It is the largest military empire that has ever existed, making Rome look like pipsqueaks.
Officially, this was the Achaemenid empire (First Persian Empire, "our arrows will blot out the sun",
almost one human being over two). But if you're talking unnofficial, I'd tend to agree. French former Foreign minister Hubert Vedrine wrote "Facing the
hyperpower", stating that that US are more than a superpower because they dominate on
all of this fields: military, financial, technological, cultural.
The ideals that nearly every American subject can pop out of their mouth have been so egregiously twisted in actual practice as to be unrecognizable. What the US figured out that most have not is taht if you can regulate everything and make people BELIEVE that the rgulations have purposes other than sheer enslavement, that teh majority won't complain. Which is why they tout democracy as if it were a virtue. In the long run, no democracy has survived, and this one won't either. Because at it's core, there is no more oppressive system. As someone on this very board has as their tagline: "Democracy: The original 51% attack.
What is funny (or sad) is that outside US, USA is still "the land of freedom". Well, outside France, France is still the land of human rights...
I like the tagline. Makes me think.
If you truly believe in the principles of democracy (which thankfully almost no-one does), then if 6 people in a group of ten decided that one of their number should be killed (regardless of any reason), he should just stand up and die. A very limited amount of democracy can be useful, but those limits must be explicit and rigid, else you get a creeping, grinding enslavement over time.
Konstantin Kastoriadis once said: "the problem with democracy is that it gives any citizen an equal voice without giving them an equal education (Kastoriadis as an ardent proponent of democracy).
As usual, this is not the concept which is good or bad, this is the percentage.
The United States was not set up as a Democracy. It wasn't truly a democracy until the 16th and 17th amendments shifted slavery away from piecemeal individual owners to a general system in which all of those born were born in bondage to the "federal authority" via the income tax, and the abolition of the Senate, making the United States of America instead of these United States of America.
The main issue I think is that there is no more free land in the world. I use this expression adequately: we don't have land, but we do have oceans and... space.
I never said it would be easy
I could write a book on the subject. In fact, I mostly have
But this thread is about Tek, so perhaps we should continue this elsewhere.
Point me to the right place and I will delete my relevant posts and move them there.