An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire

by Arundhati Roy
2004

A brilliant novelist (The God of Small Things) has given up such idle pursuits as fiction writing to join the current legion of pamphleteers in attempting to inform the American public about the propaganda of the mass media, the corporatization of the world, the ongoing violence of repressive regimes as they attempt to create good business investment climates. In this collection of talks and speeches, she pleads with us, especially the good and noble citizens of this great country, to resist the media controlled conversation and force the real issues to the forefront. She desperately believes that we still can if only we were informed and outraged enough and persistent. A muse of the resistance movement.


She has one note of hope - that George W. Bush, in his incompetence, has revealed the empire building machinery for what it is. The poetry of her writing, combined with her passion makes this slim book worth pursuing. She leaves us with the memorable metaphor of a buffalo being persued by bees. The buffalo being the mass media and the bees being the cadre of internet writers working to reveal the truth, but she reminds us that the buffalo still determines where it will go, what news it will cover. How eloquently she explains how the act of resistance is being co-opted by this crisis coverage. Protestors might dream up some news worthy spectacle only to raise the stakes so that the same act at the next protest is old hat. Non-violent protest is fast becoming ineffective as a way to garner public sympathy. Which way to turn? Not to politics for that would be to operate from a position of weakness (it takes money). Roy dreams a vision for us, though it is somewhat sketchy, that might be described as a parallel culture of higher ground where real issues are discussed with broad ideals, not just those of one note specialty interests, but a bigger picture encompassing justice for all.