We have to acknowledge that the empire is tottering towards its collapse. So what is empire? Empire is the expression of white supremacy beyond our borders. The whole nature of empire is to go into the Middle East — previously into Vietnam, Latin America, the Philippines and elsewhere — and steal natural resources and exploit cheap labor in the name of white supremacy. And of course, we have an American society built on chattel slavery and genocide against indigenous peoples. What empires traditionally do at the end is they engage in what historians call "micro-militarism".

I feel as if empire is something that is either taken for granted in space opera—uninterrogated, simply present as a fact of worldbuilding—or it is rendered so evil as to be incomprehensibly bad…

[F]rom the earliest periods of time [man] alone has divided the empire of the world between him and Nature. ...[H]e rather enjoys than possesses, and it is by constant and perpetual activity and vigilance that he preserves his advantage, for if those are neglected every thing languishes, changes, and returns to the absolute dominion of Nature. She resumes her power, destroys the operations of man; envelopes with moss and dust his most pompous monuments, and in the progress of time entirely effaces them, leaving man to regret having lost by his negligence what his ancestors had acquired by their industry. Those periods in which man loses his empire, those ages in which every thing valuable perishes, commence with war and are completed by famine and depopulation. Although the strength of man depends solely upon the union of numbers, and his happiness is derived from peace, he is, nevertheless, so regardless of his own comforts as to take up arms and to fight, which are never-failing sources of ruin and misery. Incited by insatiable avarice, or blind ambition, which is still more insatiable, he becomes callous to the feelings of humanity; regardless of his own welfare, his whole thoughts turn upon the destruction of his own species, which he soon accomplishes. The days of blood and carnage over, and the intoxicating fumes of glory dispelled, he beholds, with a melancholy eye, the earth desolated, the arts buried, nations dispersed, an enfeebled people, the ruins of his own happiness, and the loss of his real power.

Empire as located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe.

Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in the water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not his then his son's or unborn grandson's) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal domination, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

Empire is a very stimulating account of globalisation, but it is hopelessly wrong on two central issues. The state has not withered away. Strong states still exist—USA, China, Germany, etc—but the difference with the past is that there is now only one Empire and this is not the nebulous entity imagined by Cultural Studies, but a real, living organism and it has a name; the United States of America.

One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.

Empires are synonymous with centralized — if occasionally schismatized — hierarchical power structures in which influence is restricted to an economically privileged class retaining its advantages through — usually — a judicious use of oppression and skilled manipulation of both the society’s information dissemination systems and its lesser — as a rule nominally independent — power systems. In short, it’s all about dominance.

Procreation annihilates eternity.

(theatrically) Do you realize, Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings? A. I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room. Q. And you predict its ruin? A. It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgements. Personally, I regret the prospect. Even if the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse. It is that state of anarchy which my project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

We have to acknowledge that the empire is tottering towards its collapse... Empire is the expression of white supremacy beyond our borders... to go into the Middle East... Vietnam, Latin America, the Philippines... & steal natural resources... exploit cheap labor... White supremacy hurts white folks.... The police in Buffalo intentionally knocking down that older white man, who lay there bleeding from the head while the police walked over him... was such a profound metaphor for how racism hurts white people... What empires traditionally do at the end is they engage in what historians call "micro-militarism".... At the end stage, the elites need the tools that the empire perfected on people of color abroad... the drones and militarized police and heavy weapons such as armored personnel carriers being used.... against the country's own citizens.

The imperial view, a history professor at the Naval Academy once said, is the long view. Individuals build empires because they want their names to echo through time. They build massive constructs of stone and steel so that their descendants will remember the people who created the world that they only live in. There were buildings on Earth that were thousands of years old, sometimes the only remaining evidence of empires that thought they would last forever. Hubris, the professor had called it. When people build, they are trying to make an aspiration physical. When they die, their intentions are buried with them. All that’s left is the building.