Dear Editor,
“You think there are rules. There are no rules.” Billy Bob Thornton
I find it odd that those who know that ‘our government’ and ‘our free press’ are corrupt liars will readily accept those lies, ignore the corruption, treason and act as though it’s all real. ‘Consumers’ aren’t interested in a leader who would apply sound principles in defense of the constitution, individual liberty and private property; they want to be ruled by someone they consider a suitable symbol of America’s “greatness.”
Patriotism includes pointing out your country’s faults and working to make it better. America’s place in the world today is like a very large animal, once unchallenged, now trapped by its own foolishness, caught in a tar baby, violently flailing about in its effort to free itself and re-establish its authority. It can’t succeed. We’ve come to the point as a society that we accept any action, so long as it comes with the promise of keeping us, presumably the good people, safe. We convince ourselves we’d never be treated badly by our rulers.
We sell ourselves the illusion of safety, surrendering choice to those who promise to protect us; our private communications, open to government to ‘protect’ us from ‘terrorists’. We’ve been protected from unapproved political ideas. We’re kept from wicked substances, though it’s clear that’s not successful. The guardians of our well-being, FDA, insurance companies, public health officials, or whoever, will soon be deciding what food and drink we consume.
America is trapped after years of its own blunders. It’s lost its reputation. Its power is reduced with all the difficulties that will cause for an arrogant people having a blind faith in their wonderfulness. America can’t accept its mistakes or that it’s ever wrong, like a fundamentalist religion whose members can’t recognize or admit they ever followed anything but the divine plan.
America obviously isn’t capable of governing itself: The irony of a people who can’t govern themselves advising others how to govern themselves displays the silliness of American government. We brought democracy to Iraq, Libya and are telling Syria their government isn’t approved.
America’s establishment, feeling its customary easy superiority in the world slipping away, seems determined to forcibly seize, using dirty tricks, advantages which no longer come to it by superior acts. Rather than learn from its errors and adjust its delusional assumptions, America is determined to force its control on the world. You can’t reclaim genuine leadership once you have been exposed enough times in your bad judgment. The Empire is clearly on the decline.
Policies based on ideologies don’t succeed unless you’re willing to forcibly smother the opposition. Others have their own needs and America doesn’t have the flexibility to accommodate them. America’s oligarchs ignore others, assuming that the Old Testament tale that man has dominion over the earth’s creatures means, them. Such thinking grew during many years of easy power that wasn’t due to qualities of American society but to many accidental circumstances, most of which are gone.
America squandered countless resources in Vietnam chasing after a fantasy its ideologues insisted was deadly important. America’s mad rush to fight communism on all fronts demonstrated the zealotry of the Empire. It was a huge, foolish choice which wasted colossal resources. In Vietnam, America was shamed, defeated on the battlefield by a seemingly inconsequential opponent, having abandoned alleged ethical values, murdering millions who never threatened the Empire. The Empire used napalm, cluster bombs, and secret mass terror programs. The savagery ripped America’s own society, dividing the nation almost as badly as the Civil War did.
Following Vietnam, the disasters have been increasing revealing the American ‘patriots’ destructive inability to govern, right down to the 2008 financial collapse caused by ignoring sound financial management chasing ‘our’ system of unlimited greed. The entire world was hurt by that stupidity whose full consequences are continuing.
From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, the Empire, has gained a reputation for “strategic miscalculation”. It’s doing it again. Top Pentagon figures have publicly started to label China and Russia, as official “threats”.
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were completely unnecessary, cost vast sums, caused immense misery, and achieved nothing useful. More than one million Iraqis died in an invasion sold entirely on lies. These wars also set in motion changes whose long-term effects have yet to be felt: for example, its Kurdish, oil-producing region has almost separated completely from Iraq and the ‘refugee’ flood destroying Europe is certainly the child of the Bush invasions. ISIS is the product of the Iraq invasion.
America’s primitive approach to the Soviet Union’s collapse, its failure to regard Russia as important enough to cooperate with, ignored America’s own long-term interests and displayed how arrogant America has become. Russia reached out for cooperation and partnership. Russia embraced free trade, a concept Americans broadcast for years, whenever it was to their advantage, but Russia is again treated as a sinister adversary.
America fights the power of economic forces, like fighting the wind, hoping for its continued dominance. ‘Our Empire’ is desperately trying to stop economic arrangements between Russia and Europe. The Empire wants to permanently to establish its dominance in Europe even though it has nothing useful to offer.
America’s deliberately dishonest explanation of Russia’s measured response to America’s coup in Ukraine is used to produce an artificial sense of crisis. Europe recognizes what America is doing but doesn’t want to disagree openly, although the Minsk Agreement came pretty close to a rejection of America’s demand for hardline tactics.
Ukraine’s coup was intended to put a hostile government in control of a long stretch of Russian border, which might cooperate in American military adventures and would irritate Russia. You don’t get good results with malicious actions. The coup has only hurt Ukraine’s long-term interests. Its bungling government is pursuing an unnecessary civil war, and may have shot down a civilian airliner. Its finances are in turmoil, and there’s no willingness by an economically-troubled Europe, to assist it. Ukraine is a perfect example of the damage America inflicts with spiteful actions intending to use them to hurt others.
Who authorized America to behave in this dangerous way? Europe’s smarter leaders lived thru the Cold War, surviving two world wars, understand and are trying to keep things contained, but America has some highly irresponsible dangerous people/Neocons working hard on the Ukraine, Syria and other American created ‘accidents’.
The actions of ‘our’ government are easier to recognize if you realize they’re an occupying army. ‘Our government’ sings the Orwellian chorus about America making the world safe for freedom, liberty and never using force abroad except in self-defense. History proves otherwise. America, next to Rome in the Western world, ranks as one of the world’s most aggressive nations when examining the evidence. The only just war is one fought to defend your homeland from invasion.
Know when you don’t know something.
American reality seems a combination of old movies; ‘Soylent Green’, ‘Fahrenheit 451’, and ‘The Running Man’, an old Schwarzenegger
Movie about aggressive game shows, with a bit of ‘Brazil’ added for garnish.
Americans can’t remember past last Tuesday. They only know pieces of real history. They only hear the highlights of the ‘news’. They don’t know where the country is that we’re invading or bombing. Next week the only takeaway they’ll have from all this ‘news’ is that America was wonderful and blameless again. Remember freedom fries; now France has joined in the Empire’s attack on the mid-east. This, from what is at least blowback from the adventure that gave us freedom fries to begin with.
“A nation of fear-addled sissies, busybodies and bullies that genuflects whenever “safety” is mentioned and who cannot grok the idea of leaving other people alone deserves what’s coming.” Eric Peters
Craig Dudley