> Dennis: "even the most ordinary people can't imagine living without the Empire."
>
> [WS:] I do not think it is true, if by Empire you mean foreign
> relations and policy.
But you can't separate foreign policy from domestic policy, because the US was not just another English-speaking country during most of the 20th century, but a world hegemon. The foreign is the mask of the domestic: the war on Vietnam was the War on Poverty, the war on drugs is the Terror War, etc. The contradiction reaches deep into identity-politics, where the US versions of masculinity and whiteness are saturated by centuries of imperialism.
I'd argue that's why we need *both* struggles -- against the empire's wars, and against reactionary identity-politics.
-- DRR