Hopkins takes a lighthearted satirical attack on how Empire directors dupe their citizens into supporting their drug habits of profit and power. It seems that this style is about the only way that rational and informed people can maintain their sanity when dealing with the current state of affairs in the US. Here are two choice paragraphs:
...if you understand “America” as the symbolic face of transnational Capitalism, then suddenly everything does make sense. The chaos the U.S.A. has been sowing throughout the Middle East, on Russia’s borders, and in other quarters throughout the world, is all part and parcel of Capitalism’s ongoing mission to expand and exploit new markets, and to do away with the final remnants of any despotic structures and values that stand in the way of its dominance of … well, everything. Looking at things this way, it’s also clear that actual Americans (i.e. American citizens) mean nothing more to global Capitalism than actual Iraqis, or Yemenis, or Mexicans, or any other citizens of other nation-states … which possibly sheds a little light on recent trends in the U.S.A., like the mysteriously disappearing middle-class, or why a nation would allow its banks to debt-enslave its university students, and anyone else they can get their hooks into, in order to enrich a transnational elite of investors who have no loyalty to anything.
Which brings us back to our founding myth, and America Saves the World Again! See, the picture I just painted above is terribly depressing, and unromantic, and makes it hard for global Capitalism to sell itself as “freedom,” “democracy,” “progress,” and all that other stuff. It also makes it extremely difficult to keep people thinking in terms of nations, and “our national interests,” and “threats to the nation.” People, once they start to see things clearly and realize that their “national leaders” couldn’t give two shits about them, get really angry, which is inconvenient. So Capitalism needs to distract them somehow, and redirect their anger somewhere, and give them something to believe in again.
