The True Symbol Of The United States Is The Pentagon
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
The real symbol of the United States is not the stars and stripes, nor the bald eagle, nor the Statue of Liberty, nor even the mighty McDonald’s logo. The real symbol of the United States is the Pentagon.
The Pentagon should feature centrally on the US flag. It should be on the coins and on all the bills, and it should appear next to the name of every American in the Olympics. When anyone sees a five-sided polygon, they should immediately think “United States of America”.
There is nothing more representative of the most significant things about the United States than the Pentagon. Sure the US has lovely national parks, an abundance of fast food chains and 500 million-dollar superhero movies, but nothing has anywhere near the effect on the world as the US government’s ability to project force around the planet with military violence and the threat thereof.
That is the main thing that makes the US unique among nations, after all. Americans are taught from childhood to take special pride in their nation’s “freedom” and “democracy” (of which they have neither), when what actually makes their country stand out against the crowd is its role as the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is held together by nonstop military aggression. The five-sided building which houses the US Department of Defense — formerly called the Department of War until someone noticed that was a bit too truthful — is the perfect symbol for that empire. It conveys what the United States is really putting out into the world more accurately than any other.
It’s easy to forget that you live in the hub of the most powerful empire in history when you actually live there, in the same way it’s so calm in the eye of a hurricane that you’d hardly know your world is being ripped apart around you. But because the US-centralized empire influences global dynamics so pervasively, and because every major international conflict in the world involves it to some degree, that’s what affects the most people in the world to the furthest extent right now. How much money they have. Whether they get to feed their kids today. Whether they’ll be torn to shreds by military explosives tomorrow. Whether they’ll have to watch everyone die in a nuclear holocaust next year.
So as far as humanity is concerned the most distinctive thing about the United States is its empire, and the most accurate symbol for that empire is the Pentagon. Artists, activists and memesters should make more use of this powerful symbol, because it’s right there, easy to draw and everything.
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I would say that the United States biggest power is its soft power. It's narrative control.
It's the power to get people around the world tonbelieve and to want to believe that the institutions in the West in general and the US in particular are basically competent. It's the ability to get Europeans to slit their own throats and gut civil liberties rather than admit to themselves that the US might not be the good guy. It's ability to get Australia to offend their biggest trading partner at your say-so, with less self-respect than a whipped dog. And unlike the dog, not a single blow need be struck.
This was the real secret of why so many Ukrainians who ought to know better went in so wholeheartedly for Maidan - after years of corruption, brutality and incompetence, they would finally get to join the club, and if hating their brothers was the price of membership, then that was a price that they would pay. It is also why they continue to soldier on, even though it is obvious that they were played for fools. Whether these institutions really are competent or not is beside the point - the perception is the thing. And that is how they are perceived.
This is also my theory as to why Russia has dithered so far in this war. It's not some master plan. Everything indicates that the war didn't start as expected, and Russia has been reactive and not proactive since then. Rather, they don't want to make war on Ukrainian people that they still see as their kinsmen. They don't want to destroy the West, even though the West openly seeks to destroy them. This is what they want to be, the club that they want to be in, even if that club will never let them be members and treats them as subhumans. That's why the western awards matter so much, why the approval of western institutions counts for far more in Russia than Russian approval counts pretty much anywhere. It's why Putin seemed genuinely hurt and shocked to learn that Minsk-2 was a sham, entered into in bad faith, not just by Ukraine, but its western guarantors, from the outset. Should have been obvious.
Russia has tried at every stage to avoid escalation, in spite of red line after red line being ignored, while the West and its Ukrainian sockpuppets are absolutely spoiling for a fight. And no, they don't fight fair.
Now, the West is destroying a lot of that good will it built up by its arbitrary and power-hungry actions, but whether that will be enough remains to be seen. Enough to say that elite circles in the West remain highly optimistic, and any dissent from the narrative is ruthlessly punished.
Eisenhower warned in 1960 the Pentagon was the new capitol building and nobody paid attention. Washington's capitol building is a mausoleum for a one time democracy; still nobody is paying attention.