The Empire 234

Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.

Enter the Empire
By Manuel Valenzuela

Comfort and Masquerades

The wealthiest nation-state the world has ever seen has for the last sixty years been standing atop the upper crust of humankind, basking in the splendor of unfathomable richness, enjoying unprecedented standards of living, accumulating power and control at tremendous speed and becoming, at the expense of the planet and its inhabitants, the latest incarnation of Rome. America, that city on a hill, from where modern man’s guiding light emanates, that nation anointed by man’s imaginary deity, has, since the end of World War II, become the most powerful nation humankind has ever produced.
Today, 300 million people live inside its borders, enjoying levels of comfort and luxury never before seen. America has for the last two centuries become the nation whose attractiveness has become a magnet to millions upon millions of immigrants from all corners of the globe. No other nation on Earth has the wealth of the United States, and only a few countries come close to matching its immense power. It is this enormous wealth and comfort, leaps beyond that of most nations, along with myriad number of freedoms and rights for decades granted its people, that compel humans everywhere to try to migrate inside its borders.
Indeed, while most people of the world, billions strong, still struggle to subsist and survive on a daily basis, scrapping to eat, clothe and house themselves, living in shantytowns and slums and shacks and ghettos and cardboard huts, lacking the basic infrastructure and investments for adequate living, most citizens of the new Rome face no such hurdles or difficulties. To the millions residing inside the bowels of the Empire, the obstacles, anxieties and problems facing billions never become an issue or a reality that must be confronted on a personal and daily basis. Indeed, the gap between Americans’ standards of living and that of most of the world’s people is enormous to the point of absurdity.
Most Americans do not go hungry, they do not subsist on two or five dollars a day, or anywhere close to that, having to toil in sweatshops or relying for food on the scavenger techniques of family members combing through a landfill. They do not have to combat embedded corruption or the complete looting of their treasure. Americans have not had to live in tyranny, in dictatorship, in despotism, having to suffer the consequences of turmoil, of disease, mass drought and internal strife. They have not had to suffer through insecurity, war, and state sanctioned rape and murder.
Americans enjoy liberties, freedoms and rights that few peoples are allowed to possess in their native lands. In fact, it is those nation-states that are under the grip of America, those with puppet regimes loyal to the Empire and not their people, that paradoxically are prevented from enjoying the freedoms and rights and liberties that the Empire bestows upon its populace. It is those American sponsored dictators, royalty and puppet politicians that are often cited for fostering and nurturing the worst violations of human rights. It is in those foreign lands dominated by America where one is likely to find that democracy is non-existent and the rights of the people easily expendable.'

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