Imperialism<-->Totalitarianism

“All empires die in the same act of self-immolation. The tyranny the Athenian empire imposed on others, Thucydides noted in his history of the Peloponnesian war, it finally imposed on itself,” said Chris Hedges, in an Aug. 17, 2022 lecture. “To fight back, to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet from ecocide…is to bear the mark of Cain. Those in power must feel our wrath, which means constant acts of non-violent civil disobedience, social and political disruption. Organized power from below is the only power that can save us. Politics is a game of fear. It is our duty to make those in power very, very afraid.”

Hedges continued, “The historian Arnold Toynbee, who singled out unchecked militarism as the fatal blow to past empires, argued that civilizations are not murdered, but commit suicide. They fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past. The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit,” he said, though I’m sure there are plans to build a massive orbiting space station with solar-powered aquaponic greenhouses and vineyards, in time for those who can afford to live there.

“This time the collapse will be global. It will not be possible, as in ancient societies, to migrate to new ecosystems rich in natural resources. The steady rise in heat will devastate crop yields and make much of the planet uninhabitable—good luck growing kale in a desert sauna. Climate scientists warn that, once temperatures rise by 4°C, the earth, at best, will be able to sustain a billion people.” Maybe 0.001% of those people, who who can’t afford space stations, will be able to afford high-tech bunkers in which to live out the remainder of their natural lives, while those condemned to life on Earth’s surface live out Mad Max scenarios.

Hedges concludes, “The more insurmountable the crisis becomes, the more we, like our prehistoric ancestors, will retreat into self-defeating responses, violence, magical thinking, and denial,” which dovetails apocalyptically with Project 2025’s Christo-fascist plan for theocracy as an opiate for the MAGA base who, crying out to Jesus, will be “raptured” by tornadoes, before inheriting the earth with a splat, thousands at a time.

On March 7, 2025, due in part to its own administration’s desires to annex Canada, Greenland, and Panama, for starters, the U.S. twice sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration's change of stance on the war. First, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow's actions and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity—voting the same way as Russia and countries including North Korea and Belarus at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. China and Iran abstained, probably too busy texting each other memes about the chaos.

On The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart of March 7, Maria Ressa spoke about the U.S.’s authoritarian turn: “As of 2025, 71% of the world is now under authoritarian rule. This is feudalism but more than feudalism—like feudalism with better PR and private jets. We’ve been raising the alarm on this since 2016, but apparently nobody’s got the memo.”

“If you don’t stand up for your rights, right now,” she continued, “you will only get weaker. This is the lesson we learned in the Philippines—where democracy got a front-row seat to its own funeral. They must understand this moment, and how to stand up to a dictator. Not acting—silence, today—means consent.”

Ressa went over how, on social media today [and since Rush Limbaugh and Fox News launched], fear, anger, and hate are the biggest factors that drive engagement. “The tech-oligarchs are using such algorithms to rewire people’s brains…The death of democracy is a by-product of letting tech remain the most unregulated industry, globally. Mark Zuckerberg did break democracy in the Philippines [in 2018], which was the testing ground” [of these algorithms] a beta test for screwing the rest of us.

On March 14, Trump called CNN and MSNBC political arms of the Democratic party. “They are really corrupt and they are illegal,” he said, before bashing other outlets, including CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, for their reporting. He claimed that the mainstream outlets were influencing judges, which is rich coming from a man who treats laws like buffet options.

Also on March 14, the NYT reported that “Elon Musk shared, then removed a post absolving dictators for genocide. The post falsely claimed that Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong were not responsible for the murders of millions of people, but rather public sector workers were.” Huh—it sounds like Musk is trying to pre-emptively absolve Trump for any deaths resulting from U.S. invasions, occupations and annexations of its neighbors. Just another day at the circus…