The Empire Comes Home
Commentary by Fiorella Isabel
There seems to be a systemic crisis rooted in the nature of the U.S. American empire, resulting in an “Imperialist Boomerang”—a consequence of decades of interventionist foreign policy. This concept, inspired by the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung but applied geopolitically, describes the process by which the methods of control, violence, and surveillance developed and exported by the U.S. for use in foreign interventions—from the Cold War proxy battles to the post-9/11 occupations—are now being systematically re-imported and deployed against the American population. The discussion has long stopped being about political disagreements, but rather exists as a striking fundamental shift where the state begins to treat its own citizens as an occupied population, using the same legal justifications, technologies, and even personnel that were once reserved for overseas battlefields. The new realities are a turning point for both civilians and government factions that will define how the evermore technocratic U.S. navigates a digital future surrounded by global capital rat race for limited resources—particularly rare earth minerals needed for the techno-feudal future.
We discussed the transformation of federal and local law enforcement, pointing to agencies like ICE and the tactical units of local police departments, and how they’ve effectively become the domestic infantry of this boomerang effect. They are increasingly equipped with military-grade weaponry, trained in counter-insurgency tactics by military veterans, Israeli “defensive” forces, and empowered by legal frameworks that freely blur the lines between supposed national security and civilian policing. This militarization is the physical manifestation of the imperialist mindset returning home, where communities are viewed not as constituencies to be served, but as potential threats to be managed— “clear and hold” operations to be conducted in a cold manner.
But we must emphatically point that the deeper layer of this control is the pervasive and technologically advanced surveillance state, and the digital architecture of control, with the role of companies like Palantir and the integration of Big Tech with government agencies. Data collection, AI-driven monitoring of social media, and predictive policing algorithms create a system of preemptive control, similarly to what we’ve seen un dystopian films like Minority Report, a movie about a pre-crime division, and TV shows like Black Mirror, highlighting AI and digital ID gone insane. This digital dragnet is the high-tech version of colonial intelligence-gathering, now applied to every citizen, effectively chilling dissent and creating a climate of self-censorship long before any overt act of suppression is needed.
Crucially, these domestic trends are directly linked to the external actions the U.S. has engaged in on a global stage The rise of a so-called multipolar world, with the consolidation of BRICS and the strategic autonomy pursued by nations like Russia, China, and Iran, while being presented as an external pressure, offer more power to the already powerful rather than strict equity for all subjugated nations—a few deemed ‘“stronger” nations sit the table rather than everyone at the table. There isn’t an opposition, as much as a planned economic vision that may take years to fulfill and offers little in guarantee for those currently struggling, often using the same U.N Charter of diplomacy and international law that has failed Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela and countless others. As the U.S. empire faces limits to its unipolar power and competes for dwindling global resources, the need to extract wealth and maintain stability at home intensifies. This external pressure acts as an accelerant for the internal crackdown, as a state feeling its global dominance wane becomes more paranoid, more controlling, and more willing to use imperial tools on its own soil to prevent disintegration.
This leads to the central, provocative question posed: Is America Collapsing? The reality is complex in that while there’s process of internal erosion in the economic and daily life of the majority of citizens, there is an external strengthening we’re seeing in the ruling predator elite class—a group that is not limited to one nation. Note that perhaps the escalating civil unrest, the deep political polarization, and the open discussion of secession or “civil war” are signs of an uncontrolled collapse or, more ominously, a “controlled demolition” of civil liberties and democratic norms, in an effort to corral them into physical and digital prisons as they increase their persecution of dissents. This seems prevalent in the permanence of the deep state and the military-industrial-surveillance complex, as its machinery grinds on regardless of election outcomes, Presidents or congress, suggesting that true power lies with an oligarchic class benefitting from a permanently destabilized but tightly controlled populace. For example, we’ve seen the persecution of vocal opposition to designated narratives begin to increase post the 2020 election, COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia-Ukraine war, and hit a major extreme post October 7th, the Israeli genocide on Gaza, Palestinian protests, and the current U.S. aggressions on Venezuela, Cuba, Latin America and Iran, as well as the violence of ICE agents on civilians.
The United States appears to be at a crossroads, where the boundaries between foreign and domestic, war and policing, have been irrevocably blurred. The “Imperialist Boomerang” is not a future threat, but a present reality. It’s up to us all to connect the dots—to see the connection between a drone strike overseas and a no-knock raid at home, between a data-mining operation in a war zone and a predictive policing algorithm in an American city, between Palantir being used to find Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and kidnap him, to it being used by ICE agents hunting people they deem illegal, and eventually killing U.S. citizens. It is crucial to understand these interconnected dynamics that uses the excuses of immigration to build more mechanisms to crush dissidents, as the essential first step in grappling with the fundamental transformation of power and freedom in the 21st century: a reality of a ruling class set to control and work against all people. A new world, not so brave, requiring our fundamental understanding of how “they first came for X, Y, Z,” to everyone else.
Ultimately, yes the U.S. as the one unilateral world power is in decline amid the rise of a multipolar world but what that means is not a rose-colored, hero vs villain Marvel film. The disappointing fact is that there is a rise in power that is not collapsing, but strengthening and that power is coalescing around a very close-knit group of people with no ideology but money, and no loyalty to anything but capital. There is now, and this will become much more apparent soon, a global struggle for resources which has led to the emergence of a new world order—unfortunately, not the one we needed or thought. But it is up to us to increasingly understand our sobering reality, so we can better face it with a clear head.
Fiorella Isabel is an independent journalist and political analyst with a combined international ground perspective.
Source: fiorellaisabel.substack.com, February 23, 2026