The Hierarchy and Bureaucratic Structure of the Imperial Machine
The Golden Imperial Collar of Professional Certification
Imperial power is dispersed and hidden within organizations that the public would not give a second glance. The Empire has made corruption a mundane part of everyday life.
Many ambitious people aspire to be professionals. What they will actually achieve is a golden choke chain wrapped around their throats held by the Empire.
The Empire can ruin a professional by yanking their license or certification. Professional certification is the mace that the Empire uses to keep the professional classes in line. The Empire’s Media (or other Imperial entity) manufactures some excuse and the certification boards will strip an Imperial threat’s license to practice. Imperial control of certification boards appears to be the norm in America and England.
The membership of the certification boards should be considered (a priori) to be policy or enforcement agents of the Empire.
When destroying an organization as vast as the Empire you have to concentrate your efforts against those personnel who have a key role in maintaining the Empire’s control. The Empire prefers a rigid centralized hierarchy where a few key imperial managers can control thousands. The Empire extends its control outside of the government by using both formal and informal hierarchies. Certification boards are formal hierarchies which do not have to be publicly transparent.
I have a temperament which derives more from the homicidal maniac than from the saint. The Empire is not entirely to blame for this. While the professionals are part of the Imperial core their skills are also necessary to society. Too many revolutions have hastened disaster by killing everyone associated with the ruling class.
The Empire does not give professionals any real choices, obedience is a pragmatic choice. The easiest and least bloody way to break the Empire’s control over the professionals is a moratorium on all professional board actions. The government (or just the people) temporally strip those boards of any legal authority over the professionals. If those boards attempt to assert their authority using other assets of the Empire it will also illuminate and draw unwanted attention to those other assets.
Most Imperial assets are inclined to only act in secret against the Empire’s enemies. The certification boards can call upon legitimate law enforcement agencies if they are physically attacked (playing the Empires game). But those boards cannot get assistance from other Imperial assets (thugs) just because their authority has been circumvented.
Deprived of the centralized hierarchy the assets of the Empire can be defeated in detail.
The Wall Street Draft and Government Agency Managers
The American military draft selected people to fight and die in the Empire’s wars. The Imperial bureaucratic system chooses its managers from the people who profit from those wars.
The American people do not set policy. The American people do not choose who will be their enemies. The American people cannot investigate the corruption within their government. All of these decisions are made by people who have to take a pay cut in order to maintain Imperial control over the American bureaucracy.
A long time ago it was called the spoils system. A way to reward people for their political patronage.
Two things happened. One the bureaucracy developed an imperial culture that could ignore their managers if they tried to change imperial policy. The imperial saturation of the FBI, Department of Justice, US Geological Survey, and the National Science Foundation being examples. The bureaucracy became an immovable object and an anchor for the Empire.
Both political parties became competing factions for control of the Empire. The only difference between the parties were the industrial and corporate factions that each party was championing.