Tag Archives: american-empire

Marjorie Taylor Greene and the Dark Power of American Empire

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Whatever you might think of Marjorie Taylor Greene, her untimely exit from the cesspit of Washington is instructive. She didn’t go willingly. Anyone who thinks this misunderstands the dynamics of power in American Empire.

For all her flaws, and there are many, Greene ended up doing things no one is permitted to do. She demanded the release of the Epstein files and she demanded an end to US support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinians. These two things sealed her fate.

She defied the order of powerful white men who rule the empire. And she dared to question the undying devotion it has to its primary colonial asset, Israel.

Greene had some genuinely insane and loathsome political positions. She peddled far right conspiracy theories, antisemitism, racism and transphobia. But in that sense, she wasn’t a grifter. She was truly deluded. She believed these loathsome things. And she was embraced for them by the cult of MAGA.

Her devotion to what she believed was the truth inevitably led her to some dark conclusions. And after that first press conference about the Epstein files, her life in politics was doomed. Since then, she has had to hire private security. And I think it was at this point she might have begun to realize what she had put some of her colleagues through.

Greene will likely make the rounds in the miasma of far right talking heads and insufferable blowhards for some time. She will likely go silent for a while to regroup. And maybe she will resurface down the road with a new brand and look.

But her time in the belly of the beast should serve as the clearest example of the banal evil of American Empire. Although it is in steep decline, it protects its interests. Those interests lie in the capital investments made by the most powerful and wealthy men on the planet. And they will do anything to preserve that status even if it means sinking the whole ship to the bottom of the sea.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

Trump is a Liar, but he is the Embodiment of the Ruling Class

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While speaking before the brutal King of Saudi Arabia, US president Trump said:

“But we also wanna thank all the people living in Gaza, the residents of Gaza. They, as you know, have begun to move back to their homes. A lot more safety, they say, than they ever had before.”

Gaza has been reduced to rubble from 2+ years of Israeli carpet bombing and demolition. Most of it is uninhabitable. A mass grave with thousands of bodies still under the ruins of their homes. Most are living in tents now, and much of Gaza has faced flooding. And the genocide hasn’t stopped. Israel is still carrying out bombings and mass starvation, with assistance from the US and other Western allies, despite the so-called ceasefire.

But Trump’s lies are always grandiose and fatuous. Designed to overwhelm norms of decency in human interactions. And to undermine the importance of truth telling for social cohesion. This is classic narcissist behaviour, and it is eroding the bonds that keep a society together and functional.

The lies he has told about his relationship to Jeffrey Epstein are an example of this pathology. To the narcissist, it doesn’t matter if lies are exposed. All that matters is if he or she can weave another web of dishonesty and distraction in time to escape the consequences of the previous ones.

This kind of mendacity is staggering to most people because it flies in the face of everything we understand to be normal in human interactions. But the narcissist doesn’t live in this world. They live in a universe where manipulation, grift and deception are legitimate tools for increasing their social control, wealth accumulation and power. Attention, whether negative or positive, is paramount.

Modern American society was fueled by the lies of such narcissists and their sycophants. Primarily by white men who constructed and curated a Machiavellian playbook for obtaining and maintaining power and wealth. They successfully convinced a huge swath of the population that wealth accumulation, hoarding and ostentatious displays are virtuous. This is a class that enjoys extraordinary impunity for their crimes. Few of them ever see a jail cell for such things as theft of wages, labour abuses, sexual exploitation, discrimination or environmental destruction.

Trump is the most glaring example of this. He became president despite a litany of crimes, from fraud to rape. He has enriched himself by peddling valueless coins and pandering to anyone who will give him a lavish gift or shiny award. He is not an aberration. Although he is crass, unsophisticated and vulgar, he is also the grotesque embodiment of the ruling elite in America stripped of all of its pretension.

And he will likely avoid any meaningful consequences for this current scandal. Do not be surprised if names are redacted and swaths of documents are censored because of “national security.” Pam Bondi and her legal team are probably burning the midnight oil to come up with any excuse available to them.

It would be naive and foolish to think that US will do the right thing in regard to the Epstein scandal. The arrangement of power that exists today, and that includes both sides of the political aisle, is incapable of tackling the malfeasance within its own ranks. As I have said before, a nation that has funded and assisted a genocide for two years, the very worst crime against humanity, can easily ignore or whitewash crimes against the most vulnerable among us. Especially when those crimes were mostly committed by wealthy white men.

So, what do we do? Aside from feeling a natural sense of despair, there are some things we can do that are vitally important as human beings. We can and should bear witness. To speak boldly. Speak out against horrendous crimes like genocide. To not buy into the pervasive lie that wealth equates virtue or superiority. To reject any conspiracy theory or idea that demonize, scapegoat or punch down on the marginalized or most vulnerable in society, whether they be immigrants, the transgender community or the unhoused. To support political leaders who espouse our values, without being naive as to their limitations, flaws and the deep rot of the system. Be persuaded by good policies, not charismatic personalities. But, most importantly, to connect with one another in community and learn how to address our own needs by building mutual aid and networks of cooperation.

No one is coming to save us, least of all the wealthy and powerful who run the show. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Kenn Orfanos, November 2025

The Charade of Death

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This is the man given dozens of standing ovations in the US Congress. The man welcomed in the White House with open arms. And not just by Trump. Biden was enraptured by that bromance too. This isn’t because this man controls the American Empire. It is because Israel is the empire’s last true colony. It is its last major investment.

Beheading children with airstrikes. Starving infants and sniping toddlers. Raping doctors to death and shooting nurses. Burning journalists alive and burying medics in their ambulances. Leveling everything in sight, from shelters to bakeries to universities to water treatment facilities. All of this is simply the business of American Empire. It is the collateral damage that allows the dollars to keep flowing upward.

Now, as the annihilation of an entire people has entered its final chapter, it has become impossible to deny what the United States is: a sham. The myth of its fabled democracy hobbled along with empty promises and hollow platitudes as crutches for a long time. Even as its institutions became sepulchers that housed barely conscious old, rich, white men. Fortresses that protected their capital investments. But the shroud that covered their moldering corpses has been ripped off for all to see. The myth of American democracy has finally died in the streets of Gaza.

We need to look at it. We need to see it for what it is. Otherwise, we will continue to delude ourselves that there is something worth saving. When the reality is that everything must be rebuilt from the ground up for us to be worthy of saving. Everything. Because to save any of what is left is to ensure that there will just be more of the people-killing, planet-killing, soul-killing same. And I, for one, want no part in that charade of death. 

Kenn Orphan, April 2025