Last week, amidst a backdrop of fear-creation by the security state, where you either shut up or face the consequences, my wife and I were talking about standing up to empire and what it might mean.

The slap-in-the-face awareness of the consequences-we-can-no-longer-ignore that people face for standing up to empire are finally and blatantly right in front of us. The evidence, which has been mounting since Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address in 1960, has been building, slowly, through Vietnam, Nixon’s resignation, the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy, the Reagan economic policies, Bush 1 & 2, the Clinton years of globalization that destroyed manufacturing in America, false flag wars, supporting dictators as long as they are our dictators, the hopium of a young Barack Obama and the incredible disappointment and betrayal as the security state moves into its fullness.