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Billy
Joel was on to something when he sang "Only the Good Die
Young." Here in America, our government does not jail its dissidents; it launches programs
like COINTELPRO to pursue them (with reckless disregard for the law),
and to covertly engineer their assassinations. Fred Hampton,
Martin Luther King, the Kennedy brothers, and Malcolm X are but a few
of "the Good" who dared to challenge the wealthy US
ruling elite's malevolent domination over the poor, minorities and
working class. In the "land of the free", your right to
dissent (and to live) ends when you begin posing a serious threat
to those who truly wield the power.
As
fate would have it, John Hinckley's bullet missed its mark, enabling a
malignant scourge of humanity to continue his reign of sadism.
Hundreds of thousands of innocent Central American civilians would
still be alive were it not for Ronald Reagan.
America
's steady march back to the "good old days" of Social
Darwinism would have been severely retarded. Disciples of Leo
Strauss's Machiavellian philosophies would not infect our government
as they do today. Yet Reagan survived, social injustice
is once again the predominating force in domestic politics, and
millions around the world suffer and die as the
US
government pursues global domination.
Apparently,
a fair number of Americans agreed with Joel's line that the
"Sinners are much more fun..." Our government is still
dominated by sadistic narcissists who shamelessly mask their
avaricious, sanguineous agenda with noble words like
freedom, democracy, and liberty. In the
US
, sociopaths like George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, and Dick
Cheney dominate our government, enabling them to commit heinous crimes
against humanity as they feed their obscene appetites for wealth and
power. At worst, they caused 9/11. At best, they knew it was coming
and allowed nearly 3,000 Americans to die so they could have the
"
Pearl Harbor
" they desperately needed to justify the
initiation of their coveted perpetual "war against
terrorism". In toppling Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator whom
it openly supported while he committed acts of genocide in the 1980's,
the
US
government has murdered over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians and
2,000 American service people. In
New Orleans
, it seized the opportunity of a natural disaster to practice its own
version of ethnic cleansing. As they feed their precious military
industrial complex while starving domestic programs which foster the
well-being of average Americans, the blatant malefactors leading our
nation are the enemies of humanity.
As
I have sifted through the many emails and comments on my blog
(Thomas Paine's Corner) from my more antagonistic
readers over the last year, I have concluded that the power moguls in
DC are reflections of a significant number of their constituency,
despite the fact that the Bush regime resorted to cheating to win the
last two presidential elections.
Why
are there a significant number of Americans who support the morally
reprehensible agenda of the Bush regime and its predecessors? One can
point to an array of contributing factors such as insularity from the
rest of the world, a bombardment of potent propaganda disseminated by
the mainstream media, the hubris which naturally emerges from the
unenlightened wielding great power, and a grossly inadequate public
education system that "white" washes history. Yet regardless
of the root causes, the Ugly American is alive and well. I have
learned that the
United States
is not a particularly friendly environment for proponents of social
justice, peace, intellectual freedom, and human rights. The consensus
amongst decent human beings (those in the
United States
and in other nations) is that universal human rights and peaceful
co-existence are moral imperatives, but in Pax Americana, many worship
the virtual antithesis.
Utilizing
snippets and quotes from a variety of correspondences I have received
from readers, I have compiled a composite sketch of the narcissistic,
selectively misanthropic Ugly Americans who dominate our government,
and apparently comprise a fair percentage of our populace. May
the Higher Power of each person's understanding help us if they truly
represent a majority. Fortunately, in spite of their arrogant belief
to the contrary, it is highly unlikely that they do.
"You
say you are anti-war. I say I am anti-death. The
difference between you and the 50% of this country who support Bush is
that you need to learn the hard way there just is no
such thing as anti-war when thy enemies will stop at absolutely
nothing to destroy you."
CBS
News poll results released on 11-3-05 showed a 35% job approval rating
for George Bush. The
United States
government, as an entity, is an enemy to the human race. If it
ceased killing civilians (i.e. the 3 to 5 million in
Vietnam
), it would stop creating enemies. Besides, the
United States
has not been invaded since the War of 1812, and 9/11 was perpetrated
with the endorsement and/or assistance of our own
government. Anti-death? Our government specializes in the murder of
innocents to achieve its goal of hegemony. As for the true enemy, it gazes
back at many of our leaders and their sycophants each time they
stare in the mirror.
"Most
important, Jason: Your march was not covered because the vast
majority of US knows that you are silly and insignificant. That
your short sightedness will only become evident to you when a
terrorist sets a bomb next to you because you are a white American and
you believe in Jesus, not allah (They really don't care whether you do
or not Jason)."
If
marching on
Washington
DC
in support of peace and social justice qualifies me as "silly and
insignificant", sign me up for a life-time contract. I will leave
war, murder, hate, torture and racism to the "serious and
significant" of the world. Propaganda pitting Christianity
against Islam as a "good versus evil" dichotomy has
obviously achieved a measure of success in
America
. I wonder if the 100,000 "brown" Iraqis who believed
in Allah realized their "short-sightedness" as the
American military machine slaughtered them.
"We
balance the sanctity of human life better than any country on earth.
We are violent, true, but we have had to be. Ironically, the things
that have happened to us are because of our stance on human life. We
could have turned the middle east to glass in three days - and kept
the oil, world be damned. We could respond tit for tat with
terrorists...kill one of us, we kill 100 of you."
Yes,
America
balanced the sanctity of human life so well in
Dresden
,
Tokyo
,
Hiroshima
,
Nagasaki
,
Vietnam
,
Nicaragua
, and now
Iraq
. It is indeed tragic that
US
government propaganda is powerful enough that there are still people
out there who believe such tripe. How gracious on the part of the
US
military machine that it chose not to employ its nuclear arsenal
to create a sea of glass in the
Middle East
. Arabs and Persians, consider yourselves blessed by the wise and
benevolent American Empire. I am quite certain that considerations
like nuclear fallout, retaliation from other nations with nuclear
capabilities, the existence of
Israel
as part of the Middle East, and major disruption of the world economy
(and thus the flow of dollars into the pockets of the
US
ruling elite) have not dictated the Neocons' restraint.
We
have responded to the "terrorists", far beyond "tit for
tat". For the 3,000 who died on 9/11 (if one believes the fairy
tale version that a handful of poorly trained men armed solely with
box cutters perpetrated the atrocity on their own), the ruling elite
has killed over 100,000 in Iraq alone.
"The
leading cause of poverty is sex. Do you have a cure for that? Are the
poor ever to blame in your world? In modern day
America
any black man without a job who has children is condemning them to
poverty. Who is to blame for that? If your parents were poor, and you
are poor, how can you reproduce? Why blame any one but the fornicators
too stupid, indifferent, or under the influence, for not using
condoms?"
Actually,
two of the leading causes of poverty are our grossly inequitable
public school system which leaves many Black Americans woefully
under-educated, and an increasingly unchecked capitalist economic
system which ensures that the majority of the wealth remains in
the hands of the few. I thought the Eugenics Movement had died, but
evidently not.
As
for those of you cheerleading the deregulation of businesses, I
suggest a review of history. The Gilded Age certainly showered
incredible prosperity on a select few in the
United States
, but the majority of farmers, working class people, and the poor
suffered miserably. Without oversight of a government of the
people, corporations and businesses in an economic system
such as ours grind their employees into dust. Is the name Upton
Sinclair ringing any bells?
"Determine
why your weaknesses have led you to most closely relate to
organizations like Amnesty International, a worthless institution at
best, instead of recognizing the real source of problems throughout
the world today - Muslim Fundamentalism and Islamic Terrorism."
In
the paradigm of the Ugly American, standing with an organization which
struggles for the "worthless cause" of universal human
rights is a weakness. Only the rights and welfare of a particular
segment of American society count in the perverse philosophy of this
breed of human. To acknowledge that all people deserve rights and
dignity would be an admission of their consent to murder and
genocide. Rather than acknowledging that both the
US
government and Islamic extremists have, and still are, committing
homicidal acts, they discount the millions of innocent civilians
slaughtered by American state terrorism while focusing on the
relatively few Americans who have died at the hands of Islamic
extremists. Don't forget to look at the plank in your own eye....
"You
people are are bunch of sick puppies and don't quite get the drift
that there are Good Men and Women dying for the likes of you and you
ilk. Get a life. America is the Greatest Country this
world has ever seen and a bunch of no accounts and self hating
(because you have never done anything worth while in you life but live
off of others misery that you help create with your stupidity) will
never see the day that Real Americans will let you pull the shit you
did during Vietnam, what you did then cost the lives of thousands of
Good People (unlike you) and are attempting to do now."
The
Good People to which this Ugly American appears to be referring were
used as pawns (by murderers like Johnson, Nixon and Kissinger) to
massacre 3 to 5 million Vietnamese civilians. The range of the number
of deaths is so wide because the
US
military "doesn't do body counts". Our ruling elite
sent 59,000 of these Good People to their deaths to perpetuate the
military industrial complex and the
US
push for hegemony. Fortunately for me, I do not have what it takes to
fit this reader's definition of a "Real American", nor do I
suffer from the delusion that "
America
is the Greatest Country this world has ever seen". Like other
nations, the
United States
has faults and is guilty of moral transgressions. In fact, the power
it wields magnifies the consequences of its transgressions to a
devastating level.
"Until
the Darwinian evolutionists can intelligently and convincingly explain
WHY apes stopped advancing into mankind and WHEN apes stopped
advancing into mankind then there is plenty of room in our schools to
teach alternate theories including Intelligent Design.
Do
you have the answer to my question above? If you do then please
continue along the same vein and answer for me what specie did the
Bengal
Tiger and African Elephant ascend or descended from as well? No
science and no politics please just common sense please."
America
, the alleged "leader of the free world", is quite lonely
amongst its "constituency" of industrialized nations in
its suspicion and outright rejection of science. While the Ugly
Americans condemn Islamic nations for their alleged religious
extremism, they continue to pit a mythological tale (which
has no supporting evidence) against a scientific theory which can
be traced back to Lamarck in 1809, has survived scientific scrutiny
for almost two hundred years, and is accepted as valid by an
overwhelming majority of scientists. A children's bedtime story called
(ironically enough) Intelligent Design, is slowly making its way into
the
US
public school system. I need some clarification now. Who is under the
influence of powerful religious extremists?
"There
are thousands of cities in this country. We are one of the most
economically viable countries in the world and anyone that wants a job
can find one; maybe that means one must leave
New Orleans
....regardless, the opportunity exists. To blame the President for the
fact that these people refuse to get off their asses and move into the
workforce is not his fault."
Many
Americans struggle to find work due to lack of skills and education.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current
US
unemployment rate is 5% (so much for "anyone" being able to
find a job), and many unemployed Americans are untracked for a variety
of reasons. The federal minimum wage has remained at the pitifully low
$5.75 per hour since 1997. Of those "fortunate" enough to
land a job at a "benevolent" corporation like Wal-Mart, they
receive grossly inadequate wages and benefits. Opportunities are much
broader for some than they are for others. This Ugly American also
assumed that all of the victims of Katrina populated the welfare
roles, which is false.
Consider
this excerpt from http://www.clasp.org/publications/workforce_final.pdf:
"Many
of the newly unemployed victims of hurricane Katrina have the skills
and resources necessary to rebuild their lives, but others lack
marketable skills. Prior to the disaster, educational levels were low
in the region. In July, the unemployment rate in
New Orleans
was 5.6 percent, and nearly a quarter (23 percent) of residents were
poor. The median household income for the Biloxi-Gulfport-Pascagoula
area was nearly $8,000 below the national average in 2004. Many
low-wage workers in the region's service-dominated economy were just a
paycheck away from poverty."
"LBJ
created the NO situation with his war on poverty creating a vast
useless dependent group of people. It was so evident went the
little child was interviewed on TV demanding "his help"
unable already at an early age to think of anything but Washington
giving him his "help" LBJ's welfare created this
mess and people like you keep it going!
Your
the racist and white people are the one's you hate! "
Justifying
the perpetration of slavery, murder, and obscene discrimination
against an entire race of people by attacking the victims is a typical
tactic of Ugly Americans. Projection of their own twisted beliefs
(like racism) onto others is a powerful psychological defense such
people employ. In this case it is enabling them to reconcile their
inner conflict between their conscience and their perverse
value system. Ironically, millions of white Americans are
unconsciously racist, and this individual is obviously one of them.
"I
believe the only people who truly have a problem with the Patriot Act
are those who have something to hide. I, for one, do not mind giving
up a few freedoms, or privacy, to ensure the safety of my country as a
whole. The very privacy laws that groups like the ACLU support are
used by terrorist and criminals to hide their actions. Those who hide
behind our liberal laws have done so long enough; it is time they were
reigned in."
The
ACLU exists for the purpose of preserving the rights guaranteed to all
Americans in the Bill of Rights and subsequent Constitutional
Amendments. Privacy is only one right which the ACLU defends. The
Patriot Act represents a significant threat many of our
civil liberties, including privacy (http://www.aclu.org/Files/OpenFile.cfm?id=11812).
The Bush regime loves loyal subjects like this one who are eager to
surrender their rights in exchange for the "security"
offered by Big Brother.
In
light of the fact that many "subversive" librarians are
creating roadblocks which interfere with FBI efforts to utilize the
Patriot Act to spy on Americans' reading habits, I recently went to my
local library and checked out some "anti-American" media,
which included:
1.
Mao Zedong by Jonathan Spence (books on tape)
2.
Hitler's Second Book: the Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf
by Adolf Hitler
3.
Karl Marx by Werner Blumenberg
4.
Ho Chi Minh by William J. Duiker
5.
Why the Rest Hates the West by Meic Pearse
6.
Weather the Underground: The Explosive Story of
America
's Most Notorious Revolutionaries (DVD documentary)
7.
Panther: a Pictorial History of the Black
Panthers
8.
Fidel Castro by Clive Foss
9.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels
10.
Terrorism and the
Liberal
State
by Paul Wilkinson
11.
Osama: The Making of a Terrorist by
Jonathan Randal
I
thought I would save some of our tax money by "going
public". Now the FBI can monitor a government dissident without
wrangling with those "wrong-headed" librarians who
still believe in the Bill of Rights. Incidentally, I highly recommend Weather
the Underground. It provides compelling evidence that
the FBI murdered Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
Sculpting
the psyches of their loyal subjects to create its "base" of
war-mongers, racists, worshippers of consumerism, religious fanatics,
xenophobes, and complicit accomplices in the murders of millions of
human beings around the world, the ruling class of the
United States
has cemented their hold on power and ensured the continued growth of
their staggering wealth. However, evidence continues to emerge to
indicate that these Ugly Americans are a minority in the
United States
with a waning potency. Sagging poll numbers for the Bush regime,
increased public support for Bush's impeachment (http://www.impeachpac.org/?q=node/6),
increased opposition to the illegal occupation in Iraq, the
indictments of Delay and Scooter Libby, and Patrick Fitzgerald's
ongoing probe do not bode well for the Bush regime or its
cheerleaders.
Despite
their recent setbacks, the "true believers" in the American
Empire's agenda are wreaking havoc on the world. That is why I
continue to participate in protests; educate, persuade, and inform
through my dissident writing; maintain Thomas
Paine's Corner; support and participate in the ACLU and Amnesty;
network with other writers and activists; produce a periodic email
newsletter which reaches over 2,000 people; continue to educate
myself; teach my children to think critically and act morally;
recycle; and boycott corrupt corporate entities like Wal-Mart. I
have taught myself Spanish (which has been characterized as the
language of the poor and oppressed) so that I can communicate with my
Hispanic immigrant clients in my job as a loan counselor. I
donate regularly to charities like Oxfam. I vote and write to my
representatives in government, despite the seeming futility in doing
so. I practice my spiritual values like honesty, responsibility,
compassion, loving as an act of will, empathy, assertiveness rather
than aggression, hard work, frugality, the use of violence only in
defense of family or self, and respecting others and myself. If you
have read my writings before, then you are already familiar with my efforts
for social justice, peace, intellectual freedom, and human rights. At
the risk of sounding repetitive, I have enumerated them again to
demonstrate that we do not have to accept the status quo in the US, and
that we are not powerless.
On
11/1, I participated in the Center for Constitutional Rights' Fast for
Justice. In a largely symbolic act, activists fasted for 24 hours to
show solidarity with the hunger strikers at
Guantanamo
Bay
. The
US
government has denied these people basic human rights and justice for
over three years. If they did commit acts of aggression against our
nation, try them, prove it, and punish them. If their innocence is
determined, pay them reparations for their suffering and release them.
Holding them indefinitely under abusive conditions seriously
bastardizes the grand ideals of our Constitution and places our own
citizens in jeopardy of similar treatment by other nations.
On
the subject of torture, I received the following comment on Thomas
Paine's Corner recently from Wolfgang May:
"Apart
from the humanitarian concerns, information obtained through torture
is usually unreliable. When I was Intelligence Operations Officer of
the 4th US Armored Division in
Germany
, our professional interrogators told me they tried to develop a
rapport with the detainee. This takes a few days, but the information
from that effort is usually good. Torture is used only by pathetic,
sadistic amateurs. For more info on how the professionals work, read
"Talking with Victor Charlie" by Tourison."
Struggling
for social justice and peace in "El País
de las Pesadillas" (the nation of nightmares) is no easy task,
and certainly will not qualify one to win a popularity contest.
However, it is well worth the effort. In spite of the overwhelming
odds against it, I believe that the
United States
can become a more just and peaceful nation, and thus
enable the world to awaken from its nightmares involving murder
and mayhem inflicted by a sadistic maniac named Uncle Sam. Let's work
together to make this possible.
Jason
Miller is a 38 year old activist writer with a degree in liberal arts. He
works as a loan counselor in the transportation industry, and is a
husband with three sons. His affiliations include Amnesty
International and the ACLU. He welcomes responses at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or comments on his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
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