The U.S. Empire Is Falling!

[Guest Michael Joel Benoit]

YES! Apparently, I am not alone in this opinion. Listen to this guy. I don't agree about some of his views, he does make some good points.

 

The American people are not fools. And the decisive majority of the American people is made up of the working class by hand and brain. They will learn from books like the one written by Gore Vidal. They will learn most from the greatest book of all - the book of life itself. Great upheavals are on the order of the day in the United States of America. Once the sleeping giant of American labour begins to move, the whole world will be shaken to its foundations.

-Alan Woods

 

 

The decline and fall of the American Empire

By Alan Woods

 

On Monday July 15, on the BBC Four channel, political columnist Andrew Marr interviewed Gore Vidal, the famous American writer. The interview was quite remarkable for the insights it gave into the present situation of US capitalism.

 

Marr began with a most interesting question: "Do you think that the USA will end up like the Roman Empire, a victim of imperial over-expansion?" Gore Vidal's reply was quite astonishing in its frankness. Moreover, Vidal is well qualified to provide the answers (or at least some of them). Apart from being America's best-known living writer, he is a most perspicacious political commentator and an outspoken critic of the present system - although he is certainly no Marxist.

 

In fact, Gore Vidal is a member of one of America's leading families - a patrician in background, upbringing and culture. His father and grandfather held high political office and he is related to Al Gore, the Democratic candidate who in fact won the last presidential elections and was cheated of victory by the manoeuvres of the Bush camp. As Vidal put it: "Bush tricked the electorate. He just used a relative of his who happened to control the state of Florida to fix the votes. Then, when the outcome was questioned, he used the Supreme Court, which gave the election to the loser. This was in complete violation of the American Constitution, which does not give any such rights to the Supreme Court, but then, they pay no attention to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or anything else. Everything is decided by the one percent of the population who own America."

 

As we can see from these statements, Gore Vidal is what is known in the USA as a Liberal. But anyone watching this interview could fairly draw the conclusion that he is considerably to the left of even the most left-wing leader of the Social Democracy on this side of the Atlantic. His close personal acquaintance with America's ruling elite and its political Establishment gives him a unique insight into the workings of the system. Moreover, he is one of those extremely rare animals - a bourgeois political commentator whose vision transcends the immediate and has a broad historical view of things.

 

In Gore's opinion, "the [American] Republic ended in 1950. Since then we have had an imperial system." What are the chief characteristics of this system? First, the USA intervenes in an aggressive way in every part of the world. According to his researches, since 1950, the USA has waged at least 300 wars in different parts of the globe. Yet, although the Constitution stipulates that any war must be approved by Congress, not one of these conflicts has been so approved. In fact, the last time an American president sought and obtained congressional approval for a war was in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

 

Vidal points out something that has been long known to us, but has never been admitted, namely that President Roosevelt deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. "Roosevelt wanted the USA to enter the war against Hitler, but he knew that 80 percent of Americans were against this. He knew that the only way to change this was by a major shock, and therefore set out to provoke the Japanese - who were the allies of Germany and Italy - to attack the USA. They deliberately cut off Japan's oil supplies, then refused to sell them scrap metal, and so on. So they attacked. The attack on Pearl Harbor was worth more to Roosevelt than several divisions…"

 

Vidal then explains how President Truman got the USA involved in the Korean War ("which we lost") by presenting it as a "police operation" that did not require the approval of Congress. Instead he referred it to - the United Nations! The US military aggression in Korea took place under the banner of the UN - like many subsequent adventures, up to Kosovo.

 

A most effective raconteur, Vidal also possesses the necessary sense of humour. In his hands, wit is a deadly weapon, as sharp as a rapier. George W. Bush ("How I love that man!") provides him with an endless source of anecdotes, one of which was new to me and worth repeating. Bush's opinion of the French: "The trouble with those guys is that they just don't have a word for entrepreneur!"

 

Vidal speaks with a smile, but in the words of my countryman Dylan Thomas, his smile is as sweet as a razor. The form may be amusing, but the content is deadly serious. He points out that the much-vaunted American freedom is largely fictional: three percent of the population is either in gaol or on parole, connected up by electric devices to the prison administration. There is very little real freedom. Freedom of the press? "The press and the media are owned and controlled by 'our corporate masters'. I've never seen the media so tightly controlled as now. They control all the flow of information, so that the great majority of Americans do not know what is going on."

 

What about living standards in the USA? "Eighty percent of Americans have been falling behind since 1973. That is the date they usually cite for the oil crisis. Nowadays a husband and wife make less money than the husband alone made at that time. On the other hand, some people have become fabulously rich. One percent owns everything - like the CEOs who now seem to be queuing up to go to gaol! Under them there is a further twenty percent who support the Empire. These are the lawyers, the journalists, politicians and bankers and so on. The one percent hires the twenty percent."

 

Gore Vidal has had recent personal experience of American "press freedom". When after September 11 he wrote an article pointing out that the USA had brought this on itself, building up bin Laden and the Taliban against Russia. The article was not published by any US paper or magazine, including the supposedly "left wing" The Nation, for which Vidal has contributed articles for half a century. "The media never asks why," he says:

 

"We still have not been told the reason why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor! Roosevelt provoked the attack, but the national mythology requires him to be a Saint, so nothing is said about it. Now we demonise Osama bin Laden, who is not a very nice man and looks the part. We do not really know what degree of involvement he had in the September 11 attacks. Yet George W. Bush immediately says: 'Dead or alive, we're going to get him.' Well, they have not got him. And he is not the reason America is in Afghanistan. In fact, one journalist got into Afghanistan early on, which he was not supposed to do, and asked a US general there where Osama was. The general did not even remember who Osama was. Only when the astonished journalist reminded him, did he recall what the aim of the mission was supposed to be!"

 

In Vidal's opinion, the USA's intervention is connected with oil interests and the plan to build a pipeline connecting the Caspian Sea to the Indian Ocean. "They want stability in Afghanistan to build the pipeline. The Taliban did not give them stability, so they decided to overthrow them." This explanation of US motives in Afghanistan is rather too simple, but it is certainly true that plans for a pipeline existed (though whether it will ever be built is another matter), and that a US company was involved. There is also no doubt that the USA wants to seize control of the Caspian and Central Asia, and that oil and other business interests are heavily involved in this.

 

No matter how imperfect or incomplete Gore Vidal's analysis is, it is not really the point. The point that was underlined by Andrew Marr, a respected British political commentator (and certainly no left-winger) is this: How does it happen that America's greatest living writer [Marr's words] did not find it possible to get his opinions printed in the USA? Eventually, he had a collection of articles published in book form in Italy, where it was a best-seller. It was also published in other European countries.

 

In the end, his book Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, was published in the USA, but then, as he remarked wryly, it got worse. Not a single paper was prepared to review the book. There was no publicity and no advertisements were accepted. As a well-known public figure and broadcaster, he received seven invitations to appear on different television programmes. Five of these were soon cancelled. CNN had invited him to debate his views, but the programme was cancelled half an hour before it was due to commence. The instructions evidently came from the top level in Washington.

 

"Citizens' rights have been demolished in our country. The Bill of Rights has been either suspended or cut down. Bill Clinton started the process at the time of the Oklahoma bomber. Then they passed the US Patriotism Act, a document of thirty pages that nobody bothered to read. It permits the government to organize surveillance, arrests and deportations. In fact, if you criticise the government you could be arrested for 'giving comfort to the enemy'. And Congress passed this Act and the President signed it immediately! But in practice it did not work. However, we do have thousands of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay with no right of appeal and no recourse at all."

 

And what are Gore Vidal's conclusions? "Our liberation from this system will come about as a result of an economic collapse," he asserts. "This is inevitable, on the basis of the colossal debts we have been building up. This must lead to monetary breakdown at some stage. The writing is on the wall."

 

Most interesting is the little detail that must have come from his family connections. "During the second world war, there were 13 million of us young boys in the armed forces. In 1945, Roosevelt's son said to him: 'You realise that the only trade these kids know is how to kill. If things are like they were after the Civil War or after World War One, when unemployed veterans marched on Washington, it will mean big trouble. If they come home and find there are no jobs, they're going to tear the place to pieces!'" On that basis Roosevelt introduced the reform of the social security system that Gore Vidal (in a slight exaggeration) claims to have transformed the class structure of America.

 

Despite his flashes of brilliance and insight, Gore Vidal offers no real solution. His only hope is that, as in the Depression of the 1930s, a reforming President like F. D. Roosevelt will introduce something like the New Deal. "If not, we will end up with a dictatorship."

 

At the end of the day, Gore Vidal has not abandoned the standpoint of the social class from whence he came. At heart, he remains the American patrician, giving Cassandra-like advice to his class on how to save itself from impending disaster. And just as the Trojans paid no attention to Cassandra, whom they believed to be insane, so the American ruling class regard people like Gore Vidal as troublesome eccentrics, to be ignored or subjected to a conspiracy of silence.

 

The fact is, as Gore Vidal is the first to point out, America is already ruled by a dictatorship - the dictatorship of Money, of the "corporate masters" who take all the real decisions while giving the masses the illusion of democracy. But democracy in America, as in Britain and elsewhere in the West, is only a sham, a hollow shell. It is, as Gore Vidal with his considerable knowledge of history has realised, like the institutions of the Roman Republic in the early days of the Empire, when the emperors kept up the pretence of defending the old regime, while real power was concentrated in the hands of the emperor and the army.

 

Gore Vidal has the merit that he has understood the hypocrisy that underlies this pretence, and the vicious, exploitative and aggressive character of US imperialism. He has also grasped the fact that this colossus has feet of clay. He appeals to the American ruling class to withdraw from its foreign interventions. He realises that America is in the process of overreaching itself just as the Roman Empire overreached itself.

 

In effect, his recipe is to put the clock back about 200 years, to return America to its pristine roots of Republicanism. He thus ends up in a posture that is both conservative and utopian. Being an extremely intelligent man, he must know in his heart that there is no question of going back, and that what he is putting forward as a solution is no solution at all. This is the real reason for the layer of irony that lays heavily on his speech. After all, irony stems from the contradiction between what ought to be and what is.

 

The America of the big banks and monopolies cannot be replaced by the world of the small farmer. Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson are long dead and cannot be revived by daydreaming - even the kind of eloquent daydreaming of a brilliant writer. The only class that can overthrow the "corporate masters" and abolish the dictatorship of big business is the American working class.

 

Gore Vidal's book, despite the conspiracy of silence of the media, is now a bestseller in the USA, with 150,000 copies sold in a single week on Amazon. This tells us a lot about the changing mood of the people of America. As Gore Vidal says: "There's no need to worry about the American people. The establishment treats them as if they are fools, but they are not fools." Precisely! The American people are not fools. And the decisive majority of the American people is made up of the working class by hand and brain. They will learn from books like the one written by Gore Vidal. They will learn most from the greatest book of all - the book of life itself. Great upheavals are on the order of the day in the United States of America. Once the sleeping giant of American labour begins to move, the whole world will be shaken to its foundations.

 

London,

June 16, 2002

 

Interesting views, eh? I happen to agree about what he said about the elections and 9/11. Fucking Bush.

 

Fuck captialism and Fuck the U.S. Goverment.

[Guest MrRant]

Then move laddie.

[Guest Michael Joel Benoit]

Socialism everyone gets a piece of the pie. Unlike captialism.

 

BTW, Gore Vidal not good enough, eh? Well, here is some recommended reading on alternative opinions (a.k.a. Leftists)

 

International Terrorism and the CIA

Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

Live From Death Row

Mumia Abu-Jamal

 

Joe Hill

Gibbs M. Smith

 

The Mau Mau War in Perspective

Frank Furedi

 

The Aesthetic Dimension

Herbert Marcuse

 

The Fire Last Time: 1968 and After

Chris Harman

 

The Media Monopoly

Ben H. Bagdikian

 

50 Ways To Fight Censorship

Dave Marsh

 

Hegemony and Revolution: A study of Antonio Gramsci's Political & Cultural Theory

Walter L. Adamson

 

The Mismeasure of Man

Stephen Gould, Che Guevera

 

A New Society: Reflections for Today's World

by Che Guevara; edited by David Deutschmann

 

The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.)

Robert C. Tucker, Editor

 

What Uncle Sam Really Wants - Free Verison!

Noam Chomsky

 

Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation

Jonathan Kozol

 

Marxism and the New Imperialism

Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, Mike Haynes

 

Rules for Radicals

Saul D. Alinsky

 

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn

 

The Lorax

Dr. Seuss

 

East Los Angeles, history of a barrio

Richard Romo

 

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

William Blum

 

Race for Justice: Mumia Abu-Jamal's Fight Against The Death Penalty

Leonard Weinglass

 

Guerilla Warfare- Free Version!

Che Guevera

 

Zapata of Mexico

Peter E. Newell

 

Malcolm X Speaks - Selected Speeches and statements

George Breitman

 

Marxism and the Press: Oppression of Women, Toward a Unitary Theory

Lise Vogel

 

Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America

Walter LaFeber

 

The Chomsky Reader

James Peck, Editor

 

Chicano Politics: Reality and Promise 1940-1990

Juan Gomez Quinones

 

The Wretched of the Earth

Franz Fanon

 

What is Communist Anarchism?

Alexander Berkman

 

Democracy is in the Streets

James Miller

 

Capital, Volume One

Karl Marx

 

The Black Panthers Speak

Philip S. Foner,

 

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life of Diminishing Expectations

Christopher Lasch

 

The State and Revolution

V.I. Lenin

 

Revolutionary Suicide

Huey P. Newton

 

The Anarchist Cookbook

William Powell

 

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

 

Another country

James Baldwin

 

First World Ha! Ha! Ha! - The Zapatista challenge

Elaine Katzenberger, Editor

 

Johnny Got His Gun

Dalton Trumbo

 

How Real is Real? Confusion, disinformation, communication

Paul Watzlawick

 

Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to socialism

Sonia Kruks, Ranya Rapp, Marilyn B. Young, Editors

 

This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color

Cherrie Monzaga, Gloria Anzaluda, Editors

 

Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity

Michael A. Messner

 

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

Susan Faludi

 

The Challenge of Local Feminisms: Women Movements in Global Perspective

Amrita Basu

 

Cheer Up Book for a Proud American

Dan Valentine

 

The Way Things Aren't

Steve Rendall, Jim Naureckas, Jeff Cohen

 

You Can't Win

Jack Black

 

Year 501: The Conquest Continues

Noam Chomsky

 

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzche

 

Deterring Democracy

Noam Chomsky

 

Mau Mau Detainee

Josiah Mwangi Kariuki

 

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse

Peter Mathiessen

 

Marx's Kapital for Beginners

David Smith & Phil Evans

 

How the Other Half Lives

Jacob A. Riis

 

U.S.A.

John Dos Passos

 

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Friedrich Engels

 

Basta! Land and the Zapatista - Rebellion in Chiapas

George A. Collier

 

The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, Resistance

Annette James, Editor

 

Black Boy

Richard Wright

 

The Quiet American

Graham Greene

 

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. DuBois

 

Rights of Man

Thomas Paine

 

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison

 

avage Inequalities

Jonathan Kozol

 

Between Hell and Reason

Albert Camus

 

Women, Race, and Class

Angela Y. Davis

 

America's Reconstruction

Eric Foner & Olivia Mahoney

 

Native Son

Richard Wright

 

Ideas & Opinions

Albert Einstein

 

Censored: The News that Didn't Make the Newspapers and Why

Carl Jensen

 

Censored 2000:Toxic Sludge is Good for You

Sheldon Rampton & John Stauber

 

Lies My Teacher Told Me

James W. Loewen-

[Guest MrRant]

Plane. Timbucktoo. 4 pm flight. Be on it. Because you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

[Guest Powerplay]

Maybe we can switch to a better system like Socialism.

 

Fuck the goverment. Fight The Power!

Socialism is just Communism with a giant happyface on it. Remember that.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Fuck the goverment. Fight The Power!

Sigh.

 

Okay. You've figured us out. We were desperately hoping and praying that no one would ever realise we're still stupidly taking advice on diplomatic initiatives and geopolitical strategy from experts in the field, instead of fuckheaded bleeding-heart "liberal" assholes with absolutely no relevant background or experience, like Gore Vidal, Barbara Kingsolver, Arundhati Roy, and Katha Pollit, all of whom seem to think that getting one or two decent books published entitles them to dictate to the President.

 

And all of us in the Pentagon live in constant fear of legions of Scott Keith fans rising up and defeating the Secret Service, the National Guard, the US Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard.

 

Please don't hurt us.

[Guest Kingpk]

Uh oh, the teenage angst is acting up in this one.

 

Communism/Socialism NEVER WORKS with a big population, let's face it.

[Guest Mad Dog]

Geez comparing the U.S. to Rome. Why in the hell does everyone try and make a decent comparison of the two. It's apples to oranges. And how is imperial expansionism going to be our downfall. We haven't fucking expaned our boundaries in a long time. And who's going to take us out anyway. I hear all this talk of China but their economic system is most likely going to cave in before they ever take us out. Also the Romans got extremely lazy, and most Americans work what 70 hours a week or so.

 

Find some real articles to draw your opinions from. Gore Vidal, ha.

[Guest kkktookmybabyaway]

When the new world order arises, someone please wake me and let me know...

[Guest Michael Joel Benoit]

Well, here is a recommended reading list of books written by leftists.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Why do people like this even stay here. If they hate the country and system of gov't which we've had for over 200 years so much get the hell out. Know before anyone says it's their right to say what they want. Yes that's true but why stay in a country that you don't like. Why not move to Sweden or another socialist country.

[Guest bob_barron]

You give us all these books and tell us to fight the power.

 

What are YOU doing to help this country besides saying it sucks?

 

I mean if you're just here to bitch and complain then you'd probably be happier someplace else.

 

Considering our government has been in power for a little over 200 yrs and the transfer of power from one president to another is very peaceful- well something must be working right?

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Hey Bob. Just curious, why did you move to Canada was it for a job or something else?

[Guest bob_barron]

I moved to Canada because they have a great journalism programme where I'm at. I also wanted a change i guess.

 

Plus the dollar makes everything relatively cheap and Canada is a great country.

 

And of course I read the decline and fall of the American Empire and figured Canada must be the place for me!

[Guest MD2020]

Well, when it comes to alternative readings, who better than a convicted cop-killer?? I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner.

 

Sigh...

[Guest Michael Joel Benoit]

MUMIA WAS TRIED UNFAIRLY!!!

 

There was even proof! You heard about the retrial right?

[Guest Cancer Marney]

Jesus, he's channelling cfici now...

[Guest Spaceman Spiff]

I moved to Canada because they have a great journalism programme where I'm at. I also wanted a change i guess.

OMG! The Canadians have brainwashed you already

[Guest bob_barron]

I guess they have eh?

[Guest DrTom]

Well, here is a recommended reading list of books written by leftists.

While I'm sure it was unintentional, it was also very accurate that such a list ended up being empty.

[Guest danielisthor]

Socialism/communism has never worked. It never worked in the Soviet Union, as the government didn't have the money to pay all of its citizens their wages. There were food shortages in a country that produced more wheat and grain than every other country, including the US. There were constant shortages of basic human needs such as clothing, fresh clean water and food (as mentioned before). Do we need not even mention the amount of death that is associated with Communist Russia and China? Stalin killed more people during his reign than Hitler came close to in his concentration camps.

 

Forms of socialism here in the US have proven ineffective. Welfare is socialism. What did welfare accomplish? Unfortunatly, very little to nothing. Liberals were able to take money that I bust my ass for and give to some unemployed crack whore in Detroit with 5 illegitimate kids. Welfare did not improve the lives of anybody on it, just made them as dependent on the Government as a crack addict on crack. Thanks but no thanks. you can keep your socialist ideas and values, and if you value them so much, there's a plane leaving at least twice a day from JFK in NYC to Paris, France. Be on it and take Daschle, Gephardt, Clinton and Gore with you.

[Guest LooseCannon]

Scooter's Biggest Fan, I could be tolerant of your point of view on this stuff, if you dispensed with the juvenile rageagainstthemachineisms, and displayed some semblance of not merely parroting the literature of people who deliberately marginalize themselves politically. You don't seem to have any command of the issues involved here.

 

And who fucking cares what Gore Vidal thinks about anything? And why was that article teeming with verbal blowjobs for Mr Vidal? I'm somewhat at a loss as to what the fuck that article is supposed to prove.

[Guest Cancer Marney]

And why was that article teeming with verbal blowjobs for Mr Vidal?

Yeah, it was pretty nauseating. This was the line I found most irritating: "A most effective raconteur, Vidal also possesses the necessary sense of humour. In his hands, wit is a deadly weapon, as sharp as a rapier." WTF! "A most effective raconteur?!" Well la de fucking da... could this Woods guy have sounded any more like a total flaming queen?

[Guest bob_barron]

What is a raconteur?

[Guest danielisthor]

What is a raconteur?

according to Microsoft Word = narrator, conversationalist, story teller, after dinner speaker

[Guest MD2020]

MUMIA WAS TRIED UNFAIRLY!!!

 

13 or so state and federal judges have not found this to be the case. Could you please state you reasons for your belief?

 

There was even proof! You heard about the retrial right?

 

I assume that you mean the recent decision by Judge Yohn (if my assumption is wrong; please forgive me and let me know what you mean).

 

If this is what you mean, then you are mistaken. Judge Yohn set aside the sentence, and ordered a new sentencing hearing. He did uphold the conviction, however, meaning that Mumia is still guilty.

 

The decision to set aside the sentence is being appealed by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office. However, even if the appeal fails, and there is a new sentencing hearing, 1 of 2 things will happen: (a) Mumia is sentenced to death again, or (B) Mumia is sentenced to life in prison. Those are the only two possible sentences for first-degree murder in PA, I believe.

[Guest Ozymandias]

Telling someone who thinks America is a mess right now to leave the country is fucking insane, if all people did that than no change would ever come about. For people like SKBF it's their country too, and they shouldn't go anywhere just because they think the current system is fucked. In fact, people who feel that way are an asset to the country.

 

Socialism has never been tried. Pointing to the Soviets as an example of socialism is madness - socialism and a totalitarian regime are totally antithetical and could never work. The closest genuine socialism ever came to being implemented was during FDR's Presidency and it only saved America.

 

 

EDIT: sp

[Guest Cancer Marney]

I agree with Cletus's general principle, just not with his specific application of it. People like SKBF are about as much of an asset to the United States as half a head of lettuce.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

These people don't think America is mess right know they think America has always been a mess. Everyone has problems with the gov't and most want some sort of change. These people want to completley overall what we've had for over 200 years. Plus I only asked why do these people stay if they think this gov't and country is so horrible.

 

Socialism did not save American. The Depression was at its worst during Roosevelt's presidency. The depression ended because of WWII. So in some ways Hitler was more responsible for ending the depression than anyone else.

[Guest Ozymandias]

Marney - I meant dissenters in general. As far as SKBF goes, anyone who names themself after Keith and who stretches out the page with long-ass sig pics can leave immediately B)