AMERICAN STUDIES

A VIDEO ESSAY BY GONZALO LIRA: Sounds harsh and even flippant, but the logic of history and economics is irrefutable. The US empire is going down, a victim of its own obvious mistakes, the weight of innumerable errors neglected by the colossal level of hubris and corruption permeating the ruling elites of the West, headquartered in Washington, and the inexorable, myopic often chaotic thinking inherent in capitalism. Ironically, it is not solely the defeats in the military sense that are contributing so much to the downfall from supremacy, although they represent a major component of the problem, but, as Lira points out, the concomitant bloating of the financial sphere, where the accumulating contradictions of capitalism, chiefly the US public and private debt, and the resulting loss of dollar solvency, are causing a refusal by hitherto key “vassal” nations (i.e., Saudi Arabia) to continue trading exclusively in dollars. This, says Lira, and we agree entirely, is hammering the last nails into the Anglo-American empire coffin, regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian war.

JAMES TWEEDIE—Following victories in the civil rights campaign, in 1968 King and the SCLC took a bold step forward by organising the Poor People’s Campaign. He envisioned “a multiracial army of the poor” to march on Washington for mass acts of civil disobedience until Congress legislated for an “economic bill of rights” for those in poverty.

On March 29 of that year King, then aged 39, traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to support a strike by public sanitary workers. His flight was delayed by a bomb threat against the aircraft, and in his last speech at the city’s Mason Temple on April 3, King was fatalistic about the prospect of his assassination, saying that like Moses, he had “been to the mountaintop, and I don’t mind.”

JOSEPH EARP—This is a family that, over generations, has learned that the world is nothing more than a series of goals, which lead to nothing but more goals. Bert (F. Murray Abraham), the family’s patriarch, has created a miniature culture that revolves around himself, in which sex is an opportunity for manipulation, wealth is an opportunity for manipulation, and love is an opportunity for manipulation. And his brood, desperate to emulate him, and attract his affection – if only to get ahead themselves – have followed in his lead, even if they don’t realise it.

FRANK SCOTT—The ignorance placed in our minds that strives to separate us as races to explain and exploit political and economic differences are cursed divisions that are created by and have fed into the political economic evils which thrive on such divisions and like so much else need to be confronted and dismissed for the ultimate ignorance and even stupidity they represent.

HEDLEY REES—So, the valley of death, as it became known, was swallowing up most of the molecules entering development. It was commonplace to read of drugs failing in phase III trials, where the hopes and dreams of patients were dashed. Hundreds of thousands of animals tortured and slaughtered, with no contribution to medical science. Billions of dollars poured down the drain. The sickening cost of failure.