(A lecture in the "Introduction to The American Empire" class at the Cascadian National University)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pGaz_qN0cw]

Most of what we know about the Americans comes to us from their Propaganda. Just like many other societies throughout time, American leaders often felt it necessary to elevate and laud achievements that were at best mundane, and at worst complete fabrications. This is by no means a new thing, however, and it's one of the constant difficulties that the historian and archaeologist must accept as a given in their work.

Take a look at at the Egyptian Empire. Three Thousand years before the Americans and the claim was made of a huge victory over a neighboring country. Complete lie. Wrote a whole Triumphal poem about their victory. Had every single person in the empire singing it. And it never happened, because the people never saw what was actually happening in the war.

First off, you must remember how the average American citizen saw the world. The average American did not talk to his neighbors, and really had zero idea about the world outside of their system, except for the television. This had not always been the case, but Americans were easily swayed by what they thought was free entertainment. Prior to the subsidized installation of what were essentially propaganda monitors in their homes, Americans had a wide depth and breadth of cultural differences, folklore and customs brought from their home countries. The introduction of the television changed all of that.

Ok, Imagine heading up to Seattle, and expecting to eat the same food, watch the same play, and talk about the exact same local sports team as you would here in Cascadia. That's what Americans expected. There were variances and minor local differences, but Americans believed that these differences were a weakness.

I've just realized I've gotten quite off topic here. However, it's easy to do when you talk about the Empire, because everything really was that interconnected and centralized. Standards were set not at the level of production, where any error could easily be seen and corrected, but at an office, often thousands of miles from the site where any of the end labor would be done. All of this created an effective Inverted Pyramid.

Which was how the American Soldier lived, fought and died. As a piece of this inverted pyramid.

Now, what is the advantage of a top heavy organization? On the surface, it seems incredibly inefficient and badly balanced. For projection of force, however, this is the ideal situation, if you can position the entire pyramid to come to bear on one tiny point.

Which is how the Americans racked up their great victories. For every story they told about heroic soldiers fighting off waves of savage enemies, there was the truth of a entire country's worth of ordinance dropping onto a wedding. If the Americans determined you were a threat, they would first engage their propaganda arm to isolate you from the world at large.

The entire world was both far more connected and far more isolated at the time. Modes of travel and communication, of course, depended on the American's military as well. As a result, for a long time, when the Americans claimed something was happening, the entire world would go along with it. Mostly because they didn't want that inverted pyramid to descend upon their country.

Once the country had been isolated, the Americans would then go about systematically destroying the people. Any people who didn't immediately kowtow and surrender would be met with overwhelming force in what they called a "Shakan Ah" attack. The entire manufacturing might would be set to the purpose of creating bombs and weapons. In an ideal American battle, there would not even be a soldier on the battlefield, rather they would send a bomb to kill the enemy without warning, challenge or even an official declaration of war.

Yes, they turned their civilians into a part of their war machine. Once again, the inverted pyramid shows up. For every soldier who actually fought, there were thousands of support staff, advisors, and even cult members who demanded that they were incredibly important to the process. And so they all benefited from the war, meaning that as soon as a country had been destroyed, there needed to be another immediate war, or the whole system would fall apart. Wars would be declared on everything and anything. Even plants were declared enemy combatants and were rounded up and burned, while the farmers were placed into slave pens and forced to toil for their supposed crimes.

American soldiers actually were expected to torture their enemies. It was considered a mark of power and ruthlessness, which were both marks of favor in the cults which were keen to recruit former soldiers. Since the Soldier held a mythic position in the American psyche, it was expected that they would be one of the few members of the lower class who would be accepted into the higher mysteries of the Imperial Cults. Of course, the greatest secrets were kept from those who did not fully embrace the American way of war.

It's a beautiful day out there, and I'm certainly not going to keep you much longer. If there are any questions, I'll take them on the lawn.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a65w80ukCSc]