Nobody ever wakes up one day and chooses to be evil or passive. Usually, a series of maladaptive behavior has been exhibited, but people have continued to make excuses for it until one day, the right person notices the behavior and starts calling it out without fear of reprisal. The United States empire has started facing a reckoning that is refusing to be ignored, and several people are doubling down, even with the evidence being repeatedly shoved into their faces. However, the truth is that when people know they owe others an accounting for their behavior, they tend to cycle through a number of predictable behaviors.
Without fail, there is usually a pity story that usually wins people over, and the empire has been playing the story of the “Founding Fathers” up with everything they have. In fairness, who could fail to see a story of triumph in the mythology of how the empire began, especially when words like “freedom” and “justice” are screamed at the top of the tellers’ lungs? At this point in history, people are finally seeing the removed elements of the history that provide important details of agency and responsibility. People who want government without paying for it while murdering native inhabitants and enslaving everyone tend to stop being heroes, which is why so many marginalized individuals are stepping back from the delusions.
Additionally, there is fake gratitude that is often loud and repetitive, for which people can consider the applause for health workers during the lockdowns that still led to folks leaving the profession due to bad treatment. Teachers quitting all over the empire is another example, which is a sad point because most parents are forced to use school as a daycare instead of an institution of learning. Veterans speaking out against war and people refusing to enlist after seeing the treatment of active troops is shrieking against the image that not only the emperor, but the whole elite fandom was hoping to portray. Offering people words after true harm has been done is nothing that anyone wants.
Inevitably, the next phase of pretending one is a good entity involves a manufactured conflict to destroy a relationship–usually a fight, sometimes a series of firings, a kidnapping and assassination (a real one, not a fake “attempt”), and a war. All of these elements happen to make the empire look strong, impenetrable, and capable of true wrath. The dollar-store gestapo running around like lunatics? Done so that people can ignore the absolute incompetence of everyone who is purportedly “in charge” who simultaneously have no idea what they are doing. Oddly enough, no one is falling for it, and the worse things get, the more the “elites” become aware of how stupid they look.
What I find even more disgusting about imperial collapse is the false humility and fake kindness demonstrated by the “good” political party to “restore” the relationship with the public. Of course, this all came after they: censured a Black politician; helped destroy a voter district of another; supported a white supremacist candidate until he finally had to pull out; and stayed rich and comfortable while seeing to the needs of no one. Lies are lies, and the lie that “injustice will eventually wear itself out” has been playing on repeat since the “beginning” of this “country.” There is no value in people who are incapable of developing self-awareness, and more imperial residents are recognizing that there is no point in any institution trying to identify itself as “saviors,” meaning that we are all alone.
Right now, the empire is in a process of a repetition of this cycle with others such as FIFA, Argentina, Israel, Qatar, South Africa, and anyone still wishing to listen to and live with the consequences of this drivel. It is not working, and people are beginning to panic because not only are the comfortable lies no longer functioning, but people are looking at the beneficiaries and the sycophants as the cowards they are. The most ironic component of imperial collapse is that had people truly been interested restoration, the empire might not be collapsing, and it could have morphed into something less catastrophic. Hyperindividualism and fake Christianity, however, have combined to make the collapse accelerate more than anyone could have predicted.
Chasing A Dying Empire 