A fading empire, like a wounded narcissist facing decline, is a dangerous animal.
“…fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.”
The things of the world that a narcissist cannot exploit, dominate, and control a narcissist will attempt to destroy. Facing collapse from inner hollowness – a narcissist is devoid of a sustaining core — he has merely a brittle facade insofar as facing the world — thus the narcissist grows increasingly desperate for praise (very bad people are denying me my Nobel Peace Prize) and he is prone to lash out in spasms of malignant rage (even to the point of bodies on city streets and reckless acts of military aggression abroad).
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
– “Sailing to Byzantium,” William Butler Yeats
Trump is an emblem — not the cause: The US has been in a state of wounded narcissism since at least the Vietnam war era. Those damn hippie commie pinkos (like the transgender weirdos of the present, invading hordes of criminal border crossers, and limp-of-wrist, protein-starved soy boys) so demoralized US soldiers in Vietnam that they could not maintain a proper kill count as they faced brigades of spitting peaceniks at home.
The Vietnam era soldier, with the M-16, was deprived of a homecoming parade
MAGA is a narcissistic wound in collective form. Fastened to a dying animal – a deranged, manic mindscape of nebulous grievance and displaced rage – will become ever more deranged and dangerous. Trump exiting the scene will not alter the trajectory of imperial deterioration.
We are confronted with a wounded beast in the form of a hydra. Yes, it will be a relief to rid from our sight the head with the risible hair weave and the malignant mouth. But to kill a hydra one must strike at the heart of the beast i.e., the capitalist dictatorship of money i.e., a heart that beats within the shared body of the Democratic Party heads of the beast.
Thus we have witnessed the reason Democrats have revealed themselves to be feckless against the rise of MAGA hyper-authoritarian excesses. A party unwilling to call out Israel’s perpetual criminality will prove useless against state sanctioned murder at home.
So we are on our own in this struggle. We must collectively strike at the heart of the beasts. Refuse to feed the beast by general, widespread strikes – not day tripper marches.
How do we strike at the heart of the hydra?
Side with, and attempt to protect the powerless, from Gaza to the urban streets of the US, the latter of which Trump, in his narcissistic pique, has flooded with ICE brownshirts. I realize, people are dying in the attempt. In their name, and in the names of all those who have been and will be harmed by ICE thuggery, we are called on to resist.
There cannot be an accurate augury of what the future holds…other than this: If we are not united in struggle the wounded beast will continue its rampage and destroy all in its path before it destroys itself.
From: AI Overview: “Imperium” (Latin for power/command) refers to the raw, often brutal authority, especially in Rome, while “Empire” (from imperium) describes the large, multi-territory state itself[…]”
In Minnesota, the MAGA Reich is attempting imperium, throwing its body armor, armed incel, cosplaying weight around. While imperium’s killer clown cavalcade is evoking mass distress, even perpetrating murder, they are failing in their attempt at full-spectrum dominance, even failing to evoke mass fear that will create submission in the populace. Thus Trump is reverting to form; he is turning taco (i.e., Trump. Always. Chickens. Out.
Now, with the US empire banging the war drum in the direction of Iran, we are bearing witness to an attempt at gunship-style imperial domination: Emperor/Commander Taco’s (grandiose) trope to force regime change in Iran.
His attempt at imposing imperium in Minnesota has been a shit-circus of narcissistic personality-style, self-undermining folly. Trump, I suspect, pumped up into a grandiose swoon of self-regard by Benjamin Netanyahu, is sailing directly towards the shoals of imperial overreach.
Imperium only lasts in the short term. Empires, sometimes, slowly fade; sometimes, they collapse, all at once, into their corrupt core, due to the historical phenomenon known as imperial overreach. Withal, it is uncanny, Trump’s ever increasing mental and physical deterioration is an analog of the decline of US empire itself.
To save his sagging, pasty hind, Trump’s only path away from self-immolation is his streak of cowardice. To that end, then he and the US empire will shamble on to collapse at a later date.
In twisted backwards and turned inside out fascist fashion, the Trump Reich claims immigrants invaded Minnesota — not the true invaders: ICE Brownshirts. They lie: peaceful resistance is terrorism while, in reality, their intent is to terrorize the populace into submission.
They claim their jackboot on your neck is the sweet caress of liberty.
The Trump Reich insists bullying is bravery and standing up to armed gangs of bullies is hatred. They claim they are preservers of life as they shoot mothers in the face and medical workers in the back of the head.
It turns out the murders of Alex Pretti are Hispanic men, Border Patrol Agents from South Texas. True to form for the assbackwardism of the authoritarian right, now, they are practicing DEI fascism.
It all feels unreal because those entrusted with official power have crossed so far beyond the threshold of the normal mendacity of officialdom that returning to the daily homeostasis required for maintaining a society can no longer be achieved by normal means. To wit, the system must be challenged, by, at the very minimum, large scale general strikes. The machinery of death must be brought to a halt.
Things will have to become even more unreal before some semblance of societal sanity can be restored. Or else, state sanctioned murder will be the new normal.
Don’t you feel a soul-caressing sense of safety from the very sight of these cosplaying (Bovino, Noem et al. creepopathic twits?
Yet I am going to take the risk of living my existence among the ranks of undocumented farm workers, landscape crews, restaurant employees, slaughterhouse workers, roofers, construction workers and all the others who labor at underpaying, no benefits, no future jobs, the powerless of the earth, those who the capitalist overclass exploits on a daily basis – then accept and be crushed under the tyranny of the MAGA Reich’s psychotic conception of law and order.
We all require safety from their (fascist, self-serving) conception of safety. In fact, we – and the world in general – would be in a far safer position if this klavern of killer clowns were tried, convicted, and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences.
There are Democratic partisans bragging that Obama, in a graceful manner, without masked thugs and spilled blood, deported 3.3 “illegal” immigrants.
Somehow, these liberacrat authoritarians, who believe theirs’ is a more elegant version of jackboot licking, are willfully deaf and blind to the dismal fact: Obama, AKA President Drone von Citigroup, opened the demagogic door to the MAGA Reich by embracing (then placing in action) the Third Reich adjacent lie that some human beings are illegal.
When the so-called opposition party claims that fascism’s rough edges can be smoothed out…it is an object/abject lesson in how we arrived at this present dire junction of history.
ICE must be abolished. Any Democrat that stands in the path of the solution should be considered a MAGA enabling tool.
De facto bipartisanship on xenophobic immigration and deportation policies dovetails with acceptance and enabling of Israel’s perpetual crimes against humanity:
The foundation of Israel as a ethno-supremacist state set the stage for its genocidal war against the people of Gaza. A nation, established in ethnic cleansing, is off to an odious start. A nation that national identity mythos tell the tale of ever-vulnerable victims/always-pure in their actions heroes who must do what a hero must against the perpetual threat of inherently evil, less-than-human adversaries…in essence, of all those who live near Israel…must be made to live on their knees in permanent supplication because of the sins of Europe.
A nation of war criminals will be resultant from whenever Israel is called, for example, to account for its crimes against humanity by Jews like myself, for our the assertion we are called Kapos — and same applies when the same kinds of present day “righteous gentiles” who would have attempted to save Jews during The Shoah yet who are slandered as antisemites when they evince empathy for Palestinians and demand Israeli war criminals be held accountable for their crimes against Palestinians.
A nation whose citizenry and its Zionist true believers (including the ad hominem inanity spewing trolls who will swarm this post) refuse to reflect on the reasons the world regards Israel as a rogue state and instead ups the volume of their hasbara campaigns of state-sponsored lies — this is a culture capable of genocide and will, in what could be preventable tragedy, follow the dismal and deranged trajectory of genocide-prone — and, ultimately, doomed — nations.
When Zionist hasbara fails. Censorship, on a massive scale begins:
In response to Zionist perpetrated social media purges, extant and looming, I have opened an Upscroll account. My understanding is, the platform will not engage in Zionist-based interference regarding content.
The following was my first Upstrolled posting at Upstrolled:
We Jews need to proclaim the following, loud and often: Zionist billionaires — who lie they speak in behalf of all Jews by way of the conflation that their support for Israel provides protection for all Jews — when, in fact, their hostile takeovers of corporate media plays into odious anti-semitic fictions e.g., Jews control the West’s economies and affairs of state, including the incitement of wars, thus the opportunity for war profiteering by secret cabals.
My narrow, less-than financially flush Jewish tuchus asserts in response: First, the following is addressed to those anti-semites soreheads, at ready to wax jackbooted triumphant with “we tried to warn you” declarations:
There is no secret plot. The media takeovers are transpiring right in plain sight, Moreover, speaking of insufferable, bigoted tools, waxing jackboot triumphant, Netanyahu has been bragging about the fact and has been promising more media domination, by means of High Dollar Zionist interests, will be forthcoming.
Understatement alert: This is bad for Jews such as myself and bad for all the people of the world. Not in the Dark Age cliched sense of Old World anti-semitism. No, Friday evening TikTok will not stream with Shabbat rituals featuring gentile blood sprinkled on Challah — but social media freedom of expression will be subject to massive measures of censorship, as is already the case with TikTok , now inflicted with rigged algorithms and shadow banning, in regard to criticism of Israel.
Understatement alert #2: I am feeling powerless before the trajectory of events. Zionists do not speak in my name and in the name of other anti-Zionist Jews but our voices are drowned out by tsunamis of billionaire dollars. Nonetheless, we must raise our voices, often, wherever we can and to whomever will listen. We must debunk hasbara. We are advised to side with the powerless of the earth. The governmental and corporate forces that enabled the Gaza genocide — understatement alert #3 — the capitalist overclass do not exactly have your best interest in mind.
Regarding which: declaration of the obvious #1: Those without privilege and power: we are all Palestinians in their cupidity and power besotted minds.
“Flower Family” (Blumen familie) Paul Klee
The post Fastened to a Dying Animal: The Narcissistic Wound of Hobbled Imperium appeared first on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Phil Rockstroh.