Chris Davies

I get why nationalists and socialists oppose empire. Socialists think the US is exploiting the world, while nationalists think the US is exploited by the world. And both actually have a point, on different dimensions, if you look through it from their respective lenses: However, what's missing is the center-left and center-right defense of American Empire. In part this is because even the existence of this empire is not acknowledged. Despite having 750 military bases and the headquarters of the UN in New York, there is the pretense that this all somehow happened by accident. But becoming global #1 in every category does not happen by accident. Wertheim's book documents exactly how and when the decision was made to seek empire: in 1940, after the fall of France, when the US realized that if they didn't build an empire then the Nazis (or, later, the Soviets) would. However, unlike past empires, American Empire is a hidden empire — as Daniel Immerwahr points out. Unlike the British Empire, it's not referred to in explicitly imperial terms, even if countries are expected to obey DC and pay tribute by buying Treasuries. Like the Soviet Empire, it's ideological yet invisible. And like the B2 Stealth Bomber, enormous resources were spent obscuring the empire of democracy, like they were for the empire of communism. Anyway, this conversation is tricky because if you say "empire" then people instantly assume you're saying "empire is bad." But it's not always bad. Sometimes it's almost self-defense. Because power abhors a vacuum — and if you do decide not to play for world domination, you may well be dominated by the one who does. And that's the logic of empire. This was understood generations ago. But today, neither left nor right fully appreciates what it took to build American empire. They just inherited it. They don't understand it. Among other things, the far left doesn't realize that it required capitalism and trade. The nationalist right doesn't realize that it required democracy and allies. Combining these was the only way to build the multibillion-person global trade union that underpins the US dollar. You couldn't do that with 77M Trump voters or 75M Democrats alone. You need trade partners, you need allies. Otherwise, when you print $6T (as the US did from 2020-2022) it's spread not across 6B+ people worldwide but just ~330M Americans. Because inflation is taxation, that's a 95% drop in the effective tax base. You go from printing $1000/head to $20000/head, with all the obvious consequences. Anyway, I completely understand why many US factions are tired of these abstractions. Because this concrete empire doesn't seem to be working for them. What isn't being considered is that things may get even worse, at least temporarily, if empire is retired. I guess we'll see what happens.

.@elonmusk really is a genius. In the history of how to reform government, no one to my knowledge suggested getting hold of the systems controlling personnel and payments. Obvious in retrospect but totally new play.