It's like this. Because of work that I do, I know a lot about imperialism and the ways that people who are, or consider themselves to be, occupied or impressed by an imperial power try to organize resistance to it. One of the problems you face, if you happen to be trying to drum up a resistance movement in an occupied country, is the fact that the violence of imperialism is so often insidious and invisible. After a certain point, the imperial power rarely has to resort to open war to get what it wants. It can use other equally devastating weapons-environmental destruction, economic exploitation, political corruption-whose operations are less visible and therefore less likely to provoke opposition.
So one of the goals of any organization devoted to resisting an imperial power is to make that violence visible. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to strike out at the imperial power just hard enough to make it strike back. The reason that tactic works so well is that when the Empire strikes back, the violence it uses is wildly disproportionate to the violence it responds to. Even if it's only been stung by a fly, the Empire always gets out the cannon. Once the cannon goes off, it's clear to everyone who the evil oppressors are, and who the oppressed people bravely fighting against all odds for their freedom are.
That is, it's clear to everyone but the Empire.
The Empire just keeps firing the cannon. The Empire descends to the level of its adversary and then starts digging-with a backhoe. The Empire pursues its hard line while shouting "no surrender" and "we don't negotiate" and "zero tolerance." The Empire escalates, no matter what the results are. If its adversary is defeated, the Empire goes on beating it long after it's down. If violence used against its adversary simply produces stronger, more numerous, and more heavily armed adversaries, the Empire nevertheless continues using violence. The mindboggling stupidity with which the Empire will pursue its one course in the face of mounting and overwhelming evidence that it is not working is staggering to contemplate. And yet its story is written again and again all over world history.
When I teach literature produced by empires and their subjects, the students always ask the same questions. Why doesn't the Empire stop? How can it be worth it to them to keep their hooks in this or that piddly little piece of the world? How come the Empire can't tell that what they're doing is causing them more harm than what their adversaries are doing? Why doesn't the Empire ever figure out that the smartest thing to do would be not to strike back?
It's not a hard lesson to learn. In terms of getting an imperial power out of a country, peaceful demonstration accomplishes almost nothing; opening fire on a peaceful demonstration accomplishes plenty. Reprisal fuels resistance. The more people you kill, the more people you create who will refuse to be won over, co-opted, bought out. Kill enough people and you create an army big enough to kick you out-or at least to make your presence there so painful to you and to the folks at home that you have to leave. But that usually takes a very long time, and things have to get very, very painful. Why doesn't the Empire learn to cut its losses, to find other solutions, to come up with alternatives to the cannon?
I don't know. I teach this stuff every year hoping to find out but I never do. All I know is that the Empire never learns. It only has one way to play. And if that one way to play results in the destruction of its own people, its own land, and its own power, then the Empire will let that happen, and go down firing the cannon one last time.
I've heard our president say that he is "amazed" at the fact that there are people in the world who hate America. All right then, Mr. President. I'll try to put this in terms that you can understand.
We are the Empire.
I know you don't see it that way, and neither do the 90% of the Americans who approve of the job you're doing. That does not surprise me. The Empire never knows it's the Empire. From your most recent press conferences it appears that you probably got most of your knowledge of good and evil from Star Wars, and I can understand why that makes things difficult for you. In Star Wars, the Empire wears black and its leader wears a mask and a cowl and everything he says comes out laden with sinister hisses and heavy breathing. In real life, though, the Empire doesn't do any of that. In the real history of the real world, the Empire believes that it is the source of civilization, enlightenment, freedom, wealth, prosperity, spiritual salvation. The Empire thinks that it is fighting on the side of the angels, bringing the light of truth to those who walk in darkness. The Empire only crushes and kills because it has the world's best interests at heart. The Empire only destroys in order to save. The Empire knows that it is acting for the best. And the Empire doesn't understand why the people it's destroying can't see that.
We won the cold war, we won the economic war, we won the culture wars, and now we're the ones ruling the world. So we are the Empire. And that's what makes it possible for people to hate us. That's what makes it possible for people around the world to support things like the World Trade Center attacks. How many Stormtroopers died when the Jedi took out the Death Star? What happened to their families and loved ones? Nobody knows, nobody cares. They were the Empire.
Of course it's terribly and unconscionably wrong for the terorrists who did this and their supporters to look at the people who died in those buildings as simply faceless minions of evil whose lives and hopes and dreams and loved ones don't matter. What switch needs to flip in your head for you to understand that it is just as terribly and unconscionably wrong not to see the Afghanis who are fleeing our bombs only to starve to death in the winter snows on the wrong side of a closed border as people whose lives and hopes and dreams and loved ones matter just as much? Training young men to see the United States as the Great Satan has proved to be a terrible thing with terrible consequences; what better consequences do you expect from calling Osama Bin Ladin "the Evil One"?
We've done a fairly good job of convincing our own population that we're not the Empire; after all, most Americans don't follow foreign news much anyway. But now that we're striking back, it's getting clearer-at least to the rest of the world. We talk like an empire, and we walk like an empire. And if we don't come up with another way to play, then this may be when we finally fall like an empire.
But then, you know, that's what I meant up at the beginning, about the weeping in despair. I know we're the Empire. And I also know that the Empire never learns. And I know what it takes to bring an Empire down, and I don't want to live to see that happen to me and the people I love and all the people who are still my people even though they stand united behind a flag I can't find it in my heart to wave.
There is only one way out of this mess that I can see, and that is for us to refuse to play. We can stop dropping bombs on a country that has already run out of things to destroy. We can stop talking about spreading the war to Iraq. We can stop murmuring darkly about what will happen to the people who do not prove that they are "with us" and are therefore presumed to be "against us." We can stop striking back. It might mean the end of world dominance. It might mean withdrawing from Saudi Arabia. It might mean not controlling the world's oil reserves. It might mean the end of telling the UN what to do, and the beginning of doing what the UN tells us. It might mean that we can no longer do whatever the hell we want in the rest of the world and let the chips fall where they may. But you know what, I'm not sure that any of those things would do us any harm.
But we won't stop striking back. We won't because the Empire always believes that violence is the thing that saves it. How could we not strike back? That would be capitulating to the terrorists. That would make us less safe, not more. Striking back is what we have to do to protect ourselves. Striking back will make us stronger. Striking back will make us safer.
Well, we're striking back. Do you feel safer? I don't.
God help America,
The Plaid Adder
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