CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Rising American Chimera?

Pebble mosaic depicting the Greek hero Bellerophon riding the flying horse Pegasos killing the monster Chimera, c. 300–270 BCE. Archaeological Museum of Rhodes, Greece. Public Domain.

According to Homer, Chimera was a hybrid monster made up of a lion, the head of a fire-breathing goat sprouting on the back of the lion and a dragon in the tail of the monster (Iliad 6.160-183). Such a monster of divine origins had no place in Greek society. Hero Bellerophon riding his winged horse Pegasos slayed Chimera. The symbolic significance of this myth is that the gods sometimes send monsters to remind humans they are violating the order of nature and civilization. This is happening to some degree in America. I explore the story below.

I arrived in America in August 1961

August 2011 marked fifty years since I left Greece for the United States. And August 2026 will add another 15 years, making my American Odyssey 65 years old.

In 1961, in Greece, I was a high school graduate with dreams of becoming a doctor. My beloved physician grandmother Demetra had shown me the way. Now, 65 years later, in the United States, I am not a Doctor of Medicine but a historian with a Doctor of Philosophy — caught in a time warp.

My American college education was a Renaissance for me, a moment of discovery, learning and self-confidence. In a metaphysical sense, I became Greek in America. My college education made that possible. However, the moment I left the university looking for a job, I felt I had eaten the lotus of forgetfulness and entered an alien realm. I developed a blurred vision.

The world now in 2026 is more complicated and more dangerous than the world of 1961. The experiment on Communism is history. Capitalism in America, however, has evolved into a dinosaur, a global hegemony of me-first accompanied by ceaseless wars. The result? Climate chaos, heating land, waters and the atmosphere, including poisoning and devouring the Earth for profit. Meanwhile, the Wall Street oligarchy and the tech and AI billionaires, who trigger the political and social upheavals, enrich themselves.

In 2008, this plutocratic oligarchy precipitated one of its periodic national financial meltdowns in order to reverse progress towards equality and democracy. The Wall Street bankers wrecked the lives of millions of Americans. And yet, the government headed by Barack Obama, the first black American elected president, did not punish the Wall Street bankers. In fact, the government itself has been under their sinister influences.

The military industrial complex

At the same time, America’s military-industrial complex, the nerve center of unregulated disaster capitalism, is encircling the world with hundreds of military bases. America’s steadfast support for Israel probably triggered the September 11, 2001 Moslem attack on New York and the Pentagon. Then, on February 28, 2026, Israel led America to the war against Iran / Persia. The US accelerated its endless petroleum wars.

The world in 2026 is full of more than 8 billion people. Of these, close to a billion live in extreme poverty and 3.5 billion in poverty. Africa continues to be the mother of hunger and famine.

Despite these developments auguring more severe trouble for humanity, people still live in silence or delusion verging on madness. Like sheep holding AI devices like iPhones, they have bought into “modernity.” This means people feel fortunate they have TV, airplanes, nuclear weapons and computers and genetically engineered corn.

I felt unease about this techno philia from the very beginnings of my American journey. America has so many cars, for example, that cities resemble parking lots.

My education sparked my questioning. I published my first critical essay on the injustice of giant agriculture in “The Christian Science Monitor” in 1975. My first book, “Fear in the Countryside,” was critical of the emerging feudalism behind the shiny armor of large agriculture. It came out in 1976. None of my modest expectations came to pass. Feudal agriculture shows off giant tractors, iPhones, AI and huge poison spray machines. But its most pervasive characteristic is the killing of animals: about 10 billion animals slaughtered year after year in animal farms. These killing fields are everywhere and nowhere in rural America. Americans refuse to see animal farms.

I was hoping for a world where, at a minimum, the peasant and small family farmer could cultivate modest pieces of land without oppression. Why should America duplicate England’s vicious enclosures whereby large farmers grab most of the land? Why has agrarian reform been failing nearly everywhere? What forces are fuelling such violent policies? Could it be that modernity’s model was the new landlord Americans call agribusiness? In fact, a concoction of mining practices, heavy machinery, pesticides, petroleum and other chemicals became agribusiness. This agribusiness hired science to give it a respectable facelift and, together, whitewash feudalism, the harsh Big Ag of our dark age.

When I was studying medieval history at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, a small farm town in Illinois, I thought that the violence and darkness we associate with the dark ages belonged to the people of Europe alone. Europe flirted with darkness because in the fourth century Greek civilization fell to the Christians adopted by the Roman Empire, which, in its tern in the fifth century, fell to the Christians and barbarians of northern Europe. But little did I know my professors blamed medieval Europe unduly because they wanted to tone down their own dancing with the barbarians.

Agribusiness and other large corporations have now resurrected a “modern” version of feudalism. By which I mean they have so much power that they poison democratic institutions. In addition, this global........

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