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LETTERS / Most Americans Prefer To Sit, And Watch

Dear Editor,

General Smedley Butler, who earned the Medal of Honor twice, said in 1933, we have every right to destroy a system that tries to destroy us. Generals sometimes gain wisdom upon retirement, Butler explained, his “mind was in suspended animation while serving as a soldier and following orders”.

In 1933 Butler said that he “was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism” saying: “I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested”.

This empire isn’t new. Things haven’t improved since Butler’s times. We’ve known what it is, and what it does, all along. We’ve seen the Empire attack popular uprisings against its dictatorial puppets, placed countries under Empire control, and then helped organize and train the death squads that killed off the opposition. The Empire regularly crushes popular governments that threatened American business interests using the excuse of “anti-communism”, obvious with Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo, Haiti numerous times, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua in the 1980’s, and many others.

Many of us lived through the epic lies and genocide of millions in Indochina during the “Vietnam War”. More recently we’ve seen the lies of Empire repeated in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Georgia, and Ukraine. The trouble we stir up elsewhere continues because we tell ourselves that it doesn’t affect us. Ask Jesus about that.

American’s worship the military and “our” national-security state. We praise the troops for defending some mythical rights, believing those “rights” are being attacked in foreign countries, as they evaporate here at home. This devotion to government, militarism, nationalism, interventions, invasions, and occupations is called “patriotism”.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence opposed everything “our government” represents today. Some think America’s Revolution was waged against a foreign government. American rebels were British citizens fighting against their government and weren’t supporting their troops; they were killing the soldiers of their own government. Not everyone considered them to be patriots. If Britain had won, “the founding fathers” would now be seen as common criminals. Officially they were traitors, terrorists, and criminals.

The British revolutionaries taught a valuable lesson about patriotism. When one’s own government is wrong, it’s your duty to take a firm stand against that government. Blindly supporting soldiers or government regardless of their actions is wrong.

“Patriots” describe WW2 as the “good war” avoiding any mention of WW1 creating WW2. The results these “patriots” celebrate; The Cold War, the Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, a foreign policy of empire, the national-security state/army, CIA, NSA, partnerships with brutal dictators, assassinations, coups, invasions, occupations, COINTELPRO, torture, and regime-change operations, all in the name of fighting “commies”.

Two Minutes Hate, from Orwell’s 1984, is a daily period where Party members of Oceania watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies and speak their hatred for them. Variations of this are presented by “our free press” daily. Nationalism teaches you to have pride in things you haven’t done and hate people you’ve never met. The crimes of enemies are advertised, and even created, but our crimes vanish because of our self-exemption from basic moral truths. You shouldn’t cooperate with “our governments” evil.

Most Americans prefer to sit, and watch: this type is almost exclusively interested in material goods and to them, American, Russian, or Nazi, doesn’t matter. If they were told to become Zimbabwean, Anarchist, Hare-Krishna’s to get more stuff they would.

By living passively in this society where the majority is ruled by a minority, you give your consent. Americans are greatly dissatisfied with today’s reality but only a tiny fraction is actually willing to make any sacrifice for real change.

Play it safe and nothing changes. “The powers that be” think you deserve what you get and will continue their murder and robbery until enough people join to stop them. When enough people rebel the status quo falls.

The Empire’s entire culture is founded on and motivated by a systematic, psychopathic, avoidance of responsibility. Psychopaths ignore the rights of others, are greedy, and violent. Psychopaths charm and exploit others for their own gain. They lack empathy and a sense of responsibility. They manipulate, lie and con others with no regard for anyone’s feelings: “Those brown people had it coming”.

Psychopaths can be anyone including businessmen, CEOs and others who never see the inside of a prison. Politicians and government are especially so practiced. Congress manipulates emotional false flags while your physical well being is ignored.

The State Department recently said: “We strongly condemn the Cuban government’s continued harassment and repeated use of arbitrary detention, at times with violence, to silence critics, disrupt peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and intimidate citizens”. Where’s their indignation when the same thing is done in America? Pacifists say violence never achieves anything while ignoring all historical evidence that governments always use it to gain their goals.

After blowing everything up, the Empire sticks around for years trying to make people like it, by murdering their friends and family; Such occupations are unwinnable, as seen in Vietnam and numerous other places. Force can’t create acceptance. The Empire has killed huge numbers of people world wide, made itself hated, made the world more dangerous, destroyed the environment, civil liberties, and wasted trillions of dollars that could have benefited the world if spent otherwise.

Having no clear, achievable political objectives in a military campaign is a guarantee of failure. What would an American victory in Iraq or Afghanistan have looked like if it ever happened? What would victory achieve for those two countries? How would the invasion by the Empire’s military have yielded these desired results, whatever they were?

America’s greatest cultural crisis is that too many “consumers” are willing to cheer wars and, even more, to accept the permanent war economy. Blaming victims is one of “our government’s” dirtiest games. Naked aggression is called liberation: Humanitarian intervention is claimed. Mass slaughter and destruction are called democracy-building measures. Plundering countries for profit is called economic development. Government that chooses lies isn’t a government that anyone wants.

The apathetic choose to remain wards of the state, approving their enslavement. This is the nature of most humans. When such slaves see others fighting valiantly against seemingly impossible odds for freedom they’ve abandoned, they’re humiliated because they aren’t in the fight themselves. They’ve chosen to accept the tyrants who are destroying our lives so they find a way to pacify their conscience: to ridicule those who stand against Goliath.

Ignoramuses buy the idea that the fate of mankind depends on freedom loving Americans to save civilization from the absolute darkness personified by various “new Hitler’s” who combine the features of Darth Vader and Sauron.

America has more jails than colleges.

Craig Dudley