Peace Man�s State of the Union speech, his first, was hailed as another historical speech. It�s rhythmic; it repeats jobs, jobs, and jobs and notes that U.S. children deserve a better education.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. Thousands will be put to work building solar panels. Others can work on creating high-speed rail services. The U.S. needs workers now! They key is education, education, education.

Math and science! Math and science! We need to emphasize math and science, says Peace Man:

Ah, what�s behind the curtain producing these words?

The Empire needs American workers now, specific workers.

The Empire has discovered that, once again, it needs more workers if it is to be the SECURITY agent for the entire world. Indeed, the entire world is, as Glenn Greenwald notes, a battlefield for the U.S. to hunt down �terrorist� and �dissenters.� These �terrorists� want our freedom. They want what we�ve taken by force and by law, U.S. law, from the indigenous people of this land and what we�ve accomplished by coercing free labor from kidnapped African and their descendents. There are cooperating oil regions, cooperating cheap labor regions, and cooperating drug regions on the battlefield. And then there are the belligerent regions yet to come in line with the American Empire�s way of thinking. They have yet to comprehend the American value: Opposition will be destroyed! �Dissenters� within the U.S. and abroad are to possess no region, except a series of mass graves!

If the Empire is to keep the PEACE, it needs to install its military bases and secret detention, black, sites everywhere to fortify the capitalist economy, on the one hand. Think 4 (not 2 wars) on Peace Man�s watch (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen); think Columbia and the need of the U.S. to work its covert magic to unravel the Latin American alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia; think 9 black sites in Afghanistan alone and others yet to be constructed; think Africom in Africa, one way or another - because this business represents the interests of the American Empire.

Empire needs armies of workers, young physicists to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, more CIA and secret operatives in foreign theatres, more creators of detention and surveillance systems. It needs to have covert workers - masterminds behind the action - young people sitting behind computers pressing the button and releasing a drone anywhere around the world while others design body scanners and I.D. chips for implants in the bodies of their fellow citizens. The Empire needs the minds of the young many already fine tuned by current educational institutions and the corporate media to accept the status quo of poverty for the masses of the unfortunate and success for the lucky few.

Get used to it! Change? This is change: War will be with us! (And who will dare to ask why!). We need to create a more enhanced lethal nuclear force, to expand our troops, to sell weapons to its �allies� and cooperating dictators willing to enforce the sword against neighboring countries.

We need the largest Pentagon budget ever! $768 billion!

Seven hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars would show so much love to U.S. children and their working-class parents! But Peace Man loves his position of power among Beneke, Geithner Sumners, Gates, McChystal, AIG, Goldman Sachs, of course, and his basketball partner, Arnie Duncan.

What is the real cost of reforming the children: the soul of this nation! Seven hundred U.S. military bases and counting on the battlefield equal reforming children for war!

The American Empire has no need of those with an interest in African philosophy or African American history or literature to empower Black Americans in particular and educate others in general. History of any kind is no longer necessary with an administration who asks its citizens to forget the past. The Empire has no interest in teachers or writers of literature. No need to study Arabic unless, as a translator in the service of Special Forces, you are assigned to stand next to soldiers or XE (previously Blackwater) contractors as you contribute to the interrogation of a kidnapped Muslim in Iraq or Pakistan. No need to contemplate the wonders of space unless you develop the means to plant the American flag on Neptune. No need for cheap garment workers: if the Empire can tame the Haitians, it will have plenty of Walt Disney characters sewn on children�s pajamas, right here in the Western hemisphere. Workers in Indonesia and Bangladesh respond to the calls of Comcast customers, �anytime/anywhere,� for less trouble and more profits. You, with the potential to create with wood furniture for your neighbors, sorry - you�re in a capitalist world!

As my colleague, Tolu Olorunda, writes in �The Game Was Right: The Education System Is a Booby Trap (And More)� at All HipHop.com, poets need not apply for the world that the Empire is mapping for its citizens.

Pigeonhole the young ones into math and science fields. So many historical speeches saying so little about the state of the union! What�s in it for our children, Peace Man? Or is it more likely that Red, Black, and Brown children will continue to be the object of scientific successes. It is more likely our children will be the recipients of new and improved bullets or drones or frequent visitors to a 6 X 8 cell.

The lights are off in the capitol. The current leadership, much like the previous regimes, because they were members of the previous regimes, seeing with their mind�s eye China and India and the decreasing number of Chinese and Indian graduates in math and science who opt to remain in the U.S. and build up this capitalist economy, whisper about the Empire�s own potential among other, fast-growing capitalist systems and shout to the American public: second rate is not acceptable!

So my fellow Americans - �In this new decade, it�s time the American people get a government that matches their decency; that embodies their strength.� Patronizing. And yet, the American people will love you for it. My fellow Americans, let�s have generations of young hailing the potential of U.S. Empire. The American people have a government that matches their desperation and that embodies their weakness - again!

A free country needs more than nuclear weapons makers. A free country needs more than psychologists focused on torture techniques or bio-chemists searching for a better form of white phosphor. In a free country, where people are encouraged and supported to live up to their potential, we would have quilters, artists, sun dancers, shaman, Fon players, neighborhood food growers, and gardeners.

In a free country, freedom isn�t obsolete!

No. The Empire doesn�t need poets! It doesn�t need teachers to discuss wimpy subjects like compassion and human rights. It doesn�t need another people�s history of the U.S. or another Langston Hughes or Jose Marti or bell hooks. The U.S. won�t need another Mark Twain or James Baldwin or Gloria Anzaldua. No anti-war, anti-imperialist Martin Luther King Jr. - again!

Peace Man points the finger at the Republicans. Obstructionist! Are the Republicans the only obstructionists? Capitalism by definition obstructs freedom. By definition, it must repress the majority of the world�s workers, particularly its poor and low-wage workers among the Red, Black, and Brown populations. Capitalism is the obstructionist and Peace Man will do anything to leave behind the legacy of a bigger, better Empire of Capitalism.

Humanity needs free thinkers. There�s ne�er a one in Washington D.C.!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer for over thirty years of commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality, she has served as a coordinator of student and community resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures, with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.