meatcleaver
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quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydog1
Intersting link you posted Meat, as usuall, it doesn't really agree with you.
You quote miller, from the same article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Empire
"However, the historians Archibald Paton Thorton and Stuart Creighton Miller argue against the very coherence of the concept. Miller argues that the overuse and abuse of the term "imperialism" makes it nearly meaningless as an analytical concept.[3] Thorton wrote that "imperialism is more often the name of the emotion that reacts to a series of events than a definition of the events themselves. Where colonization finds analysts and analogies, imperialism must contend with crusaders for and against."[4] Political theorist Michael Walzer argues that the term "hegemony" is better than "empire" to describe the US' role in the world."
The article defines Imperialism---the Us does not meet the main defnition. The third definition of the term Imerialism is as an Insult. You can indeed use it that way if you like.
We did hold an Empire after the Spanish American War--we gave it all back.
I know it doesn't back me up entirely, we are talking about perception as much as anything and that piece reads like it was written by an American. As I have already stated, just about everyone in the world but Americans accept the US is an empire. You can use the word hegemony if you like but many imperial definitions fit American behaviour.
You might have given the Spanish Empire back but you held on to informal power much as Britain held informal power over much of its empire. It is rather inefficient to have troops on the ground and a governor in a capital when you can pay for place men (you don't actually pay them, you allow personal corruption to do that) to do your bidding and a couple of battle ships within a few days sailing (or bombers in the US's case) should those place men get too independent minded. The US's interference in Latin America backs me up. When Latin American countries start thinking independently, the US let's it be known it is not happy, like the US is letting Venezuela know it is not happy now, like it has insisted on strangling Cuba for winning independence from American domination. This is how much of the British Empire used to work. If this is not imperial behaviour, the British Empire was much smaller than I was taught at school.
quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydog1
And we are in Western europe at the behest of the countries there. France asked us to leave and we did. Czechoslovakia asked the USSR to leave, they sent in tanks and killed people by the hundreds. Same happened in Hungary. Bush and Rumsfled threatened to leave and the Europeons begged us to stay. Meat is just angry because the Marxists didn't take over western Europe. That doesn't make us an Empire. But it does say a lot about you.
France asked you to leave and you left but you were in the neighbouring countries and France was of no strategic value anyway but it still remained within the American imprial sphere, even De Gaulle recognized that. Conservative Europeans wanted you to stay but not the majority. As Chomsky noted “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” If you look at the installations the US wants to build in Poland and Czech, 70% of both populations don't want the installations despite all the propaganda fed them by the power brokers of their countries. As the mayor of the town where the US wants to place a radar installation said on the BBC World Service "We have not left one empire to join another, we want our freedom from both, we don't want to sell it for dollars. What hold do they (the US) have over our leaders?" A sentiment a lot of Europeans have. Why do you think anti-Americanism exists in Europe when in the wake of WWII the US was seen as a knight in shining armour? It is because people sense that the US is imposing its will and for some reason the European establishment keeps bending to the will of the US despite substantial disquiet in Europe. Part of US hegemony in Europe is down to European disunity, which is what I keep trying to point out to NG.
quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydog1
The idea of the Modern American Empire is just leftover marxism. America is a hegemonic power in a world economic system. If we were a freaking Empire running things for ourselves, the world would be very different. Whiny Europeon Marxists not withstanding.
Not at all, you should visit Europe, disquiet over American influence on European leaders goes all away across the left and infilitrates deep into the right. It is the rich that are US backers and I suspect one of the reasons for European leaders behaviour is that they buy the politicians in one way or another. I don't think all the influence is direct, take a look at Thatcher and Blair and other British leaders, they operated as though they had one eye on wealthy earnings in America after their political careers ended. Something they are widely despised for in Europe. Sarkozy and his sudden kow towing to America has seen his popularity plumet. Many feel it is more than American influence but American pressure as to why European politicians act like vassal kings to the great emperor, it is not for the sake of their people so much as the damage that could be inflicted should they not kow tow. The Spanish leader Zapatero said no to America which won him a lot of browny points in Europe but there was little to be gained for the US to make a big deal of it. Even in the British Indian Empire, smoke filled rooms was the best place to have quiet words and some Prince showing a little independence did the British no harm, it showed the people on the street they weren't really in control. Ordinary Americans seem to think that just because brute force isn't being used to dominate people, they aren't dominating people and have no empire, that is not true, empires have always used wealth and cultural domination as a way of dominating people, that is how the British Empire worked, the British Empire had a remarkably small military for the area it dominated.
Take films and TV. American insistance in economic treaties that films are an industry rather than a cultural expression means that the American film industry dominates Europe and keeps many European films from getting a screen simply because European film industries are national and can't financially compete with the giant US industry. This means that America gets endless propaganda opportunities in Europe. The same is with the insistance of free market of TV programmes, again there is endless propaganda on European screens where Europeans can't compete because TV companies are divided on cultural, hence national lines and hence don't hgave the wealth to compete in a free market.
Call it imperial or hegemony or what you will, it is using economic domination to further economic and political aims. You call it hegemony, I call it imperialism, the word doesn't change the nature of the wexperience. I just wish more Europeans would wake up to what they are being spoon fed as freedom. Being in a sonambulent state watching comic book heroes such as Rambo or Dirty Harry is not freedom, it is propaganda, it is the drip drip drip that Americans are always the goodies and therefore they can't be subjugating the Iraqis but freeing them. They can't be forcing us to watch their films because we live in a free market and anyway, I want to watch this film, it makes me feel good about the world, especially if I don't look out of the window. This much I will say, most people seem to opt for watching mindless escapism than quality stuff that stimulates their imagination but there should be an alternative to mindless escapism on offer and it shouldn't be removed from the menu under the pretence that culture is business and business is the concern of Big Brother.
I am not against something because it is American, I have shelves full of American books and CDs, even films. What I am against is the crouding out of European culture from film and TV screens and its replacement with mindless propaganda on the pretence we live in a 'free market' when the 'free market' is not free but is defined by people with power who are soley concerned with their own economic and political aims. Hell, even Americans are kept in their place with the same endless stream of propaganda. At least European films on the whole tend to be concerned and critical of their own cultures rather wanting their audience to feel good and righteous about their role in the world.(though there have been some of that and the pressure is on to go the Hollywood route for financial survival in a market that is skewed against thoughtful productions)
< Message edited by meatcleaver -- 3/11/2008 3:24:32 AM >
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