posted September 29, 2004 08:07 PM            

Remember the Red Menace, also known as the Communist threat? Or how about the Third Reich, the creator of which became the chief metaphor for evil in the 20th century?

Most Americans, certainly those younger than 30, don't remember either. Hell, they don't even remember Vietnam or Nixon or The Beatles. The terms and their connotations are totally unfamiliar, unless encountered in history texts. Millions of Americans simply do not remember what America used to stand for - freedom, justice, equality - and as a result, don't fully comprehend the appalling reality of what America has become.

Once upon a time, back in the days of Elvis and the hula hoop, when I was a little shaver, I was taught in school that when Germany took over France, Poland and other European countries, that was wrong, and the United States sacrificed almost a half million of its own young people to reverse those situations in the name of freedom. And that happened twice, 1916-18 and 1941-45.

In the same vein, I grew up being taught that the Soviet Union's annexation of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and all of Eastern Europe was an evil deed, and that for many years in a period called the Cold War, the American military objective was aimed at overturning this unjust oppression. Back in the 1950s when I was in elementary school, we used to have routine Civil Defense drills where we used to have to hide under our desks pretending we were about to be nuked by the Russians. Really!

It's a new world now. For one thing, the population of the planet has doubled in those mere 50 years. And for another, it is the United States that is now sweeping the world, scooping up all these other countries in the name of capitalist democracy, and telling lies about why it has to go to war. And instead of railing against the powerful giant stealing freedom from all these hapless victims, as it did in years past, the American press is now cheering it, justifying it in the increasingly ambivalent names of capitalism and democracy. Worse, the American people are cheering it, too, something that's never really happened in U.S. history, when the people support a war that they know is based on lies.

Of course, the American press is cheering it because it is the American military doing it. Even the German and Russian press aren't really criticizing it in a serious way. Because there is no country that can oppose America, which spends more on its military than all the other countries in the world combined, yet still complains that it needs to spend more, even as its bridges and schools are falling apart and its manufacturing base has completely disappeared, precipitating its imminent economic collapse. Still the military spending increases, and war plans ooze out like an evil ink stain spreading across the globe.

The evil empire, number one threat to peace in the world, is now the United States. No more Red Menace. No more Third Reich. Now it's a War on Terror executed by the biggest terrorist of all - America, the nation that killed its own people by the thousands in order to trigger World War III and capture all the world's oil fields.

Now the shoe is obviously on the other foot. The United States has now assumed the role of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia at their worst and all rolled into one. It has troops poised and threatening in 127 other countries. By the diabolical mechanisms of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, it has already plundered most other countries financially, stealing their utilities and impoverishing their inhabitants. And those nations who resist this financial con game, like Yugoslavia, are simply invaded and coerced into servitude. Those nations who play the game, like Russia and Argentina, are reduced to abject poverty with a few pro-Western billionaires owning everything.

And woe to those nations who won't play the game, like Iraq. They are obliterated and turned into permanent war zones. Their people are murdered in their sleep by hopped-up American soldiers who are told by their cynical leaders that they are spreading democracy, when really what they are spreading are endless opportunities for plunder by politically connected corporations.

And America's leader lie about absolutely everything. Never at any time in my personal history has there been a time when an American president has not at least accidentally told the truth about something, but that time is now.

Once upon a time, Americans used to preach the cause of freedom and justice for all. It's actually written in their Pledge of Allegiance. But they don't adhere to that anymore. After all, Americans have canceled their Bill of Rights, which once made them famous - made them loved! - all over the world. Now they are feared all over the world. Reviled. When Americans launched their worldwide war on terror - based on a treasonous event in which they killed large numbers of their own people - they betrayed the whole world. They betrayed every dream of freedom anybody ever had anywhere.

The people who did it did it for a few billion dollars. Can you blame them? It's easy money blowing up countries and blaming it on somebody else. Even you might do it if you had the chance. Americans support such an idea. It's capitalism at its best, controlling the market, make money on the destruction by selling the weapons, make money on the reconstruction by involving your friends in the contracts, no public bids, of course. So you lose a few dark-skinned lives. The world is overpopulated anyway. Look at it as population control (although that it another, much larger topic).

Things have become so ugly in the United States that the liberal opposition candidate for president tells peace activists to "Get over it!" That there will be no peace no matter who is president. That America is united to overrun and ravish the whole world, simply because there is no one to stop it. This is the America that was venerated and admired all over the world. This is what America became when there was no other power to keep it honest. It became dishonest - and a killer nation.

People overseas make a mistake when the say they have nothing against the American people, that it is simply the American government they loathe and fear. It is the American people who have permitted this to happen, and they who bear the blame and will reap the whirlwind for their inaction.

Once, America set an example for the world to establish representative government and take care of its less fortunate. Today, America is still setting an example for the world, an example that democracy is a hoax, and that all we can expect for our children's futures is a dark abyss of endless war based on phony pretenses.

The thing that made the episodes with Nazi Germany and Soviet Union have happy endings was that there was somebody to fight for freedom ready to rescue those oppressed by military tyranny from a foreign power.

But now, who is ready to defend the freedom of those in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in Macedonia, Serbia, the Philippines, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala ... or Palestine?

Who is ready to defend freedom now that the Americans have declared freedom incompatible with security?

But these things tend to even out over time. Rome wasn't built in a day and it took centuries to fall apart, but eventually it was picked apart by jackals and sycophantic traitors from within.

The world will yet have the last laugh on America, after its own leaders have finished picking the bones of its financially depleted carcass.

Because Americans have given up defending true freedom around the world, the day will soon arrive (sooner than they think) when they will have to defend their own freedom against the very monster they have created by their own selfish indifference. The corporate beast that consumes freedom around the world will one day soon turn its gaping jaws on America itself, and the Americans, who have decided to forget how to defend true freedom around the world, will necessarily have forgotten how to defend their own.

Once upon a time, when I was a little shaver and the president was some guy named Ike, I was told that America was the greatest nation in the world because it was a champion of freedom and justice, and rescued the oppressed whenever people were in trouble.

So ... were they lying then and telling the truth now, or telling the truth then and lying now?

And when the rest of the world comes calling to rectify this murderous tyranny and worldwide oppression that America now practices, what will you say to them when they aim their guns at you? That you didn't know?




John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays published by Dandelion Books and featured on hundreds of websites around the world. For more information on how to get this book or to financially support his work (seriously needed now), go to http://www.johnkaminski.com/. Or, to read some more of his recent essays for free, go to http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html

posted September 29, 2004 08:12 PM            

Frankly Ozone, if things were the way this jerk really thinks, his sorry $ss would be sitting in a jail cell rotting off.

posted September 29, 2004 08:21 PM            

Just so you can use control over your fellow Americans and everyother humanbeing to your own whims, just as YOU please!

posted September 29, 2004 10:22 PM              

quote:

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No wonder you can't keep straight in your mind who the enemy is and who the enemy isn't. Short circuited.

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This sentence rubbed me the wrong way, jwhop. I don't really know how to express why, but the words black-and-white come to mind. Maybe that's not what you meant though.

I liked the article. Even if it might be a load of crap (can't say if it is or not), I love stuff like this that looks at such a drastically different viewpoint.

Who's the enemy? Shouldn't we take a minute or two once in awhile to look around and see if we're still fighting the same battle that originally set forth to do in the first place? To liberate the Iraqi people? Well, we captured Hussain, we didn't find any weapons, we tried at our best to give Iraq what we thought was the best form of government- a democracy. Things aren't going that great anymore though, are they?

I don't know about you, but when I turn on the news in the morning before going to school, I don't hear about the Iraqi people jumping stepping stones towards peace. But then, my opinions could just be a result of news bias. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's a bit hard to think positively about our whole international situation with all of the negative news and information we get day after day. Then again, I guess I could say that's my fault for not striving to research what's really going on on my own.

This probably sounds incredibly cheesy, but it's true- every great empire has fallen.

posted September 29, 2004 11:47 PM            

quote:

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This sentence rubbed me the wrong way, jwhop. I don't really know how to express why, but the words black-and-white come to mind. Maybe that's not what you meant though.

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If it seemed a black and white statement to you Everlong, it was intended to be.

In all the time Ozone has been on this site, I cannot recall one time he ever has had one good thing to say about the United States. In my opinion, people with that mindset have their heads where they don't belong.

posted September 30, 2004 01:30 AM            

Most people spend their time focusing on one side or the other when reflecting upon themselves or their country. Being able to look at either aspect with a frank eye is critical to being a part of a functioning democracy.

now..

Those who doubt the U.S. bent towards world dictatorship should study up on the effects of GATT, the WTO and NAFTA upon the global south and democracy across the world. Example- Corporations have the right to sue countries that democratically pass environmental or labor laws that interfere with future profits of that company. Now our collective desire to, say for example, protect ourselves from carcinogens in a product is trumped by a corporations need to profit off the sale of said carcinogen. The decisions of the WTO are not democratic, they take place behind closed doors without any accountability to communities and they decide the fate of our ecosystems and our labor conditions And tis thus that capitalism gunned down democracy as the somnambulists uttered nary a peep of discomfort.

p.s.
Ironic that some folks so feverishly denounce the United Nations and yet see nothing wrong with the WTO.

posted September 30, 2004 02:37 PM            

I'm sure then that you must have a reasonable explanation for your opposition to the Constitution which lays out a Republic as opposed to a Democracy. An explanation for your opposition to the capitalist economic system which flows naturally from the Constitution. An explanation for your opposition to the US Government, which exercises the governmental powers under the Constitution. Your opposition to the government itself, which is composed of mostly career personnel, most of whom are Democrats.

Maybe it's the people you like Ozone? I can't see how that's possible either. At least 70% of Americans like W personally, the man you despise. People, the majority of whom vote conservative and agree much more with W than they do with you.

Let's see what's left for you to like about America Ozone. It's not the Constitution, it's not the government, it's not the economic system and it's not the people. I guess that just leaves the climate...unless you can come up with something else that doesn't fall into one of the other categories.

As for the climate Ozone, since that seems to be the only thing you like about America, let me recommend Toulouse, France to you. The average mean temperature is identical to your area in Pennsylvania except the winters are slightly warmer...that's a plus. The socialist economic system is exactly to your liking and as a socialist nation, they are exactly on the same page with you. Rounding it out Ozone, Toulouse is a city of culture and art, what could be better? And of course you would be right at home with the America bashing French and away from those terrible conservatives who like Bush and love America. The French are also Kerry fans Ozone.

An added benefit Ozone is that you would never have to worry about France going to war...no indeed. Their national motto is "peace before honor". Hell Ozone, France even surrendered to the little German Corporal with hardly a shot fired in anger. Something to think about eh Ozone? It just gets better and better.

posted September 30, 2004 04:30 PM            

But since Bush Jr. became president, the US doesn't look like Toulouse, France, it looks more like Pagan Rome!

posted September 30, 2004 05:06 PM            

OK, well here we go!

I like....

New York city
bumper cars
ice creeeeeam
nude beaches
Woodstock(what's left of it)
fishing for fluke by Robin's Island
mild winters
oh what else, geeee JW you got me on a little bit of a tight spot, I'm missing the news right now. I'll get back to you in a little bit to finish my list, OK?

posted September 30, 2004 08:56 PM              

(nude) Hot Springs
Summer Fairs
Hawaii
Knott's Berry Farm
WIC (Women Infants and Chldren -they give low income families milk, eggs, cereal, baby formula (which is like 10 bucks a can and lasts about 3 days), juice, and peanut butter (or canned tuna))
Clean drinking water
The Grand Canyon
The Pacific NW (no other place like it... and the people here are REALLY nice mostly)
Washington State (no income tax, beautiful state)
Oregon (no sales tax, beautiful, Eastern Oregon is really warm)
Montana (has no speed limit on the highway )

posted November 19, 2005 05:37 PM              

It seems things are a little slow, aye?