A Conversation With Gore Vidal on the ‘E’ Word

I asked Vidal if, unlike today, there was a time when average Americans, or at least the intelligentsia, realized they indeed had an empire in the same vein as other Empires?

“Yes they did,” he said. “You must remember that they all read the classics. Most farmers knew some Latin and a few knew some Greek. You know we were a very well educated people.”

“There was a sort of New Order in the world,” Vidal told me. “That was the phrase that was put on the dollar bill. There was something new under the sun, there was going to be new empire: a Radiant Empire.”

“It did not turn out terribly well,” he said. “Most things human don’t.”

**“When do you believe the American Empire began?” I followed up. “Washington in a letter to Lafayette refers to America’s impending westward empire. I think Madison said, ‘We are laying the foundation of a great empire’ and —”

“That was sort of common political rhetoric then,” Vidal interrupted. “Jefferson refers once or twice to ‘our empire’ before he even bought Louisiana. That is the beginning of this. In fact, we really were an empire with all of that territory. The mind-set that brings on, ‘Let’s get more and more empire’ was of course 1846, the Mexican War, in which we doubled the size of the country yet again.”

[consortiumnews.com]

If you've been paying attention, I've occasionally stated that the new land was always just an expansion of the then dominant empire from across the Atlantic. Freedom and democracy a fallacy from the beginning of the hypocritically written constitution and bill of rights.

{A U.S. massacre of Filipino civilians and the use of water torture moved Mark Twain, vice-president of the Anti-Imperialist League, to suggest the U.S. flag be redesigned with “the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by skull and crossbones.” The ensuing Filipino resistance claimed 4,324 American lives and between 250,000 and 1 million Filipinos—eerily familiar numbers.}

These people, just like American Natives, were forced to fight with their bows and arrows and spears attempting to avoid murderous mass slaughters. Living in jungle killing fields, tossed into mass graves, like a large village of contagious diffusion. We wasted no time in a quest to conquer the rest of the world after devastating the American Natives for the tyrannical power structure we were suppose to have left. We've been forced to sacrifice our own from the very beginning for the elite and after all this time we still refuse to see the madness within this failed agenda.

{Does the media then purposely keep the empire secret, I asked him?

“Not to mention schools,” he said. “I am, or used to be, an authority on high school history books in America. And there’s not one that dares to tell the truth about anything.”

Democracy is America’s ruling myth, Vidal told me. “It’s the one form of government that we’ve never tried.”}

Personally, I never really put much thought into empire building until I started following Abby Martin after 9/11. Along with her work I was able to relate empire to all my sources, then Sanders being the final slap of an awaking. Which also enlightened me to how accurate the World Socialist Web Site is with their analogies and conjecture on US politics, exposing the failures and corruptness of our representation.

{Vidal points to the 1947 National Security Act as the creation of an entirely new kind of United States. America’s overseas power had grown radically with the Second World War, after which the U.S. stood as the only undamaged industrial power, left fabulously wealthy by making guns.

Why let peace ruin a good thing? Most post-war investment poured into the arms industry, leaving America with crumbling schools, dysfunctional health care and inadequate public transport but with a shiny military machine constantly at work.}

"The OSS was developed in 1942." And how was in develop? "The organization was developed with British assistance, until some months after Pearl Harbor, the bulk of OSS intelligence came from the UK." We've always been an arm of the UK, and now obviously Israel also. Everything they want us to think we are is a delusional reality.

{Eisenhower tried to warn us, I asked, but shouldn’t he have done so in the middle of his first term?

“You can’t bite the hand that elected you,” Vidal said. “He did it when he knew he never was going to run again.”}

Forget all the catchy memes you see on social media about Eisenhower. For that matter, from Washington up to the newest fake management perception. Virtually all of them are tools of indoctrination. Right down to even the Native American memes, who most betrayed each other to find favor within the hands that would make them the next enemy. Let that one sink in nice and deep. Because we are filling those shoes today. Betraying ourselves. We are the enemy, most just don't realize it yet.

{Empires receded, particularly Britain’s and France’s. The decolonization movement and Soviet rhetoric rendered “Empire” and “imperialism” dirty words.}

We're in that process. And we're going to go down hard when it happens. the Next one is going to make the last 2 look like childs play. I hope you're paying attention to the economy post I've been making and settling your affairs. I highly suggest no one goes any further into debt unless you have means to back it up. I've got myself to a point my ass is basically safe, but might require me selling my truck to cover my equity account.

{Continuation of empire would have to be conducted covertly in name and deed. Running an Empire meant calling it something such as spreading democracy, even if it meant covertly overthrowing democratic regimes in Iran, Guatemala and Chile and installing monarchs and dictators. It was 1776 in reverse. The evil Soviets were an empire. America was not. The U.S. still falsely clung to the memory of 1776. Not only was the truth about the Soviet threat kept hidden. Empire itself became an official secret.

Hence most 2008 presidential candidates, let alone the population, deny America’s empire.}

Venezuela, Honduras, Hong Kong, Cuba, Syria, Nicaragua, Haiti, and various places in Africa today.

{Unnecessarily onerous loans on developing nations put money in the pockets of corrupt client rulers and American contractors, while giving political leverage to Washington to put in bases or grab natural resources.

“The Chinese, like the Romans, Spanish and British before them had openly conquered,” Perkins writes. “Nothing subtle about it.” Today, by using “tools like the IMF and the World Bank, backed up by the CIA and jackals (assassins)” America is “practicing a new form of conquest, imperialism-through-subterfuge.”

When clients have refused to cooperate with the U.S. they have been assassinated, overthrown or, if all else failed, their countries were invaded, Perkins says.

I asked Vidal if he believed the war on Terror, like the Cold War, was a hoax to drum up defense contracts and to cover up a war for resources.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “It’s been wonderful for Homeland Security, Halliburton, all of those employees of various construction companies. They outnumber our troops. And they behave like troops.”}

{What is to be done? Normally, in the history of the United States, you would hold an election and you would get them out. Now, you hold the election and Diebold withholds the vote and decides not to share it with us. So in 2000, we had President Gore, the one I’m going to vote for if he’s running in ’08. He’s a little grumpy about it. Why get elected president if you are not allowed to serve? When the Supreme Court says you are not to go to the White House.}

{Bill Rights, remember the USA Patriot Act took away most of it. And where were the great voices in the land when we lost habeas corpus?}