in the accumulation of national wealth. Early supporters of this type of exploitation are represented by such famous names as Gould, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt etc; the titans of industry.
America of the 20th Century seems hard to pin down.
The Roosevelt cousins seemed to be on to something, but things got confusing with two world wars and the Cold War.
Our early historical disinclination to get involved in foreign entanglements seemed to collapse. And our instinctive egalitarian ideals of homesteads for all vanished. And wealth seems to have become consolidated in a few controlling entities.
America is a country of conflicting ideologies. It is evolving like all empires. However it’s lawmaking bodies seem old and arthritic and its people STILL looking for their moral compass. Trapped in mindless consumerism with creature comforts never seen in human history, while numb to the suffering of others, America clings to its false sense of superiority and exceptionalism.
America is a confused and self centered neurotic as it remains immature and unable to cope with the apparent loss of its endowment, an endowment that never really belonged to it. What is America? America is a polity looking for its soul!
at our local 4 year university. Her students – seniors – were complaining to her about an assignment to write a research paper. They said they haven’t had to write a paper since freshman English. She says they CAN’T write – all they do is send text messages all day long.
So the long downspin of America is doomed to continue – at an even faster pace. Of course they don’t understand world politics, our place in the world or world history. They are ignorant and not getting an education.
I know this is a gross generalization – but the conversation with my friend was depressing. I know there certainly are many young people who are very aware of, and concerned about, what’s happening with climate change, our imperialistic wars, etc. But this is a four year accredited university – in a very red state – and I’m afraid indicative of the degree of lack of knowledge/learning of a lot of Americans these days.
I go all kumbaya on you, somebody just smack me. lol
Greenwald nails it on the KSM stuff.
You wrote in part:
I agree 100%, and just want to add the point — they still think that. Delusional much? Yes, as you point out, it is.
Heard a great speaker the other night. Alex Steffan from WorldChanging.org
He quoted Paul Hawken as saying something like “The people who are ruining the planet via pollution aren’t doing it by accident. They’re doing it purposefully. And they have names and addresses.”
Implying that — hey, we could take this straight to them.
That really woke me up, which is probably why he remembered it, and was quoting it.
So lemmie say, “Hey bozos! You’re wrong, and we’re waking up! And you have a name and an address.”