The Empire Has No Clothes

A common Lovecraftian theme is the peril in searching deep within one’s own history for some vindicating truth, as the searcher may only find terrible disappointment. In “Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family,” the titular character explores throughout the world for proof that his ancestor was not insane after all. Regrettably he ends up cursed with information that is “a thousandfold more hideous.” Similarly America is on a voyage for a bygone idyllic world. It seems we are daily inundated with calls to “go back” to some older era where the American republic “worked.” However Daniel Immerwahr is here to tell us that there is no virtuous era that we can go back to. America was never the honest republic she pretends to be and has always been unscrupulous empire.