I'D RATHER BE LIVING POST-IMPERIALISM

Ever since I read Aurora Levins Morales' recent essay (linked to at my post Thinking Outside the Ballot Box), I've been using her phrase "empire in steep decline" in conversation and as a reminder to myself of our current reality. One friend and I laugh merrily whenever one of us says it -- a means of acceptance without utter panic. Recognizing we are in the midst of this shift really does explain a lot of scary things, and in the big picture, I'm not sorry to see empires decline. They are always built on the equivalent of slave labor and increasing disenfranchisement of all but a small elite. Not what I hope for with the technology, information, and human consciousness that is available on this planet.


Interestingly, the idea and the phrase itself, "empire in decline", seems to now be cropping up in diverse places. Perhaps Aurora was a bellwether (wouldn't be the first time), perhaps she read the same sources, or, most likely, smart people all over the place are coming to the same realization. Anyhow, here's a couple of other good, and somewhat contrasting, reads on the idea.

The first is Alternet's coverage of this week's publication of Howard Zinn's latest book, A People's History of American Empire. Their article, subheaded "The End of Empire", begins:

'In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's "sole superpower" is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an "empire lite" has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster.'

What follows is a capsule history of the U.S. as only Howard Zinn can do it. I'll skip ahead (trusting you'll read the whole thing) to this section:

'Various interventions following the U.S. defeat in Vietnam seemed to reflect the desperate need of the still-reigning superpower -- even after the fall of its powerful rival, the Soviet Union -- to establish its dominance everywhere. Hence the invasion of Grenada in 1982, the bombing assault on Panama in 1989, the first Gulf war of 1991. Was George Bush Sr. heartsick over Saddam Hussein's seizure of Kuwait, or was he using that event as an opportunity to move U.S. power firmly into the coveted oil region of the Middle East? Given the history of the United States, given its obsession with Middle Eastern oil dating from Franklin Roosevelt's 1945 deal with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia, and the CIA's overthrow of the democratic Mossadeq government in Iran in 1953, it is not hard to decide that question.'

In the following section, "Justifying Empire", he states:

'The ruthless attacks of September 11th (as the official 9/11 Commission acknowledged) derived from fierce hatred of U.S. expansion in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even before that event, the Defense Department acknowledged, according to Chalmers Johnson's book The Sorrows of Empire, the existence of more than 700 American military bases outside of the United States.

'In wars, there is always a difference between the motives of the soldiers and the motives of the political leaders who send them into battle. My motive (as a bomber in World War II), like that of so many, was innocent of imperial ambition. It was to help defeat fascism and create a more decent world, free of aggression, militarism, and racism.

'The motive of the U.S. establishment, understood by the aerial gunner I knew, was of a different nature. It was described early in 1941 by Henry Luce, multi-millionaire owner of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, as the coming of "The American Century." The time had arrived, he said, for the United States "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit."'

His article concludes with the paragraph:

'Have not the justifications for empire, embedded in our culture, assaulting our good sense -- that war is necessary for security, that expansion is fundamental to civilization -- begun to lose their hold on our minds? Have we reached a point in history where we are ready to embrace a new way of living in the world, expanding not our military power, but our humanity?'

It was Helen Keller who first said "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us." We in this country are emotionally attached to our Empire, even those of us being ground down by it, because we fear the alternative, a murky not-quite-imagined construct where our addiction to individualism and noble self-image might get tossed on the ash-heap.

I believe it is this fear, as much as fear of equally imaginary "Islamofascists", which keeps us complacent while latter-day imperialists openly unlace our governmental balance and our civil rights for their own gain, monetary and power. We think they will not go so far as to destroy the identity of America itself in their quest for control -- like the German elite, we think letting the Nazis go after the commies and Jews will "clean house" but be self-limiting. But one empire is virtually identical to other for those at the top. They care not a flip what the rest of us do, they have their compounds and their Saudi connections. They may get booed off the baseball diamond by their former constituency while throwing out the ceremonial first pitch, but they can buy their way into being the commissioner of baseball nevertheless.

As if to reassure us, this week the U.K. Prospect has an article by Michael Lind titled America Still Works, begins with:

'Anyone who reads the serious press about the condition of the US might be excused for believing that the country is headed towards a series of deep crises. This impression is exacerbated by economic slowdown and by the presidential primaries, in which candidates announce bold plans to rescue the country from disaster. But even in more normal times there are three ubiquitous myths about America that make the country seem weaker and more chaotic than it really is. The first myth, which is mainly a conservative one, is that racial and ethnic rivalries are tearing America apart. The second myth, which is mainly a liberal one, is that America will soon be overwhelmed by religious fundamentalists. The third myth, an economic one beloved of centrists, is that the retirement of the baby boomers will bankrupt the country because of runaway social security entitlement costs.'

Lind goes on to address and debunk each of these myths. My favorite part is where he explains that social security privatization is talked up by those who intend to profit from it, not because the fund is in serious trouble -- but the real problem, health care costs, are ignored by the same folks.

Less blunt than Howard Zinn, but with some still useful insights, he concludes:

'The US is facing major challenges—but they are not the ones usually identified. Long-term racial and linguistic balkanisation may not be a problem, but class lines in the US are hardening; there is now less social mobility in the US than in Europe. The US is not in danger of becoming a theocracy, but it is in danger of becoming a plutocracy. Social security does not threaten to bankrupt America, but healthcare cost inflation does. The US is not going to be eclipsed any time soon by another superpower, but it may exhaust itself by allowing its commitments to exceed the resources that the public is willing to allot to foreign policy. The sooner the mythical problems can be dismissed, the sooner the genuine challenges to America's future can be identified and addressed.'

The glaring euphemism in the above is, of course, is "it may exhaust itself by allowing its commitments to exceed the resources that the public is willing to allot to foreign policy". By foreign policy, he means the military-backed domination of the rest of the entire world for the profit of a small elite. In other words, empire in steep decline.

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THINKING OUTSIDE OF THE BALLOT BOX -- AURORA LEVINS MORALES SPEAKS

(Aurora Levins Morales)

Last night I was avoiding reading some of my heretofore favorite political blogs, especially Daily Kos which has, to quote a blogger friend of mine, turned into a seething viper's nest of misogyny. I was tracking down a piece of women's herstory, or trying to, when I ran across an essay which broke air and light into every fissure of this campaign for me. Now for something COMPLETELY different...

I want to share the whole thing with you, but I also want to support the site on which it appears, online archive of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, so I'm linking to it and will extract fair use portions to whet your appetite here.

A bit of personal background: The author, Aurora Levins Morales, is a woman I knew and respected without qualification in the Bay Area. (Pay note to that "without qualification" -- not many people get that accord from me.)

Raised Jewish Puertorriqueña, she's been a bridge builder her entire life. She's a poet, essayist, community historian, activist, and curandera. Her essay on being middle class dropped into the lesbian-feminist 1980s community like a lifeboat, ending any number of class wars. She's a mother, a straight woman whom I trust as much as any dyke, and a woman of color who -- well, years ago I was at a gathering where Barbara Love, an African-American activist, said the notion of building bridges is overused (as I just did above) because most of the time, the bridge between us already exists, has been there all along. It's simply obscured by the debris of lies. And it's important to realize this because building a new bridge is much more work than clearing an extant structure of garbage. So, I revise my definition of Aurora: She's got one hell of a broom, and she's clearing strutwork with every breath she takes.


At the outset, Aurora says:

"First let me make clear my view that as progressives in this country we have very little impact on the outcome of the elections, and less still on the post-election behavior of the winner; our votes are not the kind of favors presidents reward. In a way, that means we have less at stake in the short term and can concentrate on our long term goals. We're a small part of the electorate. We're far more potent as organizers and catalysts than as voters.

"Our ability to save our species from extinction and create a world we can thrive in does not depend on who wins this election. It depends on our ability to dismantle profit-based societies in which greed trumps ethics. As my brother Ricardo Levins Morales points out, we live in an empire in steep decline. The election is about finding a CEO capable of holding domestic constituencies in check as they are further disenfranchised at breakneck speed and, as much as possible, make them feel that they have a stake in the military aggressiveness that the ruling class understands is necessary. Having a Black man and a woman run helps to obscure the fact that this decline of empire is what is driving the whole political elite to the right. Both these people represent very reactionary politics in ways that I don't want to get started on. Part of the cleverness of having such candidates is the very fact that they will be attacked in ways that make oppressed people feel compelled to protect them.

"There are two points here:
1) Neither Obama nor Clinton represents an alternative human strategy to propping up a failing empire that is based on pirating the world's resources (including ours) for the sake of a small elite.
2) The fact that someone is being targeted by oppression may arouse our outrage and lead us to identify with them, but it doesn't change their actual political positions."

A while later, she points out (and backs up fully):

"Among all the candidates running for national office Clinton and Obama rank first and second as recipients of health industry contributions, and are in the top four recipients of donations from the finance (banking, investment and insurance), energy/natural resources, communications/electronics and construction industries. What's more, Obama is ahead of Clinton in taking money from pharmaceuticals, electrical utilities, internet companies and foreign and defense policy PACs."

She goes on to clear a giant path for us with:

"First let me say that as a woman of color, though I am not surprised, I am disgusted and angry at the way a Black man and white woman have been put into the ring against each other, while the white male elite looks on. So should we all be. As Robin Morgan says in her essay Goodbye to All That #2 , it's strongly reminiscent of the way the same two constituencies were pitted against each other to compete for the right to vote during the late 19th century. It was utterly predictable that the first serious female and Black presidential candidates would run against each other.

"The people who disappear in this contest are women of color who are subjected to both sexism and racism, and who, with our children, are suffering more devastation at a faster rate than anyone else in this country. In 1981 I was a contributor to This Bridge Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color, a collective refusal to make an untenable choice, and resist the pressure we faced to abandon ourselves either as female or as people of color, to distance ourselves from the political struggles of one or the other of our peoples or face being called traitors. The book had a strong impact on many progressive people, but not, of course on the wider society. In 2008 we are being told, as usual, that we have to choose between a man of color and a white woman, neither of whom will do much to change the increasingly desperate conditions of our lives."

Aurora makes it clear throughout her essay that she is neither a supporter of Clinton nor Obama, not in the advocacy sense. She says:

"I began this article in response to Robin Morgan's article on the viciousness of the sexism in this campaign. What it's permissible to say in public is only one marker of oppression, but it's an important one. I agree with her that its important to notice and talk about how much easier it is for Clinton's opponents and the media to go all out with violent and degrading sexist attacks on her than it is for the same level of racism to be openly expressed at Obama. Which is not to say that he isn't constantly targeted by racism, but in the public arena where this battle is taking place, sexism is considered trivial.

"The power brokers expect Obama to be a model minority candidate, and he has that option. He can assimilate himself enough to be Black in a way that's acceptable to a workable number of white people. There's no comparable role for Clinton. To the degree that she assimilates by acting like one of the guys, or taking hawkish positions on the war, she loses her femininity and becomes less acceptable, not more. A model female doesn't run for president."

And, finally, she give us the blessed relief of an utterly fresh viewpoint (fresh for those of us impaired by racism):

"Recent history gives us another way to redefine American politics. America is much larger than the United States. After five hundred years of brutal economic and social oppression, Bolivia, the poorest country in Latina America has elected a radical indigenous man with a mandate to take back the countrys natural resources and redistribute wealth into the hands of its majority indigenous population. In Venezuela, under the leadership of a mestizo man, petroleum wealth is being used to put power into the hands of working people, and to improve the quality of life and build solidarity and mutual support far beyond its borders. Cuba, in spite of 49 years of economic blockade, has one of the best health care systems and most ecologically sustainable economies in the world. Together with newly elected progressive governments in other Latin American countries, they have created an alliance that allows them to start defying the corporate powers that force their will on so much of the world.

"Imagine that instead of arguing about Clinton and Obama we put our considerable energy and smarts and capacity for thinking big toward joining that alliance; toward stripping illusions, revealing possibilities and overcoming discouragement in order to make such a thing possible."

Imagine...

(Aurora Levins Morales at the River Residency, a program of Tulane University)

Other blogs linking to this post: Yes We Can (do anything): On the elections, feminism, and our future, by Victoria Marinelli at Anachroclysmic.

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