The American Religion: Imperialism and the Next Step of Modern Fascism

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Military trackers are lighting up like Christmas trees. The whole brunt of the American military is heading toward the Middle East and likely preparing to attack Iran in a joint operation with Israel that will, according to all signs, last for weeks and seek regime change.

Maybe you’re up to date on this and maybe you pay attention. The signs have been there for a minute. Maybe you’ve been halfway aware and knew there was potential for a war. Maybe this is the first you’re hearing about it. If so, welcome to the New United States of America.

Having cut my political teeth during the run-up to the Iraq War, there’s something truly awful to all of this. Back then, we had to listen to Colin Powell lie about weapons of mass destruction. Dick Cheney made the rounds on all the shows. We were fed one piece of propaganda after another. The Bush Administration at least went through the process of telling us Saddam Hussein had helped al-Qaeda and that any failure to act would lead to a “mushroom cloud” erupting over the American homeland. The air was thick with drumbeats and it felt, maddeningly, like we were being marched toward an illegal and catastrophic war.

Now, it’s just kind of happening.

This is a taste of the peasant life. Living like an ant under the shadow of an elephant that moves and sits and attacks without so much as warning. Leadership and the population completely removed from one another save for the consequences and violence visited upon the population at the leadership’s behest. You might wake up one Saturday morning and find that the U.S. has kidnapped the President of Venezuela and then watch a disorienting and frankly embarrassing press conference where the President of the United States tells you in strange, bored language that America now controls the country. No one particularly asks follow-ups. There’s no clarification. Rather, everything becomes more confusing until it just isn’t talked about anymore. A story might get published revealing that money from Venezuela is being held in shadowy accounts in Qatar, but that doesn’t get much attention either.

I’ve been reporting on and studying Trumpism and American Fascism for over a decade now, and what I was most concerned with heading into the Second Trump Administration was the embrace of militarism. Because Trump gained favor in the GOP by attacking Bush and the War on Terror during a period in which fatigue had set in, MAGA enjoyed a tenuous embrace of “isolationism.” This period, it should be obvious now, was more of a gestation. MAGA, and the wealth and oligarchical classes that direct it, needed to consolidate its power before embracing military chauvinism.

Militarism is the essential ingredient of both fascism and America. Our origins as a bloodthirsty and incomparable greedy colony that landed on the continent and then committed genocide and thievery on unprecedented scale and then, over time, came to attack nearly every neighbor we’ve ever had, to steal territory, to violently subjugate Africans and indigenous and Filipino populations, to continually build our wealth and power on the broken backs and lifeless bodies in our wake, means that we are always eager for whatever adventure in militaristic violence presented to us. Because it is our bedrock and our inheritance.

Perhaps you gained insight into this in the beginning of the century, when Democrats joined their colleagues on the Right to greenlight an illegal war and, relatedly, a global operation that killed millions. Maybe you were reminded recently when, following the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, corporate media and Democrats fell all over themselves to praise the “efficiency” of the operation rather than question the obvious illegal and fascistic elements. And, soon, if we are to engage in war with Iran, you will once again see the revelation of something sinister and essential: the United States of America is less a nation than a state designed for war.

Trumpism as an avatar of fascism offers a perfect glimpse into the evolution. Any “isolationist” within MAGA was simply burned by the failures of the War on Terror. Their opposition to military action was more a fear of humiliation than it was a principled stand. Notice how quickly they got on board with the Venezuela caper. The sign of “strength” was more than enough to salve their wounded egos.

“Never Trump” Republicans, as much an oxymoron as you could ever imagine, are already slobbering all over themselves. The same men (and yes, almost all of them are men) who created the conditions necessary for Trumpism to blossom left the party once their Frankenstein’s Monster came online, not because they didn’t want to stay: they weren’t welcome anymore. They wanted their imperial violence with a veneer of respectability. They wanted a Ronald Reagan to give a speech about American values and freedom, but Reagan had been rotting in the ground and what he had wrought, in both his time in power and his own personal style, was a two-bit conman who didn’t bother to hide what he was doing behind a professionally-produced lie.

He did it for the oil and for the money.

And fuck you if you wanted another explanation.

But these “Never Trumpers,” or, as we should make clear, these Neoconservatives, are now getting that warm feeling all over again. You can see the signals. They gave Trump his flowers for the Venezuela operation, or, rather, they praised the military and the “adults in the room.” Already we’re seeing an attempt to launder this insanity. Notable Iraq War champions who have hidden behind the “Never Trump” label are now humiliating themselves by praising bullshit like Marco Rubio’s recent speech. What is happening, moment by moment, as Trump and MAGA learn to love military might, is that the Neoconservatives are realizing that power has always resided behind the scenes. The Business of Empire, and yes the capital letters are intention, is still humming behind the ugly veneer.

And it will shock you how fast critics of Trump snap to when war is on.

War on Iran and, by proxy, regime change in Iran, has been the wet dream of Neoconservatives for decades now, ever since the revolution in the late 1970’s deposed their “man” the Shah, a willing American accomplice who earned his support by oppressing his people and instilling necessary discipline. Knowing this, you can begin to understand much of the strangeness of this past decade. Toppling Iran was the pet project of John Bolton, who served in the first Trump Administration as National Security Advisor before being drummed out and becoming a hated figure. Trumpian attacks on Bolton had engendered support among certain liberal circles who have seemingly forgotten that Bolton is as dreadful a figure as we have ever produced. And now, Trump, who Bolton decried, will likely attempt to carry out the operation Bolton has desired for forever.

All the feuds and posturing and maneuvering are largely ceremonial.

What matters is power and wealth. And the easiest way to increase your power and increase your wealth is war. That is the concentrated essence of the United States of America and it will shock you how quickly all these “feuds” and “differences” fall by the wayside in the face of war.

This moment, with all its horrors and atrocities, is an opportunity to see through the curtain and recognize things as they actually are. If we do have war, pay attention. Listen to what corporate Democrats say, to what corporate media says. If you read between the lines and sort through all the bullshit, you will notice there is an inescapable theme. “Politics” and political theater fall by the wayside because they have been window-dressing all along. The pursuit of power and wealth by the barrel of the gun and the arc of the missile is all that matters.

Life under ascendant fascism works like this. We will see more belligerence and warmaking. There will be quick excursions like Venezuela that happen and then pass quickly without much in the way of consideration. Then, something like this proposed war with Iran that emerges from seemingly nowhere. It might get more attention, particularly if it lasts weeks and costs American lives, but it will still lack the heft and weight of what events of this magnitude used to have. In this way, a confusing life that lacks any real depth or explanation would become normalized. Invasions and coups and wars will happen devoid of rationalization or context. Sometimes you’ll think about the water, sometimes you’ll survive an attack, sometimes it will just feel “normal.”

If you need an entry to understanding, the prescient 1984 by George Orwell, who understood and communicated authoritarianism as well as anybody, included the haunting line “Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” This weaponized warping of reality hid something meaningful: that war itself and the pursuit of power had little to do with what people on the ground experienced. Ideas of nationalism or any of those other fairytales simply hid a larger, more chaotic, more destructive truth: the powerful use their power to pursue more power. Everything else is theater and is merely manipulation to obscure the larger game.

If this war takes place, and all signs are trending in that direction, it will serve as a baptism into a new world. What we have seen with the invasion of Ukraine and then the genocide in Gaza have been revelations into what was possible in this new world and previews of a wider series of destabilizing tragedies. There is no telling where it might lead beyond proliferating more events of the same kind. Note, as well, that the financial fates of the tech oligarchs depends on world where their products, which are now essential components of the Military-Industrial-Tech Complex, will be used by every country as they destroy one another. Once you understand that, the game starts to take on a different hue. Suddenly, it becomes obvious the downfall of the American Empire and subsequent flailing violence will continue to escalate until we finally trip the wire of world war and, by extension, a cycle of violence and oppression the likes of which only prophets like Orwell have properly understood, all to the benefit of the wealth and oligarchical classes, who hold all the cards.

That does not mean it is all inevitable. What we’re experiencing is, again, much like an ant living in the shadow of the elephant. We can choose to live under that shadow and risk being crushed but also avoid the obvious crushing of the feet and heft or we can step out from under it and take a calculated risk that could lead to something better. There is a reason that leadups to wars and wartime itself breed revolutionary conditions. The actual reality, which is so often obscured by comforting narratives and mythologies, becomes clearer in these moments. If you look, and if you pay attention, you can start to see how the theater of the powerful obscures the actual mechanisms of power.

Refuse to let the worship of the militarism warp your own experience. Politicians and personalities will fall in line so fast to support military operations, no matter how illegal. We have seen this over and over again. War is the offspring of both parties and there is a reason why so many of our wars have been shared by Democratic and Republican presidents, why they have extended beyond partisan divides. If you’re not careful, the reaction, or likely the non-reaction in some cases, will sweep you in and make you question your own principles and perspective. Like the Iraq War and so many wars before it, it will feel inevitable and just, if only because the powers-that-be are pushing you to feel that inevitability and justification.

Make no mistake, whether we wage war against Iran, the future of this country and the world proper is war unless we force a different path. This is the destiny of the United States of America and the American Empire, both of which are now hellbent on self-destructing and taking as many lives as possible upon detonation. Nothing about it is inevitable. Nothing is inevitable when you can see clearly where it is heading.