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16 The Anti-American Manifesto
Nothing lasts forever, empires least of all. And this one, which only began to expand in earnest circa the year 1900, doesn’t feel like it has the staying power of ancient Rome. Not at all. But we’re not here to talk about the vague possibility of collapse at some point in the future. We are here—in this book and within this historical moment—because the collapse feels as though it is currently in progress. We are here because the U.S. is going to end soon. There’s going to be an intense, violent, probably haphazard struggle for control. It’s going to come down to us versus them. The question is: What are you going to do about it? Definitions: Us: Hard-working, underpaid, put upon, thoughtful, freedom-loving, disenfranchised, ordinary people Them: Reactionary, stupid, overpaid, greedy, shortsighted, exploitative, power-mad, abusive politicians and corporate executives In 2008, like the people of the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, we put our hopes into a young new leader. He is the kind of fresh-faced reformer who just might have been able to do some good had he been put into power decades ago. “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” read the headline in the satirical weekly newspaper the Onion after Barack Obama won. He has failed. It is by design that internal reformers like Mikhail Gorbachev and