“Lacking internal support or external legitimacy, writes Hamid Dabashi, the US empire now banks on a pedigree of comprador intellectuals, homeless minds and guns for hire.”
From Al-Ahram:
So there is in fact no absence of interest or insight into how and on what general contours is the American empire navigating its turbulent course. As part of this more general concern about an American empire, with or without hegemony, one might also propose that given the way the US propaganda machinery is operating ever since 9/11, it seems (both domestically and internationally) to be completely contingent on a mode of momentary amnesia, a systematic loss of collective memory, a nefarious banking on the presumption that no one is watching, no one is counting, and no one is keeping a record of anything–that history is dead, as is memory, recollection, experience. This proposition may indeed work and tally well with the principal thesis that set this predatory empire in motion, namely Francis Fukuyama’s notion of “the end of history,” which in this case amounts to the end of collective memory and the effective erasure of shared experiences–even (or perhaps particularly) of the most recent history.
How could one account for this politically expedited collective amnesia –of manufacturing consent and discarding history at the speed of one major military operation every two years?
More here. [Thanks to Zara Houshmand.]
