What has happened to the common sense of Americans? Has it completely gone down
the drain with the propaganda of U.S. superiority?
Don’t they see the millions and millions of people who have died and are still
dying across the world, due to U..S. empire illusions and the firmly
established greed and power of the Big Corporations? Don’t they see that the
lone superpower as a taken-for-granted is a fiction?
Yes, the United States was once a powerful nation, and a nation that people in
the world looked up to, but it lost all its good points on the aggressive stand
all over the world. Its go-it-alone, we’re-the-leaders-of-the-world mentality
is the way this ’superpower’ has been living it up at least since World War II.
The more it has been crushing and killing, the more it has lost its credibility
in the world. The more its corporations intruded on the sovereignty of other
states, the faster did this country lose its favorable standing in the world.
And Americans themselves, how do they see the world at this point? From a
distance it seems as if they are beginning to open their eyes. One big BUT
however. The everyday American is not capable of giving up on his deeply
indoctrinated faith that the United States is the greatest country in the
world. They ‘know’ that they are basically moral, highly civilized, good people
who want to confer their way of life to the whole world since the rest of the
world is so uncivilized, so poor, living in such precarious conditions.
There is no doubt in their minds that the United States is the foremost
democracy in the world. Since they don’t know anything about the rest of the
world, it’s easy to propagandize them into believing just about anything you
want to make them believe. And besides, don’t the every-two-year elections
prove that they are the ones who select the leaders and so they have a voice in
what’s being done in their names? A majority of U.S. citizens are most
certainly taken in by the belief that they participate in the running of the
country.
It’s doubtful if there are many Americans who see the National conventions that
have just started as the fool’s gold that they are. The most expensive circus
that ever was and that the people pay dearly for. Just another Disney World to
fool the people into believing that something important is going on and that
they matter. “We don’t have a moment to lose or a vote to spare,” [Hillary]
Clinton said. “Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our
children hangs in the balance.” [1]
What is hanging in the balance is hard to see since both presidential
candidates are saying pretty much the same things, except that their styles are
different. Ok, Obama/Hillary now say Healthcare for all, but that is to be seen
once the corporations get into the game. The arms manufacturers telling the new
administration what they ‘need’, the HMO’s, the pharmaceutical industry, all
the corporate giants telling them of their sine qua non. Nothing so far has
indicated in the least that either Hillary or Obama is against privatization or
the free market. Disaster capitalism, as Naomi Klein says, is the name of the
system and democracy is the victim. Regulation is a non-concept. How can
corporations develop and maximize profit if they are being regulated? Starve
the people but don’t you ever think of strangling the corporations that are
making the world go round. Profit is king and the people be damned.
So how do Americans see their country’s criminal aggressions and the callous
greed? First of all, greed is a good thing in the American credo. God rewards
the hard workers and the ones left behind have no reason to complain. Socialism
is a dirty word and welfare is only good when it’s for the benefit of the Big
Corporations.
Instead of seeing that the United States invades or buys every country that
does not agree with their methods of running business, the gullible U.S.
citizen is firmly convinced that the U.S. comes to the aid of every country
when it is in trouble. They support the evil dictator and things calm down.
Nobody ever lets them know that what the U.S. is doing is in the interest of
its own global hegemony and that the indigenous people are beaten down and
suffering even worse after the United States gets in on the side of the
dictator. For every social uprising in Central America, from the
CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954 in Guatemala on through the Reagan years, the
United States has intervened with an iron fist, bombing and killing, usually
through mercenary death squads, until the leftist struggle for justice is
totally crushed and the U.S.-supported dictatorship can go on doing the bidding
of the Empire.
Inside the United States, the increasing inequality and vanishing civil rights
are forcefully backed up by the Big Corporations who see that state of things
as the only way of meeting their goal of ever increasing dividends to the
shareholders and multi-million bonuses to the CEOs. Furthermore, this is the
way of life that is considered by them as the normal way of running the
economy. Ethics do not exist. Those who were born to grab from the others will
do so no matter what they were taught in Sunday school about doing good to
their neighbor.
So why don’t the U.S. governments try to rein in the greedy corporations?
Because the corporations are the ones who run the show, who tell the so-called
rulers what to do – in all countries more or less, not just in the United
States. The lawmakers and the heads of governments are all puppets dancing on
strings, unless the so-called rulers actually have a foot in each camp. They
pretend to run the country but they are actually looking after the corporations
they are tied to and their own interests. In this last administration, this has
been the case more than ever before.
It is certainly not in the interest of the ruling elite to give in to demands
of fair treatment from the poor sections of society or even from the middle
class. Starving the beast is a prerequisite for controlling the populace, for
setting the rules of the game. A population that is ignorant, apathetic from
tiredness and overwork, dumbed down from infotainment and antiseptic television
shows – that is exactly what suits the greedy money makers. No insurgency,
since there’s no energy left for such a thing as a fight for better conditions.
No knowledge about the rest of the world, and so Americans can go on believing
that they are the best, no matter what the rest of the world might feel about
that unquestioned rule of faith. So the world doesn’t love us any more. It’s
because of the war in Iraq. It’s that simple.
Creeping totalitarianism, the people losing one civil right after the other,
and their voices not being heard or paid attention to. This is what has become
of ‘America the beautiful’. And all the while through non-stop propaganda the
citizens are made to believe that they live in a democracy.
In this police state there is no need to make Jews scrub the sidewalks. There
is no need for ostentatiously depriving a section of the population of their
freedoms and making them the scapegoats. Poverty will serve the purpose of
creating a marginal group that can be exploited.. No need for arm bands with
the star of David. The poor people and in particular the immigrants have their
backs sufficiently bent to serve the ever-existing need of a class to look down
on. In spite of the age-old history of racism in America, this is not a war on
race, it’s a class war, and it’s getting more and more extreme. The so-called
free trade system, which is far from free, is only benefiting Big Money.
Desperate poverty has been increasing all over the world ever since the
organizations that set the rules for the economies of third world countries
promised to solve the crisis of hunger and poverty in the world. In fact, what
they were gearing up to do was finish off the plunder of the poor countries
that depended on their high-interest loans. You might well ask yourselves if
this neocolonialism is not even more disastrous for the third-world countries
than the former kind that was very gradually ended after World War II, at least
in a legal sense.
9/11 was a windfall for the neocons since, whoever orchestrated it, it paved
the way for the totalitarianism that we are now witnessing. It made the
invention of the ‘war on terror’ possible.. A war president can allow himself
to commit aggression in the name of the people that would meet with violent
protests in a peaceful era. Fear is the ever efficient means of keeping a
population under control.
Little did they see that the ambitions of the neocons went much farther than
the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the control of its oil resources. The
aim was much higher. To begin with they wanted control of the whole Greater
Middle East. Then what was going to follow was clearly control of the planet
and possibly outer space. However, it now seems obvious that their ambitions
will be cut short, since other big powers are rearing their heads in different
parts of the world.
Also the ‘war on terror’ has been proven to be a worn-out cliché, a nonsense
word, mainly because all this so-called war is doing is increasing the
resistance to the United States and its aggressive march across the world’s
continents. Even the U.S. citizens are aware of this counter-effect.
So what the neocon regime is now aiming at is a renewal of the cold war. Russia
is going to be the enemy No.1 once again. They make the people believe that
things are calming down in the Middle East. Iraq is moving towards a democracy,
is what they try to make people believe. What is happening in Afghanistan and
Pakistan is hushed up. They have the media on their side, which has of course
been essential in winning the support of the people that they have had so far.
The question is now: Will le capitalisme sauvage (as the French say) win the
life or death game or will the people finally gather strength and a voice and
manage to throw them out? To the corporations it’s a game, to the people it’s a
matter of sheer survival.
All the ballyhoo about the American dream is just that and as for Bill
Clinton’s words about restor[ing] America’s standing in the world [2], that’s
for megalomaniacs and dreamers. We will be lucky if the planet survives, and it
will take the rising up of the people, a forceful attack on the prevailing
corporate system by the people all over the world to make that happen. The
world is under attack from U.S. corporatism, ecology, economy, inequality,
injustice, and it’s not just American citizens who have to speak out and act
out. It’s the people of the world.
Notes
[1] Steven Rosenfeld: Hillary Electrifies: “Nothing Less Than the Fate of Our
Nation … Hangs in the Balance”
[2] Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention on August 27, 2008 -
exact quote: “Clearly, the job of the next President is to rebuild the American
Dream and restore America’s standing in the world.”
Siv O’Neall is an Axis of Logic columnist, based in France. She can be reached
at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Cambodia Discussion (CAMDISC) - www.cambodia.org" group.
This is an unmoderated forum. Please refrain from using foul language.
Thank you for your understanding. Peace among us and in Cambodia.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/camdisc
Learn more - http://www.cambodia.org
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
