Musings on Empire and Imperialism

1. Who is to blame for the current European situation? As I am not a theologian or an ethcist I can only point out that if we want to play the blame game there is a lot of blame to go around and a lot of blame to apportion if we want to be fair and balanced. If you want to blame, blame NATO, blame the US, blame intransigent I gotta show em my cock is hard Biden, blame the Ukraine, blame Russia, blame Putin, blame stupidity, blame hubris, blame moronicity, blame humans, blame imperialism, blame empire. 

2. More important than playing the blame game is to put what is happening in Europe into context. Putin has repeatedly warned the West and NATO, an arm of American imperialism, for years that Ukraine and Georgia were off limits for NATO expansion. He offered Ukraine Finlandisation, which means that Ukraine would have to remain, like Finland, neutral. While perhaps not perfect when you live next to an empire, which Pierre Trudeau likened to sleeping next to a cranky elephant--Trudeau was referring to the US and he well knew what it was like to be dominated by American economic, political, and even military imperialism--there is no perfect. I would think that, Finlandisation is better than war. But that's me.

3. Today American military bases can be found around the globe and they are, quite clearly, at least on one level, instances of continuing American imperialism. As for America's many imperial wars in my lifetime, the overt ones start with Korea and end with Iraq. The covert ones are going on around the globe almost everywhere as I type including in the Ukraine. Did you see that marvellous photo of McCain, Lindsey Graham, with the Ukraine military? But then the US is an empire. 

4. I have long been fascinated by the American civil religion. Americans like to think that their country is just there to lend a hand and to make the world a better place (translation, make the world accessible to American business and military "interests"). It is interesting to compare and contrast Britain's revelling in being an empire with America's studied amnesia of the fact that it is an empire. Britain's elites generally accepted that they were imperialists and they believed that they and their nation were, as their empire spread across the globe, "civilising" the world (translation: making it safe for British interests) thanks to Britain's natural and/or god given economic, political, cultural, and demographic superiority. The US generally revels in the myth of its civilising and helping hand "mission" and its own sense of economic, political, and cultural superiority (American White supremacists would add biological superiority to this mix), but it continues to wallow in its own John Wayne innocence. Such amnesia is not quant. It is simply delusional.

5. I want to end by noting that anyone who believes that Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iraq were defensive wars has been snorting the imperial koolaid and drinking too much cocaine. To paraphrase Chapelle, imperialism is a hell of a drug.