Let's face facts, shall we? America Sucks

By MrScorpio


Yep, I said it, we suck.

It isn't hard to figure this out.

It's just that too many of us are too chicken to deal with this fact.

I know that a lot of people will say, "What about Democracy? What about Freedom? What about this? What about that?"

I say that these people obviously haven't been paying attention.

In terms of the strict constructionist, America was supposed to be the safe haven for the white, land owning male... Everybody else was supposed to be an afterthought. Slaves, indigenous people, women and child labor be damned. The history of this nation should never be viewed in terms of the PEOPLE, who overcame adversity and lead the nation to peace and prosperity... That's basically a lie.

The story is one of the privileged few, forcing the disenfranchised many to do their bidding. Twenty million citizens from the great state of Wisconsin didn't sign the NAFTA treaty along with the people of Chiapas and Manitoba... These were men and women, who were the source of real power or the supporters of it. They acted and the people who were most affected by this, or any other such treaty or policy decision had very little say, if any.

The history of America is basically an example of how empires are built, and as of late, how they collapse on themselves. The motto of America should have always been, "We Shit Where We Eat". Which, of course, is never a good thing to do.

You have two histories of America, internal and external. The internal history relates how the rich and powerful few have subjugated the not as rich and powerful many. How most people are dealing with modern day slavery, i.e. the prison industrial complex, economic disenfranchisement and the support for the war machine that affects so much of our external history.

America still is ruled by the rich and powerful few and the tools that use are many. Their strategy is very simple and efficient in its prosecution: Just get the masses of people to not care that they are continually working against their own best interests. Do everything to stop them from noticing that they are shitting where they are eating.

You hear these folks, and there are a lot of them all the time. They say things like, "I'm not a terrorist, so it's ok that my phones or bugged". Or, "Unions are what's bringing down the economy." Or one of my personal faves, "The government should be run like a business." People who utter this kind of crap have successfully turned off their brains and are willing to allow their masters to maintain dominion over them.

Even, when faced with their own economic and political disadvantages, they proudly attach yellow ribbons to their vehicles and pine on about how great "we" are. Talk about reverse projection.

They are the kind of people who shit where eat and are very proud of this fact.

And of course, those captains of industry and their whores in the political arena aren't any better. These are people so blinded by their quest for greed and power, their willing to commit social and economic suicide to get ahead. Just think about every business that fought tooth and nail to change trade policy in this country that outsources manufacturing and offshores money. Look in any paper and you'll see that the major car companies are tanking from lack of sales and are tanking badly.

Did it ever occur to these people that, by moving manufacturing and support to cheaper and less regulated climes, they were undercutting the buying power of a huge chunk of folks that they depended on to buy their cars? Henry Ford may have been an anti-semitic, racist, union-busting egoist along with being a successful industrialist... But one thing he understood, the wages that he paid his employees would eventually put more money in his own pockets. So, he sold a car that he knew that his workers could afford. With his eventual acquiescence to the demands of his organized labor force, the resulting growth of the middle class working population improved living conditions tremendously.

All in all, Henry Ford was dragged kicking and screaming into the realization that it was not a good thing to shit where he ate.

How the Big Three are not realizing this obvious situation as they circle the drain is way beyond my understanding.

About a hundred years ago, during the gilded age of the robber baron, society said enough: The barons where given a choice, either strive to make life better in general for the masses of people, or continue to shit where they ate and be forced to change their ways. Most chose the latter. Thus people whose with names like Rockefeller, Mellon and Carnegie built an infrastructure for culture and learning that we still are benefiting from to this very day.

They were forced to be the exception when the rule was no longer tenable.

The result helped transform America into a country where the original ideal citizen was expanded to include just about all of us into the franchise.

Somehow, we're backing to shitting where we eat and no one has any inclination to change.

On the External Front, America never fails to shit where it eats. I'll just give you a list of people that simplifies my point. A list of dictators supported by the U.S. Government and the corporate elite.

Country Dictator Dates Statistics
Chile Gen. Augusto Pinochet 1973-1990 3000 murdered. 400,000 tortured.
Argentina Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla 1976-1981 30,000 murdered. more
Indonesia Suharto 1965 coup against left-leaning Sukarno,
1975 support of East Timor genocide
500,000 dead after 1965 coup; 100,000-230,000 dead in East Timor; more, more, more.
Guatemala Armas, Fuentes, Montt 1954-
Iran The Shah of Iran
Ayatollah Khomeini was on the CIA payroll in the 1970s in Paris
Egypt Sadat, Mubarak 1978-today
Iraq Saddam Hussein
Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza & sons 1937-1979
Paraguay Stroessner. US supported throughout (state.gov says US has supported Paraguayan development since 1942) ($142M between 1962 and 1975) 1954-1989
Bolivia Col. Hugo Banzer overthrew elected leftist president Juan Jose Torres 1970-
Angola Jonas Savimbi/UNITA (didn't actually win his revolution, but killed or displaced millions) 1975-1989
Zaire Mobutu
Saudi Arabia Saud family
Kuwait a monarchy
Morocco
Tunisia
Algeria
Jordan
Panama Noriega was US-supported for years
Haiti Papa Doc, Baby Doc
Dominican Republic Trujillo, a military dictator for 32 years with US support for most of that time; Belaguer, Trujillo's protege, installed after US Marines intervened to put down an attempt to restore the democratically elected government of Juan Bosch 1930-61, 1965-78
Honduras
El Salvador 1980s
Nepal monarchy since 1948
Cuba Fulgencio Batista pre-Castro
Brazil Gen. Branco overthrew elected president Goulart with US support 1965-67
Uzbekistan Kamirov "The Boiler", $150M from the Bush administration for an air base. 1965-67

source

With things like total war, globalized pollution, tobacco price and trade supports, the undermining to international law and a complete disregard of the basic humanity of other people on this planet, the U.S. is taking a big shit on the whole planet. Just to name a few, of course. Oh, and we brag, and force so much of our "culture" on so many people who can't even imagine to have our frame of reference at all. The concept and definition of "Anti-Americanism" and our response to it has always bothered me... I could spend all day talking about that, but I won't

I'm sure you get the point, so there's no need to extrapolate further. Is there any reason why we shouldn't realize why so many people hate our guts?

One last thing: They easy thing to do would be to blame Bush, or Reagan or the Republicans or whoever. The fact is that these things have happened and they were done in all of our names AND due to the fact that the masses did not stop whatever crimes from occuring, we all share either implicit or explicit blame. When a dropped bomb kills an innocent family, in one way or another, we all share in that event, without regard to our approval or not. We allow the bombs to be built, our taxes fund the costs and those who represent us authorize the deed.

We allow failure to stop it from occurring to be an option.

It's that ugly fact alone, which stipulates why this country sucks.


Posted in full with author's permission.

Originally posted at democraticunderground.com: http://tinyurl.com/36mumx