“Twilight of Empire.”
The Trump era, when it finally passes from the stage of history, will not pass either easily nor willing. It will have left the aura of anxiety, the pangs of paranoia, and the air of enmity. It will be bitter, nasty, and mean.
And it will not end with that. It will leave a stint of anger of hatred and sourness that will long dwell in the national unconscious, as well as the memory of the world. Such will be the legacy of Trump. Such will be the unworthy inheritance of the American empire.
For the better part of the century, America plays the role of protector of the weak and benefactor of the world’s oppressed. But that was when the world was a bipolar one, the fall of the Soviet union made the world unipolar, the world’s sole superpower.
And with that reality emerged the U.S. without a peer and without a mask. We saw then its true, angry, contemptuous face, snarling at the Third World, hostile to its European ancestors, and dismissive of Latin America.
That’s because an empire needs no allies nor any friends. It needs subjects. It needs satraps, for empires are political, economic, and military machines. Dominance and exploitation. Its power is its only justification for being. It matters little whether Trump completes the full eight years of two terms or is there for the next eight months. The die is cast.
The empire has set its utter contempt upon the world. The damage is done
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
