Columnist - John Sammon You’ve heard of a Freudian slip. This is where you accidentally reveal some hidden thing in which you believe. Time and again, Republicans have revealed, sometimes outright, while at the same time attempting to pander to the American people as working class heroes, that they consider Americans to be superior to other peoples. Especially white Americans.
Do you? Because you’re American, do you feel you’re better? One of the chosen people?
During the first debate, McCain wouldn’t look at Obama. This is because McCain thinks of Obama as an upstart nigger.
McCain’s handlers told him about this gaff, and in their last debate, McCain literally hugged Obama (a theatrical ploy to gain votes by trying to show he’s friendly to blacks).
The reason for the original snub is also the reason McCain is against any dialog (communication) with countries we’ve decided we don’t like, like Syria. Syria might use its influence in the region to help control terrorism.
I’m only saying it’s a possibility.
Instead, turn your back. Because hostility and non-communication are better, despite the fact that in the past we’ve befriended some ruthless dictatorships, while selectively condemning others. We originally befriended Saddam Hussein, and only turned on him when he wouldn’t act like the good puppet we thought we had in our pocket.
Why do Republicans constantly talk about God and America as though we’re the only country in the world whom God favors? As though we’re the only country that matters?
Here’s the way they (Republicans) word it.
• “I’m fearful his America is not my America” (implies ownership of America).
• “Our troops are on a mission from God” (implies God is a four-star American general).
“Bomb bomb bomb…bomb bomb Iran” (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann). Meant as a joke by McCain, it trivializes, dismisses as nothing, the violent deaths of thousands of innocent people, including women and children.
There are three main dysfunctional reasons to think we’re better.
1. We’re more powerful militarily.
2. We’re richer.
3. We know God. Others don’t.
To Republicans, there are niggers here in this country, that we (whites) are better than. But there are others. Many others.
Here is a partial list of countries, who, according to the right wing, could also be considered niggers:
Canada – A bunch of displaced French frogs and faggots in Mountie suits up in the north woods. Even though they’re socialistic and soft on terror, at least, they stay where they are.
Unlike –
Mexico – Cactus niggers. Ruining the United States by coming here, illegally populating huge tracts of land of which they used to own that we illegally but patriotically stole from them. I don’t like ‘em, but I’ll let ‘em landscape my yard.
Arabs – Sand niggers. A worthless bunch of stinking, sheep-stealing, turban-wearing Sabu-fetch-my-slippers assbites…..except the Saudis (the springboard for Al-Qaeda), whom, even though they’re inferior…we can tolerate because of their oil. Their royal family act a lot like we do.
The British – They support every war we engage in. They’re faggy and weak looking but at least they’re white, and they gave us the Beatles.
Japan – They’re still just Japs. We’ve watched too many old World War Two movies to change that.
The Russians – Godless, communistic-inclined Bolsheviks who attacked Georgia. Only the United States has the right to attack other countries (Palin said we might attack Russia).
China – A bunch of modernizing Chinks whom we as yet have no problem with.
South America – All those countries down there, a bunch of stupid looking, weak-coffee-colored Indians walking around like they don’t have a clue. Sandals on their feet. No shopping malls. They’re lucky we tolerate them.
All of Africa – If God didn’t intend them to be unlucky, he wouldn’t have put them in huts as ignorant, disease-ridden savages. If you want the true story of Africa, watch Tarzan movies.
Pakistan – More turban heads. We’re going to violate their sovereignty without their permission to go after terrorists. We can fight a war with them since we have two other wars we haven’t won. We’ll have ourselves in a war with those ignorant bastards and we’ll make it look like they started it.
“[America on Notice] deserves to be read widely…sets out an alternative agenda of engagement with other cultures and states.” — Roger Eatwell,Professor of European Politics, Head of Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath, UK
Product Description:
During the past decade, the image of America in many parts of the world has steadily deteriorated. In this perceptive analysis of the causes of anti-Americanism, Glenn and Carole Schweitzer—coauthors of the acclaimed Superterrorism: Assassins, Mobsters, and Weapons of Mass Destruction—chart a proactive course for change that will create a more positive attitude toward America and deter terrorism, while encouraging international cooperation to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.
The authors begin by showing how and why growing American military and economic power in recent years, coupled with questionable foreign policy choices, have generated negative foreign perceptions of America, especially in Muslim countries. They also address how the growing Muslim populations, with few resources and little room to expand, display increased resentment toward American wealth, while their overcrowded cities have become breeding grounds for hatred directed toward America.
Beyond highlighting key problem areas, the Schweitzers devote most of the book to recommending realistic, doable solutions. They want to see U.S. leadership that gives priority to: a new emphasis in foreign assistance on job creation and sustainable solutions; expanded international educational opportunities and the adoption of modern university curricula, particularly in the Muslim world; a change in current U.S. policies that justify military interventions; greater support of capabilities in the developing countries to control infectious diseases; modification of the U.S. double standard that allows for the increase in American nuclear weapons capabilities while denying others the use of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes; a strengthening of the role of the United Nations to prevent and resolve international security crises; and more assertive U.S. actions in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a major source of much of the anti-American feeling in the Middle East.
The authors also stress the importance of listening to and considering the views of leaders of other societies, in contrast to simply pronouncing U.S. policies and intentions. Also, they urge more effective support of local television stations to communicate accurate and balanced views of American society, culture, and policies. Reflecting decades of experience in international relations, this important assessment of America’s role in the world will interest everyone concerned with American security and the prospects for global peace.
The United States is one of the last remaining land empires. That it is made the butt of opprobrium and odium is hardly surprising, or unprecedented. Empires - Rome, the British, the Ottomans - were always targeted by the disgruntled, the disenfranchised and the dispossessed and by their self-appointed delegates, the intelligentsia.
Yet, even by historical standards, America seems to be provoking blanket repulsion.
The Pew Research Center published in December 2002 a report titled “What the World Thinks in 2002″. “The World”, was reduced by the pollsters to 44 countries and 38,000 interviewees. Two other surveys published last year - by the German Marshall Fund and the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations - largely supported Pew’s findings.
The most startling and unambiguous revelation was the extent of anti-American groundswell everywhere: among America’s NATO allies, in developing countries, Muslim nations and even in eastern Europe where Americans, only a decade ago, were lionized as much-adulated liberators.
Four years later, things have gotten even worse.
Between March and May 2006, Pew surveyed 16,710 people in Britain, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the United States.
Only 23% of Spaniards had a positive opinion of the USA, down from 41% the year before. A similar drop was evinced in India (from 71% to 56%), Russia (from 52% o 43%), Indonesia (from 38% to 30%), and Turkey (from 23% to 12%). In Britain, America’s putative ally, support was down by one third from 2002, to 50% or so. Declines were noted in France, Germany, and Jordan, somewhat offset by marginal rises in China and Pakistan.
Two thirds of Russians and overwhelming majorities in 13 out of 15 countries regarded the conduct of the USA in Iraq as a greater threat to world peace that Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The distinction formerly made between the American people and the Bush administration is also eroding. Majorities in only 7 of 14 countries had favorable views of Americans.
“People around the world embrace things American and, at the same time, decry U.S. influence on their societies. Similarly, pluralities in most of the nations surveyed complain about American unilateralism.”- expounded the year 2002 Pew report.
Yet, even this “embrace of things American” is ambiguous.
Violently “independent”, inanely litigious and quarrelsome, solipsistically provincial, and fatuously ignorant - this nation of video clips and sound bites, the United States, is often perceived as trying to impose its narcissistic pseudo-culture upon a world exhausted by wars hot and cold and corrupted by vacuous materialism.
Recent accounting scandals, crumbling markets, political scams, human rights violations, technological setbacks, and rising social tensions have revealed how rotten and inherently contradictory the US edifice is and how concerned are Americans with appearances rather than substance.
To religious fundamentalists, America is the Great Satan, a latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of immorality and spiritual decay. To many European liberals, the United states is a throwback to darker ages of religious zealotry, pernicious bigotry, virulent nationalism, and the capricious misrule of the mighty.
According to most recent surveys by Gallup, MORI, the Council for Secular Humanism, the US Census Bureau, and others - the vast majority of Americans are chauvinistic, moralizing, bible-thumping, cantankerous, and trigger-happy. About half of them believe that Satan exists - not as a metaphor, but as a real physical entity.
America has a record defense spending per head, a vertiginous rate of incarceration, among the highest numbers of legal executions and gun-related deaths. It is still engaged in atavistic debates about abortion, the role of religion, and whether to teach the theory of evolution.
According to a series of special feature articles in The Economist, America is generally well-liked in Europe, but less so than before. It is utterly detested by the Muslim street, even in “progressive” Arab countries, such as Egypt and Jordan. Everyone - Europeans and Arabs, Asians and Africans - think that “the spread of American ideas and customs is a bad thing.”
Admittedly, we typically devalue most that which we have formerly idealized and idolized.
To the liberal-minded, the United States of America reified the most noble, lofty, and worthy values, ideals, and causes. It was a dream in the throes of becoming, a vision of liberty, peace, justice, prosperity, and progress. Its system, though far from flawless, was considered superior - both morally and functionally - to anything ever conceived by Man.
Such unrealistic expectations inevitably and invariably lead to disenchantment, disillusionment, bitter disappointment, seething anger, and a sense of humiliation for having been thus deluded, or, rather, self-deceived. This backlash is further exacerbated by the haughty hectoring of the ubiquitous American missionaries of the “free-market-cum-democracy” church.
Americans everywhere aggressively preach the superior virtues of their homeland. Edward K. Thompson, managing editor of “Life” (1949-1961) warned against this propensity to feign omniscience and omnipotence: “Life (the magazine) must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all, or a Peeping Tom.”
Thus, America’s foreign policy - i.e., its presence and actions abroad - is, by far, its foremost vulnerability.
According to the Pew study, the image of the Unites States as a benign world power slipped dramatically in the space of two years in Slovakia (down 14 percent), in Poland (-7), in the Czech Republic (-6) and even in fervently pro-Western Bulgaria (-4 percent). It rose exponentially in Ukraine (up 10 percent) and, most astoundingly, in Russia (+24 percent) - but from a very low base.
The crux may be that the USA maintains one set of sanctimonious standards at home while egregiously and nonchalantly flouting them far and wide. Hence the fervid demonstrations against its military presence in places as disparate as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Saudi Arabia.
In January 2000, Staff Sergeant Frank J. Ronghi sexually molested, forcibly sodomized (”indecent acts with a child”) and then murdered an 11-years old girl in the basement of her drab building in Kosovo, when her father went to market to do some shopping. His is by no means the most atrocious link in a long chain of brutalities inflicted by American soldiers overseas, the latest of which are taking place in Iraq. In all these cases, the perpetrators were removed from the scene to face justice - or, more often, a travesty thereof - back home.
Americans - officials, scholars, peacemakers, non-government organizations - maintain a colonial state of mind. Backward natives come cheap, their lives dispensable, their systems of governance and economies inherently inferior. The white man’s burden must not be encumbered by the vagaries of primitive indigenous jurisprudence. Hence America’s fierce resistance to and indefatigable obstruction of the International Criminal Court.
Opportunistic multilateralism notwithstanding, the USA still owes the poorer nations of the world close to $200 million - its arrears to the UN peacekeeping operations, usually asked to mop up after an American invasion or bombing. It not only refuses to subject its soldiers to the jurisdiction of the World Criminal Court - but also its facilities to the inspectors of the Chemical Weapons Convention, its military to the sanctions of the (anti) land mines treaty and the provisions of the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, and its industry to the environmental constraints of the Kyoto Protocol, the rulings of the World Trade Organization, and the rigors of global intellectual property rights.
Despite its instinctual unilateralism, the United States is never averse to exploiting multilateral institutions to its ends. It is the only shareholder with a veto power in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), by now widely considered to have degenerated into a long arm of the American administration. The United Nations Security Council, raucous protestations aside, has rubber-stamped American martial exploits from Panama to Iraq.
It seems as though America uses - and thus, perforce, abuses - the international system for its own, ever changing, ends. International law is invoked by it when convenient - ignored when importune.
In short, America is a bully. It is a law unto itself and it legislates on the fly, twisting arms and breaking bones when faced with opposition and ignoring the very edicts it promulgates at its convenience. Its soldiers and peacekeepers, its bankers and businessmen, its traders and diplomats are its long arms, an embodiment of this potent and malignant mixture of supremacy and contempt.
But why is America being singled out?
In politics and even more so in geopolitics, double standards and bullying are common. Apartheid South Africa, colonial France, mainland China, post-1967 Israel - and virtually every other polity - were at one time or another characterized by both. But while these countries usually mistreated only their own subjects - the USA does so also exterritorialy.
Even as it never ceases to hector, preach, chastise, and instruct - it does not recoil from violating its own decrees and ignoring its own teachings. It is, therefore, not the USA’s intrinsic nature, nor its self-perception, or social model that I find most reprehensible - but its actions, particularly its foreign policy.
America’s manifest hypocrisy, its moral talk and often immoral walk, its persistent application of double standards, irks and grates. I firmly believe that it is better to face a forthright villain than a masquerading saint. It is easy to confront a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Mao, vile and bloodied, irredeemably depraved, worthy only of annihilation. The subtleties of coping with the United States are far more demanding and far less rewarding.
This self-proclaimed champion of human rights has aided and abetted countless murderous dictatorships. This alleged sponsor of free trade is the most protectionist of rich nations. This ostensible beacon of charity contributes less than 0.1% of its GDP to foreign aid (compared to Scandinavia’s 0.6%, for instance). This upright proponent of international law (under whose aegis it bombed and invaded half a dozen countries this past decade alone) is in avowed opposition to crucial pillars of the international order.
Naturally, America’s enemies and critics are envious of its might and wealth. They would have probably acted the same as the United States, if they only could. But America’s haughtiness and obtuse refusal to engage in soul searching and house cleaning do little to ameliorate this antagonism.
To the peoples of the poor world, America is both a colonial power and a mercantilist exploiter. To further its geopolitical and economic goals from Central Asia to the Middle East, it persists in buttressing regimes with scant regard for human rights, in cahoots with venal and sometimes homicidal indigenous politicians. And it drains the developing world of its brains, its labour, and its raw materials, giving little in return.
All powers are self-interested - but America is narcissistic. It is bent on exploiting and, having exploited, on discarding. It is a global Dr. Frankenstein, spawning mutated monsters in its wake. Its “drain and dump” policies consistently boomerang to haunt it.
Both Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega - two acknowledged monsters - were aided and abetted by the CIA and the US military. America had to invade Panama to depose the latter and to molest Iraq for the second time in order to force the removal of the former.
The Kosovo Liberation Army, an American anti-Milosevic pet, provoked a civil war in Macedonia tin 2001. Osama bin-Laden, another CIA golem, restored to the USA, on September 11, 2001 some of the materiel it so generously bestowed on him in his anti-Russian days.
Normally the outcomes of expedience, the Ugly American’s alliances and allegiances shift kaleidoscopically. Pakistan and Libya were transmuted from foes to allies in the fortnight prior to the Afghan campaign. Milosevic has metamorphosed from staunch ally to rabid foe in days.
This capricious inconsistency casts in grave doubt America’s sincerity - and in sharp relief its unreliability and disloyalty, its short term thinking, truncated attention span, soundbite mentality, and dangerous, “black and white”, simplism.
In its heartland, America is isolationist. Its denizens erroneously believe that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is an economically self-sufficient and self-contained continent. Yet, it is not what Americans trust or wish that matters to others. It is what they do. And what they do is meddle, often unilaterally, always ignorantly, sometimes forcefully.
Elsewhere, inevitable unilateralism is mitigated by inclusive cosmopolitanism. It is exacerbated by provincialism - and American decision-makers are mostly provincials, popularly elected by provincials. As opposed to Rome, or Great Britain, America is ill-suited and ill-equipped to micromanage the world.
It is too puerile, too abrasive, too arrogant and it has a lot to learn. Its refusal to acknowledge its shortcomings, its confusion of brain with brawn (i.e., money or bombs), its legalistic-litigious character, its culture of instant gratification and one-dimensional over-simplification, its heartless lack of empathy, and bloated sense of entitlement are detrimental to world peace and stability.
America is often called by others to intervene. Many initiate conflicts or prolong them with the express purpose of dragging America into the quagmire. It then is either castigated for not having responded to such calls - or reprimanded for having responded. It seems that it cannot win. Abstention and involvement alike garner it only ill-will.
But people call upon America to get involved because they know it rises to the challenge. America should make it unequivocally and unambiguously clear that - with the exception of the Americas - its sole interests rest in commerce. It should make it equally known that it will protect its citizens and defend its assets, if need be by force.
Indeed, America’s - and the world’s - best bet are a reversion to the Monroe and (technologically updated) Mahan doctrines. Wilson’s Fourteen Points brought the USA nothing but two World Wars and a Cold War thereafter. It is time to disengage.
Note - America the Narcissist
The majority of worldwide respondents to the last two global Pew enter surveys (in 2002 and 2006) regarded the United States as the greatest menace to world peace - far greater than the likes of Iraq or China. Thinkers and scholars as diverse as Christopher Lasch in “The Cultural Narcissist” and Theodore Millon in “Personality Disorders of Everyday Life” have singled out the United States as the quintessential narcissistic society.
The “American Dream” in itself is benign. It involves materialistic self-realization, the belief in the ideal of equal opportunities and equal access to the system, and in just rewards for hard work, merit, and natural gifts. But the Dream has been rendered nightmarish by the confluence with America’s narcissistic traits.
America’s internal ethos is universally-accepted by all Americans. It incorporates the American Dream and the conviction that America stands for everything that is good and right. Consequently, as the reification of goodness, the United States is in constant battle with evil and its ever-changing demonic emissaries - from Hitler to Saddam Hussein.
There is no national consensus about America’s external ethos. Some Americans are isolationists, others interventionists. Both groups are hypervigilant, paranoid, and self-righteous - but isolationists are introverted and schizoid. Theirs is siege mentality. Interventionists are missionary. They feel omnipotent and invincible. They are extroverted and psychopathic.
This pathology can be traced back and attributed to a confluence of historical events and processes, the equivalents of trauma and abuse in an individual’s early childhood.
The United States of America started out as a series of loosely connected, remote, savage, and negligible colonial outposts. The denizens of these settlements were former victims of religious persecution, indentured servants, lapsed nobility, and other refugees. Their Declaration of Independence reads like a maudlin list of grievances coupled with desperate protestations of love and loyalty to their abuser, the King of Britain.
The inhabitants of the colonies defended against their perceived helplessness and very real inferiority with compensatory, imagined, and feigned superiority and fantasies of omnipotence. Victims frequently internalize their abusers and themselves become bullies. Hence the rough, immutable kernel of American narcissism.
The United States was (until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and still is, in some important respects, a
pre-Enlightenment, white supremacist society. It is rife with superstition, prejudice, conspicuous religiosity, intolerance, philistinism, and lack of social solidarity. Its religiosity is overt, aggressive, virulent and
ubiquitous. It is replete with an eschatology, which involves a changing cast of demonized “enemies”, both political and cultural.
The Civil War was fought between 2 America’s: the South, a perverted rendition of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the North, a harbinger of modern, multicultural immigrant societies. The North and the American Dream prevailed, the slaves were freed, and the Southern way of life, that of “gentlemen with leisure”, was replaced by a workaholic society where everyone is a slave to money and leisure is an ever rarer commodity.
Americans’ religion is a manifestation of their “Chosen People Syndrome”. They are missionary, messianic, zealous, fanatical, and nauseatingly self-righteous, bigoted, and hypocritical. This is especially discernible in the double-speak and double-standard that underlies American foreign policy.
Narcissism is frequently comorbid with paranoia. Americans cultivate and nurture a siege mentality which leads to violent acting out and unbridled jingoism. Their persecutory delusions sit well with their adherence to social Darwinism (natural selection of the fittest, let the weaker fall by the wayside, might is right, etc.).
Consequently, the United States always finds itself in company with the least palatable regimes in the world: together with Nazi Germany it had a working eugenics program (the 1935 anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws and the Nazi sterilization law were modeled after American anti-miscegenation and sterilization statutes), together with the likes of Saudi Arabia it executes its prisoners, it was the last developed nation to abolish slavery, alone with South Africa it had instituted official apartheid in a vast swathe of its territory.
Add to this volatile mix an ethos of malignant individualism, racism both latent and overt, a trampling, “no holds barred” ambitiousness, competitiveness, frontier violence-based morality, and proud simple-mindedness - and an ominous portrait of the United States as a deeply disturbed polity emerges.
As expected, after the “idiot-in-chief” George Bush attacked Sen. Barack Obama on the floor of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), right-wing ReTHUGlican radio and TV morons, picked up the issue like hungry hyenas ‘howling and fighting’ over bone fragments.
George W. Bush told the Israeli Knesset Thursday that those who would talk with Iran or Syria were guilty of “appeasement” of a kind that once emboldened Hitler.
The remark has been widely interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has said the U.S. should not exclude talking with Iran or Syria.
One of these right-wing “Radio Toilets,” a Mr. Kevin James attempted to defend President Bush’s comments comparing Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to Nazi appeasers because he favors talking with ‘US’s enemies.’ James tried to compare Obama to Neville Chamberlain(1869 – 1940), who was a British Conservative politician and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1937 to 1940. Chamberlain’s legacy is marked by his policy regarding the appeasement of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany with his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler.
Mathews asked James if he knew what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich in 1938.
James had no answer other than to yell baselessly — like an imbecile in heat.
“What did he do?” x20 — Mathews Asked.
….but “Idiot James” kept on digging…
Mathews retorted: If you answered, “He signed the Munich Agreement, conceding a portion of Czechoslovakia to the Nazi regime,” you are right. If you answered, “He talked to Hitler, and caused 9/11 to happen and made the Statue of Liberty cry, just like Barack Hussein bin Laden wants to!” then you are Kevin James.
The video below is representative of the thought process of right-wing talk hosts and their audiences (TV and Radio), the Bible thumping, Gun Clinging and Xenophobic idiots crawling across West Virginia and many other southern states — Stubborn ignorance piled on top of unconscious delusion — the primary cause of hate crimes in the United States.
Spokesman Hari Sevugan: “This is a shameful attempt to attack a woman who has repeatedly said she wouldn’t be here without the opportunities and blessings of this nation. The Republican Party’s pathetic attempts to use the same smear tactics to win elections have failed in Mississippi, failed in Louisiana, and will fail in November because the American people are looking for a positive vision of real change. And if the Tennessee Republican Party has a problem with Senator Obama, maybe next time they’ll have the courage to address him directly instead of attacking his family.”
You’ve heard of a Freudian slip. This is where you accidentally reveal some hidden thing in which you believe. Time and again, Republicans have revealed, sometimes outright, while at the same time attempting to pander to the American people as working class heroes, that they consider Americans to be superior to other peoples. Especially white Americans.
