But the effect of banishing Nixon was cosmetic. The accepted Watergate storyline, of probing, political inquest and Constitutional redemption, served as a palliative administered to the US public in the rare case the slumbering masses might have desired to delve deeper into the heart of darkness of US empire thus might begin to question the mythos of American Exceptionalism and doubt the uplifting denouement cobbled onto the scandal by the political and media elite; e.g., the system of checks and balances functioned as the nation's Founders intended. Granted, the system did work as designed, only not in the cliched manner portrayed by its apologists; it worked in the manner it was rigged; to wit, to preserve the secrets of state. The long national nightmare was far from over. In fact, it has been normalized.
When the unthinkable becomes quotidian, by means of the normalization and systemic codification of crimes against the greater good of humanity, there is a good chance the dynamics of empire building are in play. Empires are not only inherently entropic but they are anathema to the democratic processes crucial to maintaining a republic.
The vast amounts of wealth acquired by means of plunder render a nation's elite not only craven with cupidity but prone to become so dismally shortsighted, even, judging by the evidence of their reckless actions and crackbrain casuistry, bughouse mad. The present US nuclear sabre rattling at North Korea and the economic aggression and militarist posturing deployed against the Russian Federation are proof of the declaration. A military empire's unchecked, monomaniacal, more often than not self-destructive, impulse for domination are monstrous traits. The death and carnage strewn in the wake of the imperial monster's presence in Libya and Syria illustrate a grim testament to the fact.
History reveals, overreach and the passage of time render the aspirations of imperium a nimbus of dust; its grandiose pronouncements a cacophony of strutting clowns; its belief in its inviolable nature and its trumpeted tales of vaunted exceptionalism the stuff of asylum dweller gibbering. On the contrary, a sense of perspective imparts the knowledge, late empire is a fool's inferno played out on a landscape ridden with exponentially increasing decay.
The storylines of the beneficiaries and operatives of vast systems of runaway power concoct are, more often than not, self-justifying fictions. Cover stories and flat out prevarications, rolled out for the purpose of hiding the prevailing order's actions and motives, come to dominate the socio-cultural-political sphere. Views running counter to reigning narratives are apt to be marginalized and/or met with scorn, rage and revulsion. A dangerous one-sidedness prevails.
Analogous to the laws governing thermodynamic equilibrium, when a governor (or speed limiter or controller) switch has been rendered inoperative, a state of thermic runaway comes into play. We are talking the stuff of runaway trains, flaming out super novas, nervous breakdowns, and overreaching empires. By suppressing countervailing views, empires create chaos and carnage and will, in the end, meet their demise by self-annihilation. The rage for total dominance and attendant overreach of capitalist/US militarist hegemony has wrought the phenomenon on a global wide basis.
The governor switch within the greed and power crazed minds of the corporate, military, and governing elite, by all indications, is inoperable. Impervious to the consequences of their recklessness, ranting about Russians, they careen through the Anthropocene.
At present, the whole of humankind is held in the thrall of a trajectory of doom. Yet their power is hinged on the ability to dominate the storyline. Withal, complicity translates to destiny usurped. Conversely, the first measure towards a restoration of equilibrium is to call out a lie.
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