> So your position isn't all that different from mine after all.
It probably isn't. One difference I can see is that I don't spend any time volunteering criticism of the IR, and disengage very quickly from any in-depth discussion of how good or bad they are. I cheer 'em on _qua_ fellow-foes of the Empire and remain seated, ostentatiously studying my fingernails and yawning, for the daily Two Minutes Hate (or whatever it was).
Perhaps one other more general difference is that I'm not a universalist. I don't see 'progress' in history in terms of the diffusion of Enlightenment values -- though I value 'em personally. Or some of 'em, anyway. I see short-term progress as a matter of balking and baffling the Empire, to the extent possible; and expropriating the expropriators, ditto. What the future will look like I have no idea, and lots of people will want to have a say in it who are coming from very different backgrounds from mine. The idea of a single universal civilization seems too far in the future even to speculate about -- and to tell the truth, I'm not even sure it's such an attractive prospect.