We live in a nation hated abroad and frightened at home. A place in which we can reasonably refer to the American Republic in the past tense. A country that has moved into a post-constitutional era, no longer a nation of laws but an autocracy run by law breakers, law evaders and law ignorers. A nation governed by a culture of impunity ... a culture in which corruption is no longer a form of deviance but the norm. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now. Sam Smith
I believe every American should be forced to commiserate with people from other countries while they are growing up. Only when I talked to people from outside my borders did I realize how insanely myopic the entire establishment of the US is. People here really can’t seem to understand why the world gets mad at us. It is not evil that’s the problem here I think, just incredible, earth-shattering, incalculable, painfully entrenched ignorance. spf2119 2001
How would you feel if we were talking about Albania? This country is as unimportant to me as Albania except for its ability to create great military mischief. Culturally it isn’t anything. Gore Vidal, televised interview
We are not dealing with a civilised culture ... Americans are very narrow ... They’re slow. ibid.
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none. Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address 4th March 1801
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything – telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return. Frank Church, senator, NBC’s Meet the Press 17th August 1975
Like Caesar peering into the colonies from distant Rome, Nixon said the choice of government by the Chileans was unacceptable to the President of the United States. Frank Church, senator 1976
We’ve never come closer to bestowing absolute authority on the President.
It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination ... Hitherto accepted norms of human conduct do not apply ... Longstanding American concepts of fair play must be reconsidered. We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more sophisticated, more effective methods than those used against us. The Hoover Report 1954
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world – bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are whores for power and oil with hate and fear in our hearts. Hunter S Thompson
Moreover as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard p211, 1997
The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and indeed the first truly global power. ibid.
For America the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. ibid.
The three grand imperatives of imperial geo-strategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together. ibid.
But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely most important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals including gold. ibid.
Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today’s Eurasia but of the world more generally. ibid.
America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last. ibid.
The paradox of our time is that humanity is becoming simultaneously more unified and more fragmented. That is the principal thrust of contemporary change. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era ch1
In our time the routinization of conflict has also meant a shift from sustained warfare to sporadic outbreaks of violence. ibid.
The impact of science and technology on man and his society, especially in the more advanced countries of the world, is becoming the major source of contemporary change. ibid.
But while our immediate reality is being fragmented, global reality increasingly absorbs the individual, involves him, and even occasionally overwhelms him. ibid.
The United States: A major disruptive influence on the world scene … No other society so massively disseminates its own way of life and values. ibid.
Marxism, born of the social upheaval produced by the combined effects of the industrial and nationalist revolutions provided a unique intellectual tool for understanding and harnessing the fundamental forces of our time. ibid. ch3
America’s relationship with the world must reflect American domestic values and preoccupations. ibid. ch5
The capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. It will soon be possible to assert almost continuous control over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date files, containing even the most personal details about health and personal behaviour of every citizen in addition to the more customary data.
These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control information. Our existing institutions will be supplanted by pre-crisis management institutions, the task of which will be to identify in advance likely social crises and to develop programs to cope with them.
This will encourage tendencies through the next several decades toward a technetronic era, a dictatorship, leaving even less room for political procedures as we know them. Finally, looking ahead to the end of the century, the possibility of biochemical mind control and genetic tinkering with man, including beings which will function like men and reason with them as well, could give rise to some difficult questions. ibid.
Society dominated by an elite whose claim to political power would rest on allegedly superior scientific know-how. Unhindered by the restraints of traditional liberal values, this elite would not hesitate to achieve its political ends by using the latest modern techniques for influencing public behaviour and keeping society under close surveillance and control. ibid.
Nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state. ibid.
The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values ... Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up to date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. ibid.
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad.
We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture and cinema to politics and the law.
Our enemies have hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep peace.
Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone.
They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters