Agitation
and republican tenure
"Republics exist only on the tenure of being constantly agitated."
Wendell Phillips
Republics are also famously short-lived. Phillips was speaking when the US was less than one hundred years old. The historical pattern is for republics to devolve into empires and tyrannies, famously within a couple hundred years at most. Here we are; 246 years old. We are not a republic in any sense - if we ever were - and the United States displays all the brutal expansionist tendencies of every imperium in history. Neither the Congress nor the president have declared a war in Ukraine and yet we are spending BILLIONS and doing our best to precipitate a direct conflict with Russia. Would someone tell me what possible strategic interest we have in the crime-nation Ukraine? Ukraine: formerly recognized as one of the most corrupt nations in the world and now declared “the last bastion of democracy, “ to be defended to the last Ukrainian and, if possible, the staging ground for the USA’s next great gambit for world domination; pull down Pres. Putin and Russia while pivoting to China. Fasten your seat belts. You’re going on a ride in which you have no choice and can only end in disaster.
Chris Hedge’s short 15 minute summary below provides as succinct a summary as I have yet heard.
Thomas Paine
Engraving by William Sharpe after the original oil by English painter George Romney, present whereabouts unknown
Great essay.