Only In America

The history of empire is the history of time,
The earliest empires invented calendars
that were pegged to the reign of the emperor
or the founding of the city state that becomes
the centre of empire. Egypt, Greece and Babylon
were exemplars of this, all three relied for growth
on enslaved labour which varied and could be benign
according to the skills the empire needed, on the day.

In all these empires slavery was a way
of organising large scale labour,
as much as creating social control.

Rome was last empire of the ancient world,
and into it Christianity was born and took root
in a way that was beyond rational explanation.
Rome later made churches the backbone of the state,
the place where citizens eventually paid their taxes.

Islam came after and became a faith built around empire,
built around externalising mass conflict management,
making their homegrown troublemakers trouble for their enemies.
None of these empires started with founding documents
of statehood, or constitutions that sought to define 'freedom'
or what freedom, or purpose, might be for, or against.

America was the empire that inherited both slavery
and the word 'freedom' from the English, to free itself
of England. Whilst keeping hold of a rampant, Capitalist,
model by which to conduct modern industrial slavery.
All whilst claiming to be Christian whilst being unaware
of how many of the earliest Christians were Roman slaves,
who found a balm in Christianity that made slavery endurable,
their faith unrecognised by their superstitious, grasping, masters.