Uncomfortable Truths for Americans

| Saturday, July 23, 2016 | |
I rather hate to do this, but I feel I must.

We're not the good guys anymore.

There, I said it.  We're not the good guys anymore.  We were once.  After WWII, we were the heroes of the world.  We rebuilt Europe and Asia, we went into space, we cured polio, we were freaking fantastic.

But then came the cold war, and multinationals, then came Vietnam and Panama and waterboarding and endless corporate promotion of American interests, even at the expense of the culture or environment or economy of other countries, then came decades of blind support for increasingly right-wing and fanatical governments abroad, especially in Israel, where our massive military assistance is, even now, creating genocidal conditions for those living in the Palestine.  We're not the good guys anymore.

This is not, of course, to say that Russia or China ARE the good guys.  No, no, no, their human rights records, economic imperialism, and environmental destruction are generally even worse than ours.

At best, we are the same as they are:  Wealthy corporate run oligarchies with little interest in anything that isn't profit or power.

The vaunted two party system of America is run by two degenerate and corrupt political organizations.  One, the GOP, has, in the quest for power, turned it's back on conservatism as a philosophy to endorse racism, hatred of women, xenophobia, and jingoistic nationalism as a means to power.  The other, the Democratic Party--once the bastion for the working man and woman--has embraced Wall  Street, disasterous trade agreements,  voter suppression, and fracking as a means to power.  Both will do any amount of back room dealing, lies, voter suppression, vote rigging, even violence, to silence voices that object.  Both will drop to their knees for whosoever writes the biggest check.

The two parties stay in power by being progressively worse than the other, using fear that the OTHER party might win to encourage votes, even if it is against the best interest of American citizens and their families and futures.

The American press, now owned mostly by only 6 gigantic corporations, is complicit in this.  As exposed by recent Wikileaks revelations, they cooperate and coordinate with the two parties to suppress dissent, stifle criticism, and further their corporate aims.

You are not the good guys anymore.

Police in America, heavily armed, tattooed, and armored, routinely humiliate, beat, and even kill members of the public for no other real reason than that they can.  Most of the victims are Black or Hispanic, and the line of racism in Policing runs deep in the U.S., but they also are certainly not above beating, framing, torturing, or killing those they deem "uppity."  No penalty is ever paid, no justice ever offered to the victims.  Police cruise through minority neighborhoods and target some poor slob who then turns up dead because the police felt "threatened."  That's normal.  Anyone striking back is a "terrorist."

American corporations, once welcomed abroad and adored, are now almost universally hated.  Their coming in the third world means corruption, environmental devastation, economic extraction, and death.  One of the DNC's most vaunted "pro labor" candidates received nearly $24m for making sure sweat shop workers in Haiti didn't get a raise to 61 CENTS an hour.   Not a 61 cent RAISE, mind you, 61 CENTS AN HOUR.  That would be, I should note, up from a minimum wage of $.21 an hour.

We drop bombs, we do drone strikes, we pay for death squads, whole families die, communities are wiped off the map, and yet we are told that "they hate us for our freedom".  No, dumbf**k.  They hate us because we killed their children.

We are not the good guys anymore.

But we could be.

We could be the good guys by disenfranchising the two corrupt parties that run America, by refusing to vote our fears and instead insisting on voting our morals and convictions.  By voting FOR something rather than against a false and manipulated choice of boogeymen.  We could be the good guys by standing FOR something for a change, rather than just profit or strategic position.  The world would welcome us, and with the strength of all the world, we would triumph without even trying.

We could be the good guys by demanding our allies and correspondents and client states and trading partners play fair with their people--with ALL of their people-- or we will walk with all our considerable skills, resources, and astonishingly large market.  We could do that.

We could be the good guys by making sure our people--AMERICAN people, American citizens--have good lives, healthcare, clean water, safe streets, safe food, and good educations.  We could be the good guys by treating our own people as something other than corporate cannon fodder.

We could be the good guys, you know.  We could be the people we've always been told we are.  We could spend a few pennies of our fantastic wealth to clothe kids and give them clean water, to treat the sick and help people to find their own voices rather then insisting that ours be the only one heard.

Now you can feel free to tell me this isn't practical, that it isn't realistic or "the way the world works."  That's fine, I guess.

But the world, ours and everyone else's, was better when we were heroes.

We could do that again.  I still have the cape.

Really.


M


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