Despite all the lip service about democracy, justice, human rights, freedom, equality and so forth—the entire Washington establishment exists for the sole purpose of perpetuating the empire.

How do I know?

Because the media response to the January 6th attack at the Capitol reveals the Washington establishment’s true nature.

The political class has commenced Operation Destroy Trump. The Washington machine will stop at nothing to expose every character flaw, every incompetency, and every authoritarian tendency of Trump.

Except one thing; if I wanted to prove that Trump was a dangerous racist dictator with no regard for human decency I could do it pretty easily, and I wouldn’t even have to search for subliminal messages in his bumbling speeches.

Trump has been complicit in a genocidal war waged by Saudi Arabia that has killed over 200,000 Yemeni civilians.

Trump illegally assassinated a high ranking member of the Iranian government—a sovereign government that the United States is not at war with—risking a conflict that would certainly produce more casualties than any other war this century!

Trump has dropped more drone strikes on Somalian civilians in 2020 than Bush and Obama did in 10 years combined! He also killed more Afghan civilians via airstrikes in 2019 than any other year in that war!

Where was mainstream media? Where was Congress? they must have been combing through speeches and tweets for racist dog whistles and subliminal calls to violence because they certainly weren’t monitoring the American drones dropping bombs on the heads of black children in Somalia.

Trying to prove Trump is the most dangerous president in U.S. history, while not attacking him on the worst atrocities he has committed is criminal, maybe even slanderous in a morbid way.

Why are the media and congress silent on these war crimes, especially at a time when they will stop at nothing to destroy President Trump?

Because the media is complicit—they exist to serve the empire.

Nothing that substantially challenges the presumption of U.S. global hegemony ever makes the airwaves. Yes, every once in a while the media will toss a low ranking soldier under the bus for war crimes, but those crimes are never presented in a way that challenges the policy. And to their credit, the media did create a hoopla over the assassination of Iranian General Qassam Soleimani, but again, they never asked the critical questions that would challenge U.S. policy in the region.

The mainstream media is state media in all but name. Journalists enjoy relationships with various anonymous sources within the intelligence community who leak cherry-picked intelligence for news rooms to gobble up in exchange for writing news stories that parrot the regime’s official lines.

After the lines are repeated enough times to satisfy Joseph Goebbels, a litany of retired generals who sit on the boards of defense contractors (which is never disclosed) make their rounds on cable news networks as they pass the ready-made sermons of the empire along to the people without a bit of skepticism from the host. In other words, the American people are exclusively inundated with the opinions of so-called experts who all stand to financially or professionally benefit from war.

The formula is rather simple. The think tanks create the policy; congress implements the policy; the network news manufactures your thirst for war; and the defense contractors fasten the weapons and buys everyone else off. Ultimately, money is moved from your pocket and is used to line the pockets of the whole cabal.

That’s why no one on network news, despite their real hatred of him, will ever dunk on Trump with the phrase “Trump is a war criminal.” Because even taking out Trump is not worth the American people wondering for even a second what exactly they mean by war criminal.

The mainstream media is not just complicit with the empire, in fact, their sole job is to protect the empire against any threat to it, such as Trump. Trump was the first candidate in recent history to make it into the Oval Office without the approval of the Washington establishment. He cracked the code of American politics by circumventing the filters of the corporate media and spoke directly to the American people through social media. The recent social media purges against Trump and his inner circle was not spontaneous, it was premeditated. The Washington machine was merely waiting for a catalyst event to occur so it could reassert its stranglehold on American political discourse.

Before Trump broke the system, the presidential primary elections were designed specifically for the corporate media to weed out unacceptable candidates. What constitutes unacceptable? Anyone who opposes the American global empire. The media gatekeepers successfully scuttled every campaign that advocated radical foreign policy change. Tulsi Gabbard spent her 2020 primary season getting ridiculed on TV for allegedly being a friend of dictators, which is an impressive way to spin her anti-war platform. Gabbard was simply getting the Ron Paul treatment, who was also lambasted by the elites during his presidential runs (2008, 2012) for having the gall to point out the evil hypocrisies of American foreign policy. The Washington machine conspired to steal the democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders twice – not because of his democratic socialism – but because he wasn’t an empire zealot either. The message is clear: anything goes in American politics except questioning the empire.

In 2016, on a Republican debate stage Trump openly called the Iraq war a mistake, criticized our wars in Afghanistan and Syria, and questioned our role in NATO. The media worked overtime to ensure a Trump defeat, but Trump proved to be bulletproof because of his cult-like following on social media. Of course, Trump never quite lived up to his promises of an America First foreign policy as he perpetuated the criminal wars of his predecessors. However, it was clear that the Washington establishment was terrified of what he might do, which is why most of his administration was plagued with a ridiculous investigation of a Russian collusion hoax that nobody believed, followed by an impeachment based on the flimsiest of pretexts. They were grasping at straws to get rid of Trump.

Trump’s improbable victory caused a panic in 2016 until the establishment realized that Trump had very little understanding of his own America First ideology. A Trump presidency could be managed by the Washington machine as long as Trump didn’t appoint anyone who could implement his campaign promises. For the most part, the Washington establishment was able to control the Trump administration with well placed neocons such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Jim Jeffrey who worked tirelessly to undermine Trump’s vision at every foreign policy turn. The only redeeming quality the Washington establishment saw in Trump was his hawkishness on China, which the media has been happy to help propagandize the American people into supporting a trade war and military posturing in the South China Sea.

As the Trump movement comes to an end the chickens are coming home to roost. Washington was so worried about controlling and eliminating Trump that they neglected his base, which has become increasingly radicalized due to the media’s deranged hostility towards them.

The anger of Trump’s base came to head on January 6th when protesters stormed the Capitol building because they believed the election had been stolen from Trump. Of course the violence at the Capitol was inexcusable, but why was the Washington outrage machine cranked up to level 11?

Washington is panicking because they see the unfolding events as an existential threat to their stranglehold on the American people and their global empire. The Washington machine was unable to stop Trump’s 2016 insurgent campaign, and Washington’s damage control strategy only worked to contain Trump’s policies but failed to control his growing popular base. Here’s three reasons why panic is suddenly setting in in the Imperial city.

First, the ruling class recognizes that their power is waning. George Bush’s Global War on Terror was truly a global war fought on two fronts, international and domestic. The national security state was given a shot in the arm with the Patriot Act, and Americans have been taking their shoes off at airports ever since. After twenty years of war, it’s undeniable that the war abroad has been a miserable failure (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Syria). But despite the empire’s failures abroad, the American people could always be counted on to stay in line. Now it seems the population is spiraling out of control of the Washington handlers.

Second, the violence is finding its target. The ruling elite has always tolerated violence as long as it stays on the peripheral and is directed at factions within the population, such as the Black Lives Matter protests this past summer. Although their cause may be misguided and their legitimate anger has been manipulated, the Capitol protesters have at least identified the proper source of all their frustrations, Congress. Congress has robbed all of us blind in pursuit of their maniacal vision of global dominance, and now—to their surprise—the war has come home.

Finally, whether the claims of the protesters are true or not, this event exposes American democracy for the sham that it is. The assumption of U.S. global hegemony is derived from the belief that America has a uniquely exceptional system of government. When an angry mob storms the Capitol building because 34% of voters believe the election was fraudulent, America’s exceptional system appears to be a myth. Therefore, the foundation of America’s global empire is nothing but a house of cards on display for the world to see.

To the empire zealots, this wasn’t just an attack on a government building, this was an attack on a religious structure, which should raise red flags. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi both referred to the Capitol as a “temple to democracy.” Joe Biden called the process of ratifying the election “sacred.” The Capitol is their vatican, their religion is American democracy, and their salvation is fighting evangelical wars to spread their religion far and wide. To these true believers, only America’s government is sacred. No one was referring to Muammar Gadhafi’s government buildings as sacred when Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden all supported Obama bombing those buildings to spread the blessings of American democracy to Libya. Trump and his supporters have exposed America’s favorite export, democracy, as a rotten product. For Washington’s empire lackeys, such as Republican Liz Cheney, this attack on America’s religion can not be tolerated.

In response, the domestic War on Terror, which previously relied on spying and government psyops, is now being fought in plain sight. Congress immediately moved to impeach Trump with just days to go in his administration to make sure that he never gets near the strings of power again. The Capitol protestors are labeled as “domestic terrorists” to clear the road for a new domestic terrorism bill in the upcoming Biden Administration. Big tech has been co-opted to do the government’s bidding by removing anyone deemed a dangerous subversive from the internet. Take out their leaders, label them terrorists, and disrupt their lines of communication. Sound familiar?

The Republican base, which has always been loyal to the Empire, has lost its faith in American Exceptionalism. The Past 12 months of impeachments, lockdowns, corporate bailouts, left-wing riots, mandatory white privilege training, and censorship has pushed a large segment of Republicans into a corner where they feel like they have nothing to lose. Despite all the nonsense rhetoric about right wing militias, the reason the Capitol police was so unprepared for this moment was because the right doesn’t normally act like this. Now Washington realizes they have a full on insurgency on their hands that isn’t going away no matter how bad they want to wish it out of existence.

It’s tempting to interpret the empire’s employment of its awesome powers against the American people as a sign of its overwhelming strength. But that’s false. This is a sign of weakness. This is how empires die, like a wounded beast lashing out as it takes its last gasps. The war on the home front is failing. The people are rejecting the government which increasingly feels as if it’s being forced upon them. The government response is merely the domestic surge (like Iraq’s in 2007, and Afghanistan’s in 2009) that puts a bandaid over an infection that will continue to spread underneath. That infection is our lack of consent. Washington is now recognized for what it is, an occupying force that hardly anyone consents to anymore. After the last 4 years of the left declaring “not my president,” the right will share that same sentiment for the next 4 years.

People are finally waking up and realizing that the federal government stopped caring about its citizens long ago. The beginning of the end was when President Truman stood up the national security state after World War II and declared that the U.S. government would counter the Soviet Union in every country on the map, including our own. After 70 years, the United States has morphed into a rogue military state hiding behind a facade of democracy that exists only to feed its own lust to dominate the globe at the expense of the American people. While the empire spoiled over $6.4 Trillion in the last 20 years looking for other countries to fix, America was slowly crumbling and stood woefully unprepared to respond to domestic emergencies, such as a pandemic or a fedup American population that has begun to reject government legitimacy.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. The system is exposed. The empire can not be reigned in, it’s a cancer that has metastasized to engulf the entirety of the beltway. The only solution is secession and a peaceful dissolution of the federal government. If that sounds crazy to you, consider the alternative: a perpetual cycle of hatred and violence that may end in a bloody civil war.

Kenny MacDonald is a former Navy SEAL and veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in history. Follow his Youtube channel here.