-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 7, 2007 1:24:45 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The 'Merkin Way
THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE
Tuesday, 06 February 2007
By James Rothenberg
http://www.ichblog.eu/content/view/383/2/
While most Americans have no difficulty reciting the flattering
components of the “American way” – the routine stuff of political
speeches such as life, liberty, justice – far fewer seem willing to
identify as “American” unflattering, complementary components of
our national ethos.
02/06/07 "ICHBlog" -- -- For instance, George W. Bush claims we are
a peaceful nation. He says it a lot. On military bases, to the VFW,
at West Point. Of course, we are not now, nor were we ever,
peaceful. Pacifists have never had an easy time with the American
government, and in point, the term itself is used as pejorative.
Not far behind is “passive”.
We behold the world not as a habitat suited for peaceful
coexistence but as a bad neighborhood in need of control. Recent
Pentagon figures (DoD Base Structure Report, FY 2006) list 2,965
military bases in all 50 states and 7 territories. In addition, it
lists 766 bases in 40 foreign countries. Beyond that, we have
active duty military personnel (some of it quite small) in about
150 foreign countries (DoD Personnel and Procurement Statistics,
June 30, 2006). That’s not all the countries in the world. We
missed some.
The DoD describes itself as one of the world’s largest “landlords”,
with a physical plant consisting of more than 571,200 facilities
(buildings, structures, and utilities) located on nearly 30 million
acres. To give that acres figure perspective, DoD bases would fill,
in entirety, the states of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Hawaii.
And it’s not just land. There’s the United States Space Command.
Positioning themselves as “stewards” for military space they stake
out a vision to exploit the advantages of the space medium
featuring this bold headline: “US Space Command – dominating the
space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and
investment . Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities
across the full spectrum of conflict.” (Vision for 2020 Report).
The term “investment” is used without apparent embarrassment.
Noticeably absent are the platitudes about life, liberty, and justice.
All this has grown out of a past that ravaged red, brown, and black
skin. This past century has been a rolling of imperialism and state
violence to secure resources and markets to feed our economy, while
at the same time snuffing out independence movements around the
world before they had a chance to set a “good example”, that is, by
making it on their own. Our military has won for us great national
wealth and, now, unrivalled and unchallenged power.
Our “peaceful” president has taken perhaps a million Iraqi lives
and limbs (counting closely is not in the national interest), and
thousands of the same for Americans, and no amount of yellow
ribbons will bring back a single one of them, or make a single loss
worthwhile. This, we must recognize, is part of the American way.
In particular, we must first recognize it if we are ever going to
change it.
What about rugged individualism? Is that a distinctive American
trademark? If so, it doesn’t extend to independence of mind. We are
a people steeped in orthodoxy – religious, governmental, military,
educational – and orthodoxy must always be followed. We can be sold
anything and we don’t know it. We can be lied to repeatedly and we
don’t know it. Services can be stripped away from us and we don’t
know that either because it’s in order to serve us better. Our
privacy is suddenly important to large businesses in the public
trust now that it is lost. Gullibility is American.
So is tolerance, seemingly without limit when it comes to our quasi-
permanent political class. No amount of puffery and hypocrisy from
the get-elected-and-stay-elected can completely alienate us. We
submissively watch their political fortunes rise from “God bless
this District”, to “God bless this State”, to “God bless this
Nation” as they ascend, with God, in humble service to this republic.
Do Americans root for the underdog? Not if by “Americans” we mean
national domestic and foreign policy. At a time when income
inequality has reached unheard of levels in this country,
bankruptcy law was “reformed” making it more difficult for
individuals to file. It may be noted that poor individuals are more
likely to find themselves in this position than rich individuals.
Corporations have double rights – those of corporations and those
of individuals – including the rights to entice the poor into
bankruptcy by questionable and deceptive lending schemes. Or
eliminating 500 jobs at the bottom, instead of a single one at the
top, and transferring the “savings” to the bottom line of the
statement of income. Yes, the stock market is at an all-time high,
thanks in part to the 500 here and the 500 there sacrificed on the
alter of economic “progress”.
The President’s tax cuts, campaigned on in 2000, were widely
criticized as a giveaway to the rich, but this did not seem to
trouble the electorate. Protecting the minority of the opulent from
the tyranny of the majority continues as long-standing tradition.
Since we can count scores of interventions into the affairs of
foreign countries in this past half-century, we should be able to
find some examples where we just happened to take the side of the
underdogs – the peasants, the croppers, the indigenous, those most
in need. But, of course, it’s not their needs that concern us when
we intervene. It’s our needs, and the underclass can offer us
nothing because they control nothing.
Maybe our love for the underdog is manifested in policies that
guarantee their number will never decrease. Or could it be that we
just find repressive dictators and autocrats impossible to resist?
That’s meant to sound funny, but it’s true. We do find them
impossible to resist because they’re good for business and that’s
what we do with them. We do business.
The “American way of life” of popular understanding first came in
our mother’s milk, and has since been drip-fed to us by those whose
successes depend upon telling us what we wish to hear. We are
susceptible to this propaganda because the inoculation (denying it)
seems to deprive us of some of our exceptionality. Expectedly,
though, the basic features of American life differ little from
human life in other parts of the world, as there is no appreciable
difference within the species.
All forms of governance rely on at least an implicit message to the
people it means to control. Do as you are told and accept all
compliments. Perhaps the President is not far off when he says we
are peaceful. Considering his difficulties with language, he may
have meant docile.
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