…We are an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality. And while you will study this reality – with envy – we will act again, creating other new realities, which you will also be able to study, and so things will go. We are the protagonists of history … and you, all of you, will remain behind and simply study what we do…
It might be one of the most “celebratory” expressions of authoritarian arrogance in History… However, it does not come from Julius Caesar, nor from Genghis Khan. It is a statement by American Karl Rove, “special security advisor” to Bush Jr., a little before or a little after the invasion of Iraq. In 2003. He was addressing those who had doubts about the legitimacy (and the justifications) of the invasion.
Although in 2003 it was predictable (for those who had the appropriate analytical tools…) that the “empire” was already in decline – and this was quickly proven during the occupation of Iraq – the hubris in Washington “prophesied” that by “acting” (militarily first and foremost) they would reshape the (global) reality, without worthy opponents and without breath. It was militaristic voluntarism in all its glory!
Yesterday, 16 years after 2003, the “right-wing patriot” American journalist David Goldman (aka Spengler, among other things co-owner of the site asia times…) started one of his articles titled “5G policy the greatest strategic disaster in US history” as follows:
…A prominent Republican who advises President Donald Trump described the American strategy for 5G as “the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the USA.” The attempts by the USA to create obstacles for the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei so that it would not dominate the global market of 5G frequencies failed, while inadequate regulation and wrong business choices hindered American efforts for 5G within the country – said this politician at a closed-door meeting with Republican donors and activists…
It would be great consolation for American (and not only) capitalism if the “greatest strategic disaster in history” of (them) was that they failed to brake Huawei…. It would be a scratch, which can easily heal. The “political tomography” however begins from the investigation of why the American regime – technological, political, military, security; and by no means Trump alone – conceived that it could achieve this braking!
The answer is so omnipresent that it is easy for many (everyone) to pretend they don’t see it. It lies in Rove’s arrogant statements about “reality construction”!
Indeed. Since the early 1990s and afterwards, when the “western world,” rulers and subjects alike, proclaimed themselves not merely winners, but the final winners in History (: Francis Fukuyama: The end of History and The Last Man, 1992) due to the collapse of one bloc (the eastern) which – unreasonably but conveniently! – had been elevated to an “existential threat,” from that time onwards, rulers and subjects of the “final winners” considered themselves “liberated.” Liberated so broadly and so deeply that they could enjoy escaping even from “reality.” Programmed delusion as a “human right”!
The “multiple realities,” initially imposed and subsequently alluring, have been gestating in the digestive system of neoliberalism from the outset, since the ’80s: you are what you think you are (as indicated by the “market”) with no other, non-market-driven social criteria and restrictions… Take drugs too, if that helps… From the ’90s onward, the digestive system “liberated” itself – and hundreds of millions of rulers and subordinates began to enjoy the result…