Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Listening to Caligula - reflexions on the Empire's fate

This morning I finally gathered the courage to sit down and listen to Caligula's speech to the Imperial Senate. I was prepared for the worst, but what I actually saw was even worse than what I had expected.

What should I have expected to hear from the most incompetent President in US history speaking in front of a Congress even more despised by the American people? Should I have had any hopes for at least some references to reality? I now see that this hope would have been quite misplaced.

Listening to Caligula one would think that all was well in the Empire and watching his barking seals jumping up and down after each triumphal pronouncement of the Emperor one could be forgiven for believing that we were just one minute away from finally reaching Communism, the 1000 year Reich or the 'end of history' (pick your choice - they all mean the same anyway). To give credit where credit is due, C-SPAN did a truly magnificent job of showing the appropriate person at the right time, the right angle of enthusiastically applauding Imperial Senators, etc. They would have made Goebbels proud, if not envious, of their skills.

For the first time I noted that each Imperial Senator's seat was flanked by a star of David on each side (check the video on YouTube if you missed that) and I wondered - is that a sign of support, or power, of vetting or of allegiance?

But my overwhelming thought watching all this buffoonery was that truly the scum of the earth had gathered under the Congress' dome and that there is no possibility at all to reform this system, to hope that the USA will change from within, or to 'vote them out of office'. To hold on to any such thought is, I think, the height of delusion. No, change can only from outside.

To paraphrase George Orwell, "if there is hope it lies in the aliens" (to use the American expression for non-Americans). The control of Caligula and his minions over this country is simply without limits and if the Emperors' speech yesterday shows us anything, it is that the US political 'reality' can exist in a vacuum in which facts, the reality on the ground, simply does not matter.

You can be the worst President in US history, the most hated man on earth, the most conspicuously stupid, ignorant and arrogant political leader on the face of the planet, but you will still get the Imperial Senate to give you more standing ovations than Hitler or Kim Il-Sung could ever hope for. The deafening silence which greeted this Kafkaesque performance in the US media and in the street is a sure sign that the vast majority of Americans have been brainwashed beyond repair by their corporate media.

Sure, some like Ron Paul or Cindy Sheehan, will object to every single thing Caligula said and denounce him for the fraud that he is. But they will also work within the system, hoping to change it from within. That is, I truly believe, an absolutely misguided and futile hope.

The US Empire is probably the most arrogant empire in history. No Empire I can think off was so deeply imbued with a messianic ideology defining its every policy (although the early Soviet Union and Nazi Germany came close). The 'manifest destiny' doctrine has now reached a quasi religious apotheosis which makes the US polity look more like some bizarre doomsday cult "a la Jim Jones" than like a normal imperial administration.

The Empire, in its final stages, is very much like a sinking "Titanic" with all its passengers dancing and drinking on the elegant decks and halls, sure of the omnipotence, impunity and invulnerability. The Islamic iceberg has already ripped the ship's hull, the freezing water is already gushing in, but the crew and passengers are still celebrating their magnificence, utterly oblivious to the almost inaudible sounds and tremors from below the deck which the music of their orchestra so successfully drowns.

Yesterday's speech was truly a historic moment. We witnessed an act of collective denial and folly: Caligula's last speech to the Imperial senate. It will, no doubt, go down in history as one of those baffling events which future generations will struggle to understand and to make sense of.