- 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
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