definitely and without trial, can be presented as one of those bits of "evidence" that Barack Obama is trashing the constitution. Obama's Indefinite Detention Powers is the title of more than one article. Remarkable indeed since he's threatening to veto the abomination if it passes.I do recognize that since the Authorization for Use of Military forces (AUMF) that Congress approved after the September 11 terrorist attacks was used to bolster somewhat unfair arguments that Bush was trashing the revered document, an equal and more ridiculous counter charge has to be leveled against his Democratic successor. That is a principle we had beat into our consciousness when Bill Clinton had to face charges, some contrived and some with marginal merit that were so like unto those Nixon was glaringly guilty of.
But I digress. I'm not surprised to hear such things slithering in the murky Senatorial cistern, but I'm surprised at the bipartisan support of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) bill and the astonishing lack of debate over this shocking redaction of the Bill of Rights. I was however surprised and pleased to hear Rand Paul declare opposition is heatedly as I would do, given the chance.
I was nauseated and enraged to hear our former Presidential contender, John McCain rail about how dangerous "these people" were without regard to how we determine fairly whether or not the accusations are true. I have been raised to think that justice demanded a fair trial and no decent civilization has failed to provide a process to determine the truth of an accusation, sometimes made under duress or torture or out of jealousy or greed or worse. A less stuffy writer might simply ask: how the hell do we know the charges are true without a trial?
Senator McCain doesn't seem to care, although with his history, he might just give the opposite position tomorrow and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seems proud of his shiny new black boots, claiming that now we can jail any American citizen because "it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland." Did he mean to say Vaterland?
"The FBI publishes characteristics of people you should report as possible terrorists. The list includes the possession of “Meals Ready to Eat,” weatherproofed ammunition, and high-capacity magazines; missing fingers; brightly colored stains on clothing; paying for products in cash; and changes in hair color. I fear that such suspicions might one day be used to imprison a U.S. citizen indefinitely without trial. Just this year, the vice president referred to the Tea Party as a bunch of terrorists. So, I think we should be cautious in granting the power to detain without trial."writes Senator Paul in the National Review.
Yes, I think our legislators have earned their 8% approval rating and can only wonder why it isn't lower. John McCain, you're a goddamn terrorist yourself, attempting to make Americans afraid for political purposes. Rand Paul: you may be far right, but you're damn right too!
Wouldn't this fall under the category of response to my posting yesterday? That aside, given your defense of Obama I still can't determine the man's actual position on the erosion of civil liberties and the end of Congressionally unsanctioned international military adventures—up to and including the 63,000 mercenaries remaining in Iraq.
ReplyDeleteInteresting additional POV on the intentional legislative grey fog surrounding military contracting in Iraq...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thenation.com/blog/37877/iraq-withdrawal-obama-and-clinton-expanding-us-paramilitary-force-iraq
Well said, Captain. I can't decide what aspect of this story angers me the most: The continued erosion of civil liberties OR the cheap and petty mendacities hurled by politicians who are little more than dictators-waiting-in-the-wings.
ReplyDeleteI am not surprised by Feinstein, however. She has supported stuff like this in the past. I am not surprised by McCain either. After all, he brought Sarah Palin to the national stage - pandering and contradicting himself so many times, he often looks like Rhomboid's twin brother. As you say, I give kudos to Ron Paul for being unafraid to voice his conscience.
I can't determine or understand his policies many times either, but I've heard him accused of everything imaginable and it's become such a reflex that the accusers aren't really aware of what they're saying even when it's contradictory.
ReplyDeleteYesterday? Do you expect me to remember yesterday?
Edge,
ReplyDeleteThat we've privatized the Iraq war rather than ended it seems obvious. That makes it easier to obscure what's going on and I think what's going on is digging in for the long haul.
Other than our strategic needs, we need high government payrolls to keep unemployment down.
I'm not sure whether the Obama Admin is threatening to veto this monstrosity for the right reasons, but in any case they should veto it. Seems to me that the right to a fair trial is the one that guarantees the other rights we have. I mean, if "they" can just lock up anyone they want without bothering to give a reason, that's a game-ender. What good is freedom of speech if it just gets you sent to Guantanamo and nobody ever hears from you again?
ReplyDeleteIt's depressing to hear legislators taking the line, "we have to protect ourselves from these terrorists." Sure we do, but whether this or that person is really a terrorist is something that needs to be sorted out by fair trials, evidence, and all that sort of inconvenient stuff.
Turns out, Dino, that everything about North American governance is about getting rid of "inconvenient stuff" over the past decade. I'd really hoped for more from the current administration—and the other team is altogether too hopeless to bear consideration.
ReplyDeleteYes, Capt., high government payrolls—and ongoing military contracts—to keep the economy going. (60,000 US soldiers dead in Vietnam, 2,000,000 Vietnamese. 4,500 US soldiers dead in Iraq, 600,000 Iraqis [Lancet]. And 250,000,000 war casualties during the last American Century.) That's the kind of compassionate leadership the world needs right now.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteBy the way, that "homeland" thing is a fine instance of the doubleplus-duckspeak effect between lots of media talkers, government members, and the lay world of blogistan and beyond. The Bush Admin militarized and, frankly, fascisticalized, our political discourse: America becomes "the Homeland" and of course we need "Homeland Security." Also makes it easy to blow up as many "non-homelanders" as we need to, without worrying about any inconvenient nonsense like decency, due process, etc. Soldiers aren't soldiers or the military, they're "warfighters" (which sounds like what some primitive Germanic tribe would call them), and so forth. And of course the press, which doesn't often reflect on any of these usages but picks them up like a parrot, repeats them deadpan. And from there they seep into the general public, and people who pride themselves on being "informed" after getting their minds pumped full of ideologized, impoverished thought-bytes on the Sunday talk shows repeat it, too. It's a wonderful world, I tells ya. I need another cup of coffee.
Edge:
ReplyDeleteI wonder what kind of man could do much more than Obama about cleaning the Augean stables of all that horseshit left behind after decades of defecation, but at least he's not Sarah Palin or John McCain or God help us Herman (what's this about Libya?) 'pizza brain' Cain. Our 'system' makes it impossible to get what we need - and our national stupidity problem too, of course.
Thanks, Dino. If you picked up on the "homeland" too, I don't feel so much like a marginal crank. When National Security became Homeland Security we passed one of those one way turnstiles and there's no going back - just as there's no chance of redeeming that forced religious oath the knights of Columbus and Eisenhower pushed us into -- just as there was no chance of redeeming the Roman Republic after the Triumvirate.
Recently I was in the El Paso airport and saw posters from some military contractor bragging about supplying the needs of "warfighters." Thanks, Mr. Warpresident.
Our passion for war and the rhetoric of the warmongers has lead airport staff to stand and applaud every time someone in uniform walks by and by the faces of the soldiers I saw, they're tired of it and just want to get where they're going. The icing on the warcake was the standing ovation a group of very puzzled Luftwaffe men ( they'd been studying something at Fort Bliss ) got from the crowd who reflexively cheer uniforms of any sort.
I think I need something more in my coffee. . .
“And 250,000,000 war casualties during the last American Century”
ReplyDeleteThere is little or no disagreement here with regards to the consequences of U.S. military misadventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the flag-waving über-patriots of American exceptionalism.
However, to lump these into one blanket statistic, “250,000,000 war casualties during the last American Century,” strikes me as either sloppy or suspect. Edge, are you implying that ALL war casualties of the last century are attributable, directly or indirectly, to U.S. military exceptionalism!
Normally, I should await an answer before considering my next remarks. However, please note: Punctuation differentiates a question from a rhetorical statement; and since an exclamation point does not obligate me to await a response, I shall proceed.
Who started the wars in Europe that caused millions of deaths? The allies or axis powers? Are you holding the allies accountable for 20 million deaths under Stalinist rule? And the genocides in Basra and Rwanda? Notwithstanding the civil war in Bosnia? Who attacked whom at Pearl Harbor? Shall we dishonor the veterans of WWII, U.S. and Canadian and European, over miscast statements?
Never mind Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, and other dictators of the so-called “American Century.” Are you implying that the U.S. has become the arch mass-murderer of all time? This kind of mischaracterization strikes me as the same kind of gratuitous sneer and jeer that characterizes the American right wing. Frankly, I take offense.
Octo,
ReplyDeleteI agree that the 250 million figure isn't consonant with the point Edge made -- we didn't cause all those deaths by dint of imperialist aggression, reaching a figure like that took a hell of a lot of genocidal butchering and ruthless land-grabbing by some of the worst "leaders" in Europe and elsewhere who ever drew breath.
Anyhow, there's a valid point to be appreciated, if it be properly circumscribed. Perhaps it can be put like this: our military superiority and militarist mindset these days seems to be a governmental and corporate response to the brutal fact that capitalism failed us back in the 1930s and might never have recovered if it hadn't been for the war effort that followed after Pearl Harbor. We "went military" and never looked back. We have probably long since reached the point of no return that Pres. Eisenhower warned us about in those famous, then-cryptic remarks about the "military-industrial complex."
Worse yet, I suspect that the only reason anybody even takes us seriously these days, given our deplorably irresponsible ways with money and our refusal to make an honest appraisal of the revenues we need to support our way of life, is that huge military we have. If we suddenly decided to slash military spending by half or three-quarters, we would probably sink to a level of regard that few Americans would find tolerable. We would lose "world street cred" so fast it would make our heads spin. I don't want to sound hopelessly Eeyorish, but that's how I feel about it at present.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome. Dinosaurs tend to notice these things. One of the worst tendencies today, I think, is an utter failure to reflect on the terms we use. But I'd better not say anything more than that. I'm already in the dog-house (a very BIG dog-house since I'm 40 feet long) for being an insensitive elitist hypermasculine reptile. (Typed with as close to a light-hearted grin as a terrible lizard can muster, just in case it's thought that I write in deadly earnest. I seldom do that.)
Octo, Dino makes my point. The US supplied both sides in the lead-up to WW2 and it's massive arms sales have fuelled conflict throughout the last century and into this. I haven't touched on the 750+ US military bases around the world, the quasi-legal wars in North Africa and the Middle East and the ubiquitous US black ops around the world. Frankly, I might take offence to your lack of insight... but I won't.
ReplyDeleteUm actually I don't think so. I am aware that IBM sold data tabulation equipment to Germany that was used for nefarious purposes, but we didn't supply munitions, tanks, planes etc. We didn't sell them the gas for the death camps and although Hitler had much support amongst American Conservatives and far more amongst British Conservatives and even the Royalty, it's not our fault even to a small degree.
ReplyDeleteI don't recall, although I may be wrong, that we sold military equipment to the Japanese during or shortly before they began their horrors in Asia. We embargoed them as I seem to recall.
We did however give massive assistance to England and Russia and they still revere the Fei Hu, flying tigers in China to this day. Who the hell else fought Japan in the late 30's? And I'm damned proud we did even that much because of the pacifist screaming and yelling at home. Am I hearing an echo of that?
I have a hard time assigning any blame for the largest act of military aggression in history to the US and I hesitate to think about what the world would be like today had we continued our isolationism of the 30's. In fact we might have prevented much of it had we acted sooner, but as you know, Roosevelt was attacked severely for suggesting it.
The largest tank battle in Europe - at Hochwald Gap - cost many, many, many Canadian lives. Was that our fault too?
As to our growing militarism: sure, we are major arms dealers and so are the Chinese and Israelis and sure, we have been slinging our weight around needlessly since the 1890's. Yes we have bases abroad and we train foreign military personnel and we haven't been scrupulous about who either, but we didn't start or cause WW II and our participation saved many millions of lives and arguably prevented a Soviet takeover of Europe and Japan and maybe worse and I'm not sorry we did it nor would I be here today to say this had we not.
Edge
ReplyDeleteDino made your point, nor did I refute your point, but you ignored mine. You seem to enjoy provoking people, and putting them on the defensive, with all-inclusive statements that say in essence:
"Because a, b, and c were bad, everything you do is bad - with no credit for sacrificing x, y, and z to a noble cause."
It paints saints and sinners alike with the same broad brush. By extension, you paint as warmongers all citizens of the UsofA (of whom 15 are citizens of the Swash Zone – a higher authority). Finally, it dishonors the dead - including Yankees, Canadians and Europeans alike. If you honed your point with finer precision, perhaps your edge would cut more sharply.
Capt., sorry, it wasn't just IBM. Here's one summary:
ReplyDelete"That Ford and a number of other American firms—including General Motors and Chase Manhattan—worked with the Nazis has been previously disclosed. So, too, has Henry Ford's role as a leader of the America First Committee, which sought to keep the United States out of World War II. However, the new materials, most of which were found at the National Archives, are far more damning than earlier revelations. They show, among other things, that up until Pearl Harbor, Dearborn made huge revenues by producing war matériel for the Reich and that the man it selected to run its German subsidiary was an enthusiastic backer of Hitler. German Ford served as an "arsenal of Nazism" with the consent of headquarters in Dearborn, says a US Army report prepared in 1945.
"Moreover, Ford's cooperation with the Nazis continued until at least August 1942—eight months after the United States entered the war—through its properties in Vichy France. Indeed, a secret wartime report prepared by the US Treasury Department concluded that the Ford family sought to further its business interests by encouraging Ford of France executives to work with German officials overseeing the occupation. "There would seem to be at least a tacit acceptance by [Henry Ford's son] Mr. Edsel Ford of the reliance...on the known neutrality of the Ford family as a basis of receipt of favors from the German Reich," it says.""
–from Ken Siverstein's 2000 book, "Private Warriors."
And yes, Octo, I enjoy provoking the world, and I should be shot for it in the good old American tradition.
ReplyDelete"I enjoy provoking the world, and I should be shot for it in the good old American tradition."
ReplyDeleteI don't enjoy wanton snark with a bad attitude, or getting into people's faces for self-amusement with no apparent purpose, or sloppy discourse and unethical scholarship that hurts the innocent along with the guilty, whether you intended to or not. Time for you to clean up your act.
"I owe my strange transmogrification to a columnar calamity that put me on edge and turned me into a pillar of salt."
ReplyDeleteHow about arrogant snark, condescending snark, sneaky snark in the dark (without the silent EEEs, if you please)?
I'm not here to get "in your face", nor to win debating points or brownie points or to prove to you or anyone else my scholarship. If that's the purpose of this forum, we're all in the wrong place. As far as I can determine, most of the discourse had a lot to do with self-amusement.
As to tidiness and ethics, I might suggest begin by looking in the mirror and assessing your own.
You know, the British Commonwealth sold guns to the Confederacy and bought their cotton. So I guess you're personally responsible for our Civil war, right? And for slavery too, by the same twisted token.
ReplyDeleteYou're confusing, accidentally I'm sure, the acts of some American individuals and corporations with "America." True, those entities have too much power because they have enough money, but Ford wasn't my country any more than Schindler represented the Nazi government.
Yes, Ford was an anti Semite and a son of a bitch, but he isn't "the US Government." Prescott Bush was amongst Hitler's bankers, but he wasn't the President of the United States any more than Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer represent American Manhood. These people and corporations did not start or instigate or provoke or significantly facilitate the vicious aggression and genocidal ambitions of the Empire of Japan or the third Reich and as I said, the US was staunchly pacifist after the Great War and resisted getting into a fight much too long.
Trading with the enemy, aiding and abetting the enemy, was and is a crime, not official government policy. Prescott Bush was shut down and his funds confiscated for trading with the enemy.
We did not start WW II regardless of the actions of some US citizens and international corporations like IBM or Ford. It sounds too much like you're reasoning backward from a conclusion with many hidden origins.
Of course our government has made many grievous mistakes and it's hardly necessary to indulge in sophistry to illustrate your contempt for this country's checkered history. If you want to talk about the Mexican American war or the Spanish American War or the Philippine insurrection -- or indeed our adventure in Iraq, that's another story and I won't defend any of it.
And as to the good old American Tradition thing: have enough Americans been shot by the US government "for their opinions" to make it a tradition? Really? Or is this just how Canadians communicate?
No, Capt., but enough Americans have been shot by other Americans to warrant the comment (based on international shooting statistics, not opinion).
ReplyDeleteRelative to the official US government's position to pre-WW2 Germany, you are correct. However, the financial influencers behind the US government were hardly at arm's length as this bit from The Guardian shows...
"George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
"The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
"His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
"The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy."
There's a definite pattern to America's checkered history.
Tutti,
ReplyDelete'Tis true, and most true, as Thomas Carlyle says, that "In the long run, every government is the exact symbol of its people." But only in the long run, and the term is hard to fix. In the medium and short run, I'd suggest, there is a pretty large gap between a people and their government (and their economic institutions, for that matter).
Capital has strongly international tendencies -- those who wield the biggest chunk of it can often be found going with whomever they believe the current "winner" is. Money doesn't seem to care much about black & red or red white & blue.
Clear conclusions, Dino. And a good quote; I'll have to remember it.
ReplyDelete"I owe my strange transmogrification to a columnar calamity that put me on edge and turned me into a pillar of salt [from above comment at 5:46 PM, December 12, 2011]"
ReplyDeleteEdge,
If I chose to quote myself, then my words are my own business. What you have done here: You have taken my words - used in private exchange in a private forum - without my permission and repeated them here in public. In doing so, you have abused a protocol of the Private Beach, which clearly states:
“What we share here, stays here.”
This represents a quantum jump from simply rude behavior to unethical conduct. UNACCEPTABLE !!!
Ah, clearly true. It was accidental. But grounds for self-banishment.
ReplyDeleteA request from a very sick dinosaur who would like to see things be more pleasant -- "Peace, ho! I bar confusion!" Get along, or I will stomp up and down and create impact tremors. Okay, so they won't be as ominous as the ones my watering-hole neighbor Baggasaurus Tex can make whenever he hears some new pack of lies about Obama on his AM radio, but they're pretty impressive even so. And now I am going to go have some oatmeal.
ReplyDeleteMay it be so. Pax, Octo.
ReplyDeleteAlas, my BEEG lizard buddy,
ReplyDeleteIn a community based on mutual trust and good will, it is also important to know the critters will be watching your back instead of stabbing you in the back. Of course, the Boundary Pilaster also has the option to cool his heels and respect the delicate balance of this ecosystem.
BTW, what’s ‘oatmeal?’ Anything like crustaceans?
Just a few facts that may be of interest,if not, c'est la vie.
ReplyDeleteThe prevailing historical view of the causes of WWII includes the the terms of the Treaty of Versailles as significantly contributing to the factors set into motion to start the second world war. The WWI allies, including the U.S. met to draw up a treat. To his credit, America's representative, President Woodrow Wilson, proposed a14 point plan that he felt would bring peace to Europe. However, the French representative, Georges Clemenceau wanted to punish Germany severely to insure that Germany would never start another great war. The British guy, Lloyd George, tried to fashion a compromise between the American and French proposals.
I wasn't there, but from what I've read the treaty pretty much clubbed Germany into submission which ticked off the German people. Germany had to acknowledge that it caused WWI,and pay significant reparations for damages caused by the war. However, there are those who argue that the biggest slaps in the face in the minds of the German people were (1)the treaty that took away German land and gave it to other countries and (2)the disarming of Germany, restricting it to having a small army and six naval ships but no tanks, no airforce and no submarines.
Humiliated and angry, Germany was ripe for Hitler's nationalistic fervor. They couldn't afford to pay the reparations, poverty in Germany was extreme post WWI, and the cost of foods and goods were high. Hitler ran on a platform that promised to rip up the Treaty of Versailles.
I don't think that America caused WWII,but this government participated in the process that set up the conditions in Germany that made it ripe for the rise of Hitler and Nazism.
Another interesting factor is America's own antisemitism. In the South, the signs mostly read,"No Colored Allowed." There weren't a lot of Jews in the South. But in the North, the country clubs had signs that read "No Jews Allowed." And as Jews migrated south, signs began to read "No Colored or Jews Allowed." I've long thought that the bonding of Jews and Blacks in the civil rights movement was a logical outcome of a shared oppression.
(Continued)
I understand that all individual Americans were not a part of the machinery that led to WWII but I don't see that it is inaccurate to characterize American interests and policies as supporting some questionable positions. Much of the pseudo science of eugenics that the Nazis embraced was based on philosophy developed by some American scientists in the late 19th and early 20th century. The mass sterilizations of women deemed to be mentally inferior, a disproportionate number of who were black and the legal prohibitions against miscegenation were based on the science of eugenics. The last such sterilizations were done in the early 1970s. My state of North Carolina was one of the late bloomers, continuing the practice of forced sterilization into the 1970s. A good friend of mine heads up the state's sterilization reparations organization, authorized just two years ago. The women involved are long past child bearing age now.
ReplyDeleteAmerica has a lot of darkness in our past and no, doing some good things does not mitigate atrocities committed by governments against its citizens. No doubt, the policies of Nazi Germany benefited some of the German people, ameliorating some of the immediate problems with access to food and goods for some groups, but the basic wrongness of those policies is not at all lightened because they were beneficial fo some.
Discussions of countries and their transgressions are not indictments of individuals and yet I perceive that each time such topics are broached it appears to me that it is taken as a personal attack rather than a broad look at trend lines and/or historical events. Sadly I think that this is what ruffles feathers and diminishes the pleasure of hearty debate among a very interesting group of people.
Just because I think that America as a whole is an arrogant country with delusions of its own grandeur, the Great Britain of the modern world, aspiring to be the country upon whose empire the sun never sets, doesn't mean that I believe that all Americans are hawks.
I'm taking no sides here, only trying to point out that we have a great thing going here and I don't want to lose it.
I don't take anything here personally - well hardly ever - but when I mention Prescott Bush as having dealt with the Germans and having been punished for it, albeit mildly, and in reply I get him used as an example of official government policy and without any indication that I said it wasn't, I have to wonder whether this isn't too often a platform for shouting our prejudices with our hands over our ears.
ReplyDeleteLook, Union Bank was alleged, at the time it was seized by the government, to have been owned by Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V., a Dutch bank alleged in turn to have held funds from the Thyssen industrial empire -- Fritz Thyssen and Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. Somehow evidence of this was never established and the funds were returned after the war. Were the Thyssens Nazis? Hardly likely since the Nazis sent them both to the camps.
So would we say that Holland caused WW II? - why not, as long as we're drifting along on hot air and prejudice?
I mention that we have freedom of speech and the government doesn't "traditionally" shoot people for voicing opinions, I get something inapposite about some people shooting other people anyway and a speech about how horrible it is that our government trusts us with a limited selection of firearms. Stubbornly working one's pet obsessions and misperceptions and hyperbolic exaggerations into every conversation makes Jack a dull boy and the Zone far too swashy for my taste.
It irritates my mostly because such things detract from legitimate criticism and I do try to keep my criticism as honest as I can.
As I've been saying too much of late, I'm fed up with the angry, hyperbolic stereotyping and straw man burning, regardless of whether those it's aimed at are blameless or not -- whether the category under fire was created solely to have something to shoot at. There is no country, ethnic group or Sunday School class -- no arbitrary and convenient category of people free from any blame or fault and to paint the US as the arch enemy of all that's good and true may be a favorite international sport but those Canadians who prefer to speak French and English rather than German and Russian owe much to their neighbor. Canadian Jews owe their existence to US armed forces and for the assistance of Canada and Australia inter alia, I am also grateful despite the lack of total unanimous saintliness. Sorry, to me, this holds no more water than blaming tolerance for hurricanes and earthquakes.
Yes, the Treaty of Versailles may have seemed just to those who drafted it, and some multinational corporations may have dealt with both sides, but getting from there to "the US caused the war" requires a great leap of horseshit, if I may revert to my alleged gender stereotype. Yes, we helped the world irritate some heinous criminals and those criminals went on to commit worse crimes and that's as far as our "guilt" extends, in my opinion.
Sheria:
ReplyDelete"Discussions of countries and their transgressions are not indictments of individuals and yet I perceive that each time such topics are broached it appears to me that it is taken as a personal attack rather than a broad look at trend lines and/or historical events."
This time I think it's about the transgressions of individuals being confused with "America" because all is deemed fair when going after the Great Satan.
When the broad brush is used, it's impossible not to get a lot of paint where it doesn't belong and when one attempts to explain specifics with reference to the typical, it's more like a fire hose than an air brush. Can't be helped.
If indeed the US is arrogant and delusional, which on the whole, may seem apparent, one has to ask whether such a wealthy and powerful country hasn't succumbed to the fear and defensiveness that haunts any entity with so much to lose. Power does indeed corrupt and frighten the powerful. Our martial spirit came along with our ability to float a huge navy - the best way at the time to project power abroad and so we found a way to flaunt it. That also corresponded with the tendency to sanctify ourselves, to see that power as a divine and well deserved gift, but you have to remember that at times one might see a flag-waving, blood thirsty imperial monster, but fail to see that three quarters of us oppose it.
When Gandhi stooped to pick up a piece of salt from the ground, the draconian response by the British had little to do with salt and everything to do with a tiny and meek challenge to power.
The American Right sees everything as a challenge to power, even if they don't participate in being powerful. Our arrogance may have much to do with our perception that others who will not bend to our majesty are in their arrogance challenging our divine right. the mother of arrogance is insecurity and we are a very fearful nation.
American Democracy is hard to see in the short term at least. It's a bit like that 300 footer they let me steer last April. Put five turns to port in the wheel and nothing happens so you try six turns to starboard and suddenly it begins to veer to port after all. The 5 foot tall Filipino helmsman standing next to me chuckled. "Is the auto-pilot on?" I asked. The helm is connected to the rudder somehow, no mysterious power is steering it, but how it reacts and which way it turns is unclear and it takes patience to wait long enough to see results.
Nice post as usual, by the way, but I still can't see gender in it. Is there a female at the helm? (G)
Sister,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to remind us of the role that the Treaty of Versailles played in this miserable historical epa, certainly a major cause of human suffering and pent-up resentment of post WWI Germany. Add in hyperinflation, global depression, and pan-European anti-Semitism, and you have a perfect witches’ brew to unleash evil upon the world.
Captain,
Thank you for picking apart, point by point, the various and sundry straw men arguments, false equivalences, and false attributions that fail to differentiate footnotes and subplots from the main narrative. Perhaps another point lost in this comment thread: It is not just a personal affront to characterize an entire nation with the misdeeds of its rogues. Misreading history is not harmless; it has lead to scapegoats, demagoguery, persecutions and atrocities.
As my favorite animator of animal history tells us: language informs thought. Words precede bullets. In my view, reading with a critical eye and framing our thoughts carefully for public consumption are ethical responsibilities.
All,
ReplyDelete"America as a whole is an arrogant country with delusions of its own grandeur" seems to me a very broad statement, so it needs some parsing.
It's probably not a bad description of large swaths of our political culture at the present time, but I wouldn't be comfortable applying it to our culture beyond that as a description of "who we are."
History, as I think everyone here would acknowledge, is made up of many strands, one of which is its political development, but there's much more: history of race relations, labor relations, gender relations, etc. It's hard to synthesize them and come up with a grand narrative or statement about who we are collectively.
Anyhow, for me the heart of the matter is how our political culture has responded to our huge jump in status in the wake of WWII. Our participation in WWI got us noticed in a big way, but it was victory in WWII that made us the world's dominant power, albeit with a close competitor in the Soviet Union. To refine this a bit, it's our political culture's response to the wake of the Great Depression and to our newfound military/political dominance after WWII that has shaped us into the nation we now are, for better and for worse. More and more, our leaders are turning America into a quasi-imperial security state, and those who should be most alarmed about that development aren't doing enough to stop it or to educate the people as to why it ought to be stopped and what consequences it might have for us and the world.
General observation: it's troubling that given the above fairly recent history, we still have a huge number of people and more or less an entire political party dedicated to the twin propositions that capitalism is perfect and that ever-increasing militarization and projection of power are the twin tickets to terrestrial heaven. Conceptions like that, I think, spell trouble for us all, including those of us who don't buy into them.