Yes, the World Ended on November 5
We live in a "post-empire" moment.
The term “post-empire” was coined by the writer Bret Easton Ellis in 2011. It enjoyed a brief moment in the sun but quickly disappeared. Today, the playwright and novelist
is back in our pages, to tell us why the idea deserves a second life. Now, more than ever, “post-empire” is the principle through which we can make sense of America.— Santiago Ramos, Executive Editor
“Empire is the US from roughly WWII to a little after 9/11. It was at the height of its power, its prestige, and its economic worth. Then it lost a lot of those things. In the face of technology and social media, the mask of pride has been slowly eradicated. That empirical attitude of believing you’re better than everyone — that you’re above everything — and trying to give the impression that you have no problems. Post-empire is just about being yourself. It’s showing the reality rather than obscuring things in reams and reams of meaning.”
— Bret Easton Ellis
The concept of “post-empire,” coined by Bret Easton Ellis in 2011 to describe Charlie Sheen’s erratic behavior after leaving the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, captured something bigger than celebrity breakdown. In hindsight, Sheen gave a name to a powerful set of behaviors and symbols which have disrupted and transformed American politics, movies, sports, music, TV, and more.
Post-empire is a powerful anthropological description of the moment we are living through: a framework for understanding how societies metabolize declining imperial power — like we have in the wake of 9/11, failed wars, the declining purchasing power of the dollar (to cite just a few examples). Post-empire is a material condition that now structures our entire spiritual present. Post-empire is a state of mind.
The distinction between empire and post-empire is a tool, a principle by which we can understand the stark differences between the recent past and the chaotic present. Consider the following:
When empire is dominant, every symbol in its info-ecosystem is a signifier of the empire, the effects of its stability, its permanence and its authority. When empire declines, there is an explosion of rhetoric and mockery — these symbols are inverted and exploded. Post-empire is a free play of rhetoric and symbolism that, rather than mourn the loss of prestige and the slackening of global power, mocks those things while celebrating the individual (because the individual doesn’t have to, unlike empire or its avatars, pretend to be strong or secure).
Empire protects the mind; empire gives you confidence; empire makes you want to identify with it completely. When you live within an indomitable empire, you behave differently, think differently, walk and talk differently. You have swagger; you are blind to fragility; you can laugh at danger; you have sex appeal. You are Rudyard Kipling; you are James Bond; you are Cary Grant; you are Marilyn, Grace Kelly, Lucille Ball. You are Ronald Reagan. But when empire goes away, you become Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan (who starred in a Bret Easton Ellis scripted movie), Dennis Rodman, Kanye, Will Smith, Britney, the Paul Brothers …
When the empire is fracturing, fraying, ineffectual — when its bark gets louder than its bite; when it can no longer fight wars or defend its borders; when the functional truths, the metaphysical certainty, even complacency, which underwrite daily life, go away — the first politician to really admit it will be rewarded. And Trump did. And Trump was. Trump said America had made some bad deals — and he wasn’t wrong. As
and others have noted, Trump was (perhaps too early), and is again (right on time), the first post-empire president. His politics mourns the loss of empire, and yet is defined by its absence — by the felt absence of confidence and national vigor.Trump allowed Americans to at least have the confidence to acknowledge things were wrong.
Trump’s mandate, even now, isn’t to make America great again. His mandate is to clear away the failed apparatus of empire so that at least individuals can be great again — or, if not great, then rich, powerful, fun, expansive. MAGA has always really stood for “make Americans great again” — give us larger-than-life figures since we no longer have a larger-than-life empire (and because the costs of maintaining empire are increasingly overwhelming, hampering, demoralizing).
Post-empire figures like Trump signal their exhaustion with the solemn duties of empire — and create room for ordinary Americans to do the same. Post-empire icons are elites who break away from the system and say “I’m tired of maintaining all this and you should be too; you are allowed to be, too.” The American empire has ceased to complete great projects (nation-building, space exploration, universal education), so just ... be you, do you.
In post-empire, your obsession (your drug) is individuality, self-expression, making money. Empire is the dollar. Post-empire is Bitcoin. Empire is a think tank. Post-empire is a charter city. Post-empire is the future ... in theory —dangling the possibility of liberation, innovation, and progress ...
But — even if post-empire rejects the structures and rules, the scope, of empire —can it still add up to ... a viable civilization? Fragmentation, individualization, even Sheen-like, Kanye-like schizoid behaviors are valid, even canny, maybe necessary means of ripping oneself away from the depredations of a dying imperial order — but after you’ve left the empire of the mind, and after the transition to post-empire is complete, and after legions come home, and after the Foucauldian discourses of empire shrivel away, what do you build a culture with? Post-empire culture and politics feels more like an antidote to an acute poison, but it has no purpose once the poison is removed.
My hunch is that post-empire (our present) was never meant to last — and won't. It’s a moment between empires; an interregnum where everything is possible because everyone is starting over. What it shouldn’t become is a parody, free-market version of empire with all the same power-lust and undemocratic harnessing of America’s resources for Titanic ends.
Like a relationship with someone who resembles your ex (“Like my ex, but not crazy,” right?), post-empire promises an inverted version of the empire. Post-empire still exists as part of the dialectic of empire; it hints at a new empire, rather than a new localism.
So while I find an analysis of the binary between empire and post-empire edifying, I wonder if now is not in fact the time to start imagining what lies beyond the concepts of empire — lies elsewhere, and speaks in a different tongue altogether …
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Funny thing. I feel like I died and went to heaven on Oct 5.
Hopefully, starting Jan 20, we stop being a banana republic. Hopefully, political partisans stop practicing lawfare. Hopefully the general public looks back at the Mueller boondoggle, the two pointless impeachments, the Hunter laptop denial, the shameful persecution of Trump over things that don't even raise an eyebrow when others do it, and the pardoning of Hunter for anything he ever did in the last eleven years, and realize that we have been flat-out lied to and manipulated for decades.
Some, of course, will remain in denial. Some feel threatened at looking down the throat of reality. Some would rather believe a ridiculous lie than face the truth. But those people are being increasingly ignored, as they should be.
I liked that table. I recognized all of the former and only half of the latter. Good riddance.
This twinges my muscle memory on the concept of Character... Empire calls the individual OUT of themselves into something greater. A participation.
Douthat's case for decline into decadence probably touches on this (I only listened to interviews; I wasn't compelled to read it yet) But this focus on the individual is so culturally prevalent. Our entire lens is so focused inward that we've forgotten we were once defined by how we interacted outward.
I don't know if there are any true historical parallels either... even in Rome, there were still Romans... fealty to Caesar, something corporate and communal. The messaging today is completely devoid of that, so long as the almighty dollar is achievable. (Wolf of Wallstreet anyone?)
Maybe that's the draw I feel to socialism, the disparities of dollar acquisition in our country give us something to rally around.
Alas a mob is not a community and that's usually where socialism goes to... pushing for reforms and falling into another set of human failings.
Jesus, come soon!
Happy Advent everyone.