Welcome to the empire

Where genocide is self-defense and peace rallies are genocide

Where war criminals are the victims and the hospitals are terrorists

Where calls for freedom are hateful and ceasefires are anti-semitic

Where civilians get called terrorists and real terrorists get Nobel Peace Prizes

Where the propaganda is journalism and the journalism is propaganda

Where the democracy is real and the apartheid is imaginary

Where the corporations are people and the people are corporate resources

Welcome to the empire

Whose bombs are humanitarian and whose provocations are invisible

Whose veterans are heroes and whose victims are forgotten

Whose wars are always just and whose enemies are always Hitler

Whose cause is always righteous and whose critics are always Russian

Whose sufferings are unforgivable and whose crimes are erased from history

Whose atrocities are always an unfortunate accident and whose enemies kill civilians for fun

Whose disastrous interventions are always innocent mistakes no matter how often they happen

Welcome to the empire

Ever the victim of unprovoked attacks from the people it has been strangling

Ever the shining city on a hill of human corpses

Ever the defender of the poor helpless plutocrats of Wall Street

Ever the savior of the families incinerated by missiles made by Raytheon

Ever the protector of natural resources in the soil of foreign nations

Ever the upholder of the rules-based order of a world with a boot on its throat

The empire loves you with a heart made of dollars and oil

The empire watches over you through your smartphone and your computer

The empire is your only friend

The empire is the only one who will ever love you

You can't leave

You can't get rid of the empire

If you get rid of the empire, this world could be taken over by tyrants

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Reading by Tim Foley.