The "indispensable nation"—currently in its rapidly rotting late imperialist phase— is now obviously in terrible trouble. Like a man long afflicted with syphilis, the ugly lesions are sprouting everywhere. Its criminal and incurably dysfunctional foreign policy is grounded in Orwellian lies, the purpose always being the imposition of feudalist hierarchies, and global hegemony at all costs. Meantime, America's domestic policies reflect rule by an obscenely rich oligarchy that controls all levers of power: a bought Congress, a suitably prostituted media, a corrupt judiciary, and bloated guardians of the status quo—from a constantly expanding alphabet soup of intel agencies to a huge military and police. Pretenses aside, this oligarchy and its legion of hacks are indifferent to the mountain of problems afflicting ordinary Americans. All this, which apologists still call without a hint of shame "the American Way of Life", and which they insist on proclaiming as the democratic ideal for all nations, is but the inevitable outcome of worshipping capitalism, a system grounded in selfishness, and of swallowing a bunch of narcissistic myths, the most pernicious, by far, American exceptionalism.
—The Editor