The Empire Always Comes Home

"To understand the true nature of the Roman empire we must abandon one of the most general and most widespread misconceptions, which teaches that Rome administered her provinces in a broad-minded spirit, consulting the general interest and adopting wide and beneficent principles of government for the good of the subjects. Subject countries have never been so governed, either by Rome or by any other empire; domination has never been advantageous to subject races except by accident; the dominant race has invariably attempted to secure the largest possible profit for itself with the least possible amount of risk and trouble." – Guglielmo Ferrero, The Greatness and Decline of Rome, 1907

Violence is very much inherent in what we are as a species. It goes back to our Homo ancestors and as Dr. Goodall revealed to our chimp cousins. However, that violence is possible and reoccurring doesn’t make it inevitable or necessary. We are the most social of beings. The vast majority of people who ever lived never inflicted violence on another, most certainly not lethal violence. If they had, we wouldn’t have made it here. One thing for certain, if we create institutions of violence or found our social institutions on violence, we make violence both inevitable and necessary.

Across history, every civilization looked at violence between its members as largely verboten, unacceptable as a way for one person to instill their will upon others. Yes, that doesn’t mean it was nonexistent, but it is the exception and not the rule. However, when you go up the totem poll to states and empires, violence has always been and remains not simply accepted but a respected means to the ends of one people asserting organized will over another, or better said as over “the other.”

With the US, violence was instrumental in our creation and remains in aspects of institutions and administration. From the beginning, America's indigenous populations were displaced from their lands largely through violence. Slavery was an institution of violence, while a presently economically stratified society requires more than a dose. After World War II, with American troops stopping at Eastern Europe and Japan, the US adopted the tried and repeated millennia old methods of empire. With the establishment of an unaccountable National Security State and permanent war budget, American imperial affairs became as sordid as any of those preceding it.

In the last couple decades, with America blowing-up the Middle East, aspects of brutal imperial incompetence became visible for all to see, no more so then for the American soldiery shipped across oceans and vast landmasses to conduct this criminal business. Fifty years ago, the US ended its conscripted citizen army. Now its military is reliant on poorly paid volunteers, many from places where the economy no longer works well and other places it never did. Militaries across history contained large groups of people disadvantaged from lives the majority took for granted. The military offered a way out.

For 75 years, the imperial affairs of the American empire have remained completely unaccountable. In the words of J.F. Kennedy advisor Arthur Schlesinger, the “Imperial Presidency” freely sends troops across the globe with zero hindrance from the Congress or the American people. An economy dependent on military spending grew greatly inequitable and in more than a few respects criminal. The top of American society became smaller and wealthier to the extreme, while the bottom grew larger and desperate. It is with little irony this criminality of the top seeped down into the ranks of the military. The NYT has an important piece, They Celebrated Vigilante Justice on the Battlefield. Then They Brought It Home.

Unfortunately, as the NYT does, they blame this on the current president, but it’s something that’s been brewing for decades, though yes, like many things Trump's making it worse, most atrociously by stationing troops in American cities and the vast expansion of a federal police force with ICE. The Times concludes,

“This vision of unrestrained power has its roots in the 20 years of conflict waged in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Understanding the secret history of America’s longest war is about more than a reckoning with the past. Cases like Golsteyn’s and the Nerkh killings illuminate the connections between a brutal conflict overseas and a radical cultural and political shift at home that venerates the vigilante. In this way, shots fired in an Afghan village echo in our present.”

In his 1967 speech in opposition to the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr. stated, “The bombs in Vietnam explode at home, they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.” Explode they did then and ever since with an ever greater militarization of American society. The idea of an educated and involved citizenry was lost, replaced by Paine's Sunshine Patriots, pledges of allegiance, hands on hearts, and billion dollar bomber jets soaring above filled stadiums.

The social vandalism wreaked upon the members of the military performing the tasks of empire never heal. They return damaged, wounds that are open soars upon the body politic. Historically, such populations helped destabilize established regimes. In republic’s, as was clearly demonstrated by Rome, a military’s move into politics is lethal.

The Roman republic conducted domestic politics for four centuries without violence. Sulla, who took power at the height of the republic’s wealth and imperial reach, was the first to march his troops on Rome to settle a domestic political squabble. That was the beginning of the end, republicanism/democracy would disappear for 1500 years. With the founding of the US, modern republicanism was birthed. Its ideas, values, and processes spread across the entire planet well before its military. Now, the same disease that destroyed the Roman republic threatens the existence of democracy in America.

"Nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus." - Livy ( We can suffer neither our vices or their remedies.)