American Hegemony – The Goal To Control All Highly Valued Resources

Dorothy, in the Wizard of Oz, is “lost,” but she is quickly surrounded by people who look familiar, look like family members back home. Collectively, they fend off the Wicked Witch of the West, whose campaign focuses on possessing the highly valued slippers on Dorothy’s feet. Let’s just “go a piece of the way” with this arguably political allegory: The “Wicked Witch of the West” feels entitled to the “slippers” and therefore entitled to any and every space where those highly valued “slippers” exist. Not satisfied with “magical” powers and advantages of a familiar landscape, the “Wicked Witch of the West” pursues her enemies in their dreams, forcing them to recognize her approach or encroachment as something to dread even while she urges them to come to her willingly.

The egotistical use of language to capture “space” by the hegemony is astonishing. To get to the highly valued things of the other, it must mark the “space” of the other. The hegemony, like the Wicked Witch of the West, assures her enemy that escape is futile, and they will be hunted long before they ever are at “home” with themselves, their community, their possessions — their minds.