“Drapetomania”, “Communism”, and “Terrorism” in the Service of Class War

[Time for change]

The quotes surrounding the three words in the title of this post are meant to convey that it is not the entities themselves that have been used by American elites since the beginning of our republic to stave off the mass of Americans from infringing on their wealth and privileges. Rather, it is simply the words. These are words that the American elite have used at various stages of our history to help conjure up images of an evil enemy, which Americans must unite against in the cause of “patriotism”. Failure of individual Americans to unite against these common enemies has brought upon them marginalization, scorn, and much worse. As long as the elite can make their fellow Americans believe in a common enemy which is both evil and extraordinarily powerful, they are able to distract us from their own misdeeds and proceed unhindered in their efforts to construct and maintain a legal and social structure to enhance their status and wealth, at the expense of everyone else.

These three words by no means represent a complete representation of the many words and tricks that American (or other) elites have used to maintain their status and power. They are merely examples, pertaining to different stages of our history.

The word drapetomania was coined by the psychiatrist Samuel A. Cartwright, in 1851, as the mental illness in which black slaves were plagued by an excessive and abnormal need to flee captivity. It was just one of many words and explanations that slaveholders and other racists used to justify their ownership and cruel treatment of other human beings in a country that was founded upon the supposition that “all men are created equal”.

By now the good majority of Americans have outgrown the mindset that justified such terms as drapetomania and the belief that the color of a person’s skin could justify slavery or other forms of discrimination. American elites had to come up with something more subtle and more believable.

With the abolition of slavery in 1865 and the onset of the industrial revolution, the labor movement became one of the biggest threats to the ruling elite. They referred to those involved in the labor movement as anarchists, socialists, Communists, and terrorists. They aggressively suppressed the labor movement, through name calling, the enactment of legislation, and violence.

With the Russian Revolution of October 1917, Communism became the new bogeyman. “Communists” were ruthlessly suppressed within our own country, but much more so in other countries. With the end of the Cold War in 1991, they needed a new enemy. The attacks of 9/11/01 provided that new enemy: “Terrorism”.


JUSTIFYING SLAVERY AND IMPERIALISM

Noam Chomsky explains the psychology behind the propensity of people to justify their own cruelty, in his book, “What we Say Goes”:

When you conquer somebody and suppress them, you have to have a reason. You can’t just say, “I’m a son of a bitch and I want to rob them.” You have to say it’s for their good, they deserve it, or they actually benefit from it. We’re helping them. That was the attitude of slave owners. Most of them didn’t say, “Look, I’m enslaving these people because I want easily exploitable, cheap labor for my own benefit.” They said, “We’re doing them a favor. They need it.”

Justifying slavery

Indeed, throughout the period of American slavery, and even afterwards, slaveholders, their defenders, and their ancestors have vigorously sought to foster the idea that slavery was natural and beneficial for black people. Consequently, as explained by James Loewen in “Lies Across America – What our Historic Sites Get Wrong”, the southern landscape of the United States even today is filled with monuments and historical markers that celebrate and glorify the old Confederacy and twist facts in order to hide embarrassing events, and justify the “cause” that the Confederacy fought for. Here are just a couple of examples:

The Good Darky
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, there stood, in the words of a Guide to Louisiana, “a bronze figure of an old Negro, hat in hand, smiling with shoulders bent”, long known as “The Good Darky”. At the dedication of the statue in 1927, the following resolution was adopted:

Resolved that the faithful and devoted service rendered by the old Southern slaves, in working and making crops and taking care of the white women and children, while their masters were away fighting to keep them in slavery, has never been equaled… Those who are old enough to remember can tell you how the slaves remained at home and took care of everything…

Needless to say, the purpose of that statue and others like it is two-fold: It provided a model for African-Americans for how they were supposed to comport themselves in the brutal segregation regimes of the old South; and, it perpetuates the totally false myth that the slavery system was beneficial to and eagerly embraced by the slaves of the Ante-bellum South.

Honoring slaves who fought for the Confederacy
In order to perpetuate the myth that slavery was beneficial for slaves, historical markers that honor slaves who fought for the Confederacy were erected throughout the South. A typical example is this one:

Dedicated to the Faithful Slaves – who, loyal to a sacred trust, toiled for the support of the army, with matchless devotion, and with sterling fidelity guarded our defenseless homes, women, and children, during the struggle for the principles of our “Confederate States of America”

Needless to say, such historical markers are grossly misleading. Whereas an estimated 180,000 slaves escaped to join the Union Army, and thousands of additional slaves aided the Union cause in numerous other ways, a study of 150 thousand Confederate soldiers found less than a dozen of them to be black (and probably most or all of those were coerced into being there). By the end of the war the myth of the happy slave had been shattered – though historical markers throughout the South continue to keep the myth alive today. Loewen explains:

As the war ended in 1865 … many whites were profoundly shaken by the revelation that slaves hated slavery and resented their masters. This might seem obvious to us now, but… the belief that blacks were content in their bondage was a cornerstone of proslavery ideology.”

Justifying imperialism

Imperialism is a close cousin of slavery, and its practice in the United continues even today, long after the abolition of slavery. One good example from the past is the American-Philippine war.

After “liberating” the Philippines from Spain in 1898 in the course of the Spanish American War, the question arose as to what to do with them. President McKinley was besieged with advice from businessmen with commercial interests in the Philippines and by military men who believed we should gain control over the Philippines for strategic military purposes. This is how McKinley justified his decision to pursue conquest of the Philippines:

The truth is I didn’t want the Philippines, and when they came to us, as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them… I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance… And one night late it came to me this way… that we could not leave them to themselves – they were unfit for self-government – and they would soon have anarchy and misrule; and that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them… and the next morning I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States, and there they are, and there they will stay while I am President!

As a result of McKinley’s magnanimous decision, a vicious guerilla war ensued, lasting three and a half years, from February 1899 until the middle of 1902. It was characterized by widespread torture, rape, pillage, and the frequent refusal of the American military to make a distinction between civilians and the Philippine military. Rationalizations provided for this behavior included the brutal behavior by the Filipino “savages” (true, but who was invading whose country?) and the claim that the atrocities were the work of a few “bad apples” (not true at all). By the time that the U.S. had “pacified” the Philippines, the dead included 4,374 American soldiers, 16 thousand Filipino guerillas, and 20 thousand Filipino civilians.


OUR LONG FIGHT AGAINST COMMUNISM

There is no question that the Communist government of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, who died in 1953, was a brutal totalitarian dictatorship. It is also probably true that at various times during the Cold War the Soviet Union posed a significant military threat to our country – though we now know that claims to that effect were greatly exaggerated. But none of that justified our repeated Cold War interventions in sovereign nations that had little or nothing to do with the Soviet Union, and usually were not even Communist.

Our war against Communism began shortly after the October Revolution of 1917, which brought to power the Bolsheviks, who later became known as Communists. William Blum explains the reaction of the United States (and other Western powers) to that event:

The Bolsheviks had displayed the audacity of overthrowing a capitalist-feudal system and proclaiming the first socialist state in the history of the world. This was uppityness writ incredibly large. This was the crime the Allies had to punish, the virus which had to be eradicated lest it spread to their own people…In 1918, the barons of American capital needed no reason for their war against communism other than the threat to their wealth and privilege, although their opposition was expressed in terms of moral indignation.

Our punishment initially took the form of military intervention during the Russian Civil War (1918-21), in which the monarchical forces, known as the White Russians, attempted to regain power from the Bolsheviks. Our efforts were unsuccessful. The Communists retained power.

But anti-Communism reemerged with a vengeance shortly after World War II. For 46 years of the Cold War, our demonization of Communism provided the excuse for our CIA and military to intervene in dozens of sovereign nations anywhere and everywhere in the world, to overthrow the legally elected governments of those nations or to prevent them from being elected in the first place. This gave rise to repressive right wing governments all over the world and resulted in untold misery widely distributed throughout the world. Richard J. Walton, in his book, “Henry Wallace, Harry Truman and the Cold War”, describes the situation:

Various right wing dictators… were quick to perceive that the United States was supporting them not out of a genuine concern for their people but because they were allies in an anti-Communist crusade that took precedence over all other considerations… It is difficult to think of a single instance where the United States took effective measures to end repressive, undemocratic practices of a regime it claimed to be supporting in the defense of democracy… Similarly, the excuse of totalitarian Communism was used to demonize the domestic opponents of the right wing elites. That is what McCarthyism was all about. Eventually, they even succeeded in demonizing the word “liberal”, to the extent that few politicians today have the courage to identify themselves with that word.

Here are some examples of the great damage that we to the peoples of numerous sovereign nations in our efforts to “save the world from Communism”:

Iran 1953
In 1953 our CIA intervened in Iran to overthrow a popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had done much to improve the lot of the Iranian people. Here is how Stephen Kinzer describes Mossadegh in his book, “All the Shah’s Men – An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”:

His achievements were profound and even earth-shattering. He set his people off on what would be a long and difficult voyage toward democracy and self-sufficiency… He dealt a devastating blow to the imperial system and hastened its final collapse. He inspired people around the world who believe that nations can and must struggle for the right to govern themselves in freedom.

In Mossadegh’s place we installed the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. The stated reason for our overthrow of Mossadegh was that we were concerned that he would open his country to Communist influence (his nationalization of the Iranian oil industry was also undoubtedly part of the reason). This is how Kinzer sums up the effect of that intervention:

In Iran, almost everyone has for decades known that the United States was responsible for putting an end to democratic rule in 1953 and installing what became the long dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah. His dictatorship produced the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which brought to power a passionately anti-American theocracy that embraced terrorism as a tool of statecraft. Its radicalism inspired anti-Western fanatics in many countries…

Guatemala 1954
Kate Doyle describes the CIA-sponsored regime change in Guatemala:

Although inside Guatemala, President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was seen as a reformer bent only on changing the country's rigid oligarchy, Washington was nervous because he permitted the Guatemalan Communist Party to operate openly. Also, his land reform program threatened U.S. commercial interests, in particular those of the powerful United Fruit Company.

Most historians now agree that the CIA-sponsored military coup in 1954 was the poison arrow that pierced the heart of Guatemala's young democracy. The covert operation overthrew Arbenz, the second legally elected president in Guatemalan history. Over the next four decades, a succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare that also would shred the fabric of Guatemalan society. The violence caused the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans…

Indonesia 1965
A power struggle in Indonesia in 1965 that resulted in the overthrow of Achmad Sukarno and the installment of a military dictatorship resulted in the massacre of up to a million people, mostly civilians, including a substantial portion of women and children – which the New York Times called “one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.” With respect to this episode it was later reported by Kathy Kadane that:

The U.S. government played a significant role in one of the worst massacres of the century by supplying the names of thousands of Communist Party leaders to the Indonesian army, which hunted down the leftists and killed them, former U.S. diplomats say…. Nobody cared about the butchery and mass arrests because the victims were Communists, one Washington official told me.

Vietnam 1954-73
The Geneva Conference Agreements, which officially ended the war between France and Vietnam in 1954, provided for general elections which were to bring about the unification of Vietnam in 1956. However, fearing a Communist victory in those elections, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles convinced Eisenhower to prevent those elections from taking place as planned. Eisenhower proclaimed an indefinite commitment by the United States to that effect – a commitment that President Kennedy inherited, and which was subsequently passed on to Presidents Johnson and Nixon. So began our long involvement culminating in an eventual Communist victory, but not until two million Vietnamese and 58 thousand Americans were dead.

Chile 1973
The Nixon administration hated the idea of Salvador Allende being in power in Chile. Whether that was for ideological reasons or because he represented a roadblock to U.S. corporate interests is not entirely clear. Perhaps there is no real distinction between those two motivations. Anyhow, William Blum, in his article, “A Concise History of US Global Interventions, 1945 to the Present”, explains what the Nixon administration did about their problem:

Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for the Washington power elite… (Allende) respected the constitution and became increasingly popular. After sabotaging Allende’s electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970 despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government… undermining the economy and building up military hostility.

Consequently, the U.S. government collaborated with the Chilean military to overthrow Allende and install Augusto Pinochet. Naomi Klein explains what happened next:

The generals knew that their hold on power depended on Chileans being truly terrified…The trail of blood left behind over those four days came to be known as the Caravan of Death. In short order the entire country had gotten the message: resistance is deadly… In all, more than 3,200 people were disappeared or executed, at least 80,000 were imprisoned, and 200,000 fled the country.

Nicaragua 1980s
Supporting the Contras in their efforts to take over Nicaragua was one of the primary goals of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, despite abundant evidence of repeated atrocities perpetrated by the Contras, including:

murder, the rape of two girls in their homes, torture of men, maiming of children, cutting off arms, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, amputating the genitals of people of both sexes, scraping the skin off the face, pouring acid on the face, breaking the toes and fingers of an 18 year old boy, and summary executions. These were the people Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters" and "the moral equal of our founding fathers."… The human rights organization Americas Watch concluded that "the Contras systematically engage in violent abuses…. so prevalent that these may be said to be their principle means of waging war."

In addition to the Reagan administration funding the Contras, it used the CIA to assist them in their carnage, including the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors. By the mid-1980s, the Contra war had produced 14,000 casualties, including 3,000 dead children and adolescents, and 6,000 children had become war orphans.


THE “WAR ON TERROR”

The attacks against our country of 9/11/01 provided the excuse by the Bush/Cheney administration for invading two sovereign nations and the shredding of our Constitution. “Terrorist” became the new bogeyman. George W. Bush abrogated to himself the power to unilaterally declare any person to be a terrorist and indefinitely detain them on the flimsiest of grounds or no grounds at all. The word “terrorist” is thrown around as casually as we used to throw around the word “Communist”. We even have the gall to refer to men as “terrorists” on the sole basis of their attempts to defend their country against our unlawful invasions.

But who are the real terrorists? Given that George Bush’s excuses for perpetrating the Iraq war all turned out to be lies, it is evident that the real reasons for the war were a combination of baser motives, including control of Iraqi oil supplies, the expansion of American military power, and war profiteering. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of our invasion. Nor are those hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths mere accidents. As noted by Michael Schwartz during the Bush administration:

The architects of American policy in the Middle East tend to keep escalating the level of brutality in search of a way to convince the Iraqis (and now the Iranians) that the only path that avoids indiscriminate slaughter is submission to a Pax Americana. Put another way, American policy in the Middle East has devolved into unadorned state terrorism.

President Obama has made changes for the better. But it remains to be seen to what extent he will reverse some of the worst of the Bush policies. He seems determined to escalate our war in Afghanistan; though he vows to “withdraw” from Iraq, he intends to leave 50,000 “non-combat” troops there; he has refused to fully restore the right of habeas corpus that is demanded by international law and by our Constitution; and, he seems determined not to hold the war criminals of the Bush administration accountable for their crimes.


WHERE WE ARE TODAY

The right wing elite in the United States today, in addition to doing everything in their power to keep Americans cowering in fear of terrorists, have resurrected the old Communist/socialist scare in their attempts to thwart any attempts by the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats to reverse the right wing policies of the past several decades in response to dire social needs. In defense of those efforts they claim that our “winning” the Cold War proved that Communism/socialism are unworkable ideologies. William Blum, in the introduction to his book, “Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”, explains the fallacy of that conclusion:

The boys of Capital, they chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century -- without exception -- has either been crushed, overthrown, or invaded, or corrupted, perverted, subverted, or destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States. Not one socialist government or movement… was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits.

So, what is the current position of our right wing elites?

Capital prowls the globe with a ravenous freedom it hasn't enjoyed since before World War I, operating free of friction… The world has been made safe for the transnational corporation. Will this mean any better life for the multitudes than the Cold War brought? Any more regard for the common folk than there's been since they fell off the cosmic agenda centuries ago? "By all means," says Capital, offering another warmed-up version of the "trickle down" theory, the principle that the poor, who must subsist on table scraps dropped by the rich, can best be served by giving the rich bigger meals.

That is the position that we liberals – and all Americans with any common sense – must fight if we are to establish true democracy and justice in our country. Our right wing elite constantly whine and wail about “big government” taxing them and using the fruits of their labor to provide welfare to vulnerable portions of our population – which is growing larger and larger at a frightening rate. Heaven forbid that our government should be in the business of providing the opportunity for education, health care, food, shelter, and a livable wage for its citizens! That would be socialism, or even Communism!

But if the truth be known, the elites of our country have long been the recipients of the biggest welfare program the world has ever known: The United States military and CIA working constantly to keep the world safe for the transnational corporations.

[Hannah Bell]

1. k for the 4th.

[DemReadingDU]

2. All this propaganda that is shoved down our throats

It is so easy for most people to believe what they hear, when they hear it over and over and over again. Thankfully with the Internet, we can easily read and search for facts. Still, many people don't take the time to find the truths.

All my life I thought the Founders of our Constitution setup the government to be of the people, by the people, for the people. But for many many years, it hasn't worked like that at all. Government now is for the elites, politicians, corporations, and lobbyists, how to protect their status quo.

Great essay for July 4th. Thanks!

[Time for change]

4. You and me both -- and the vast majority of other Americans

The vast majority of us believe what we learned in school, and it takes a lot for us to see the man behind the curtin, or even to believe it when someone points it out to us.

Thank God for the Internet. We better make sure that they don't find a way to take that away from us. It may turn out to be the salvation of humankind.

[bigbrother05]

6. The attack on public education is to break that link

Most of the press is given to the realm of science education, but the more insidious part is the undermining of history and civics education. With a focus on the 3Rs, there is less time given to the study of the founding documents and their precursors. The notion of a balance of powers between the Executive/Legislative/Judicial branches or a separation of Church & State has been greatly eroded by a drumbeat of popular culture (MSM/TV/movies) to the point that those educated since Reagan took office would be hard pressed to name the three branches or the two chambers of Congress.

Anyone that was taught and believe in the founding principles is much harder to fool and more likely to see when the Emperor is naked.

[Time for change]

8. That's one reason why right wingers are able to get away with

claiming that we were founded as a "Christian nation", when in fact our Founding Fathers were abhorred by the idea of mixing religion with government.

[DemReadingDU]

11. Education is much different today than in the fifty's

Teaching and learning are different. And everyone must respect the child's self-esteem. Can't have anyone get their feelings hurt.

And many people today just have different priorities. They they go about their work, kids, hobbies, vacations, and they leave the 'politics' to their Congressional Representative and Senators thinking their interests are being taken care of. Except it isn't the people's interests being taken care of, but the politicians and lobbyists.


edit for clarity

[tomp]

13. self delete. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. Great essay. Thanks. K&R

[Time for change]

5. Thank you -- Here is something else from the introduction to Blum's book that

I found very convincing and interesting:

Did this International Communist Conspiracy actually exist?

If it actually existed, why did the Cold Warriors of the CIA and other government agencies have to go to such extraordinary lengths of exaggeration? If they really and truly believed in the existence of a diabolic, monolithic International Communist Conspiracy, why did they have to invent so much about it to convince the American people, the Congress, and the rest of the world of its evil existence? Why did they have to stage manage, entrap, plant evidence, plant stories, create phony documents?

[anonymous171]

19. There was an international communist conspiracy,

it just wasn't as good as the International Capitalist Conspiracy.

[leftstreet]

7. K&R

[onethatcares]

9. thank you very much for posting this

I pass these along to my grandson, because his school books have a strange way of omitting things like Iran/Contra, Phillipine Insurrection, or the real reasons we invaded VietNam.

[Time for change]

17. Thank you -- that's great to know

I hope your grandson likes them and learns something.

[zeemike]

10. Another important thumbnail sketch of history...thank you.

But there is one American folly that you left out....Cuba....but that could be a OP in itself.

But I think Cuba is the perfect example of how the elite dominate our government....Cuba before the revolution was 90% owned by American corperations....and the city of Havana was owned by the mafia and used like Las Vegas is now, as a place to launder money and sell vice to the American tourist.
Castro was not at first a communist but an agrarian reformer that wanted to give that land back to Cubans so they could lift themselves out of the outrageous poverty and slavery that was Cuba in the early 50s
And when Castro came to the US seeking support the state department would not see him...that is when he turned to Russia for help.
The State Department was there to look out for the interest of the corporations and the mafia because Cuba was their property....and they still feel the same way today.
And had the Russians not supported them, Cuba would have reverted to the ownership of powerful interests.
But Russia did back up the support of Cuba with tactical nukes installed in Cuba that prompted the Cuban missile crisis and gave Castro "hand" to make a deal through Russia with the US...let them be and we will withdraw...And Kennedy made that promise that the right wing hated but had to abide by.

Actually Cuba is the one failure in our policies of colonialism, as well as the most egregious example of it

[Time for change]

18. Thank you zeemike

You hit the nail on the head with your discussion of our imperial interests in Cuba. During the Kennedy administration, the military put tremendous pressure on Kennedy to invade Cuba -- at least four times:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

I'm very glad that Kennedy was president during that time because he resisted the militarism of his CIA and military advisors as much or more than any president we've ever had.

There are so many more examples too -- many of them discussed in Blum's book, "Killing Hope". I just presented a small sampling of them in this OP. Some were "successes" and some were failures, but what these examples have in common is that they were all failures in the moral sense and in the sense of the long term interests of the people of our country and of the world.

[zeemike]

22. Kennedy may have saved us from a thermo nuclear war.

Some time after the fall of the USSR I read that Kruchef had given authorization for the military commanders to use the tactical nukes stationed in Cuba...had we invaded it may well have touched of an exchange that would have been disastrous for the world.
Fortunately JFK was no Bush.

[Time for change]

26. Yep. We're very lucky that Bush didn't cause more catastrophes than he did

If he'd been president during the Cold War it would make the catastrophes of the past 8 years look like child's play.

[mmonk]

12. "The United States military and CIA working constantly to keep the world safe for the transnational

corporations." Absolutely. It feeds the rich while it buries the poor.

[tomp]

14. the heart of the matter. thank you.

anyone who doesn't get this, just doesn't "get it".

[Overseas]

15. K&R

You've described very well a lot of the history that made me so sad to learn decades ago, that our government has had a deliberate policy to destabilize and destroy any burgeoning movements toward more equitably managed economies around the globe.

It has galled me that we continue to call what we have been pushing the "free market" approach. That definition seems to mean free to those who have the cash to fund aggressive military tactics to dominate natural resources and labor markets. When the cost of military domination is factored into things, that kind of economics has been the most expensive in the world.

My only hope is that being against the wall in terms of dwindling critical natural resources worldwide, we will need to find more lasting ways to utilize those resources and will allow a few socialist systems to establish some alternatives. I wish our legislators would see that having different models for dividing the fruits of our natural and human resources will help the USA develop better models for its own governance in a future of increasing scarcity.

And that perhaps the green angle can move some people. Brutal warfare to establish the domination of multinational corporations destroys a lot of natural ecosystems that we may need to find alternatives to resources we have depleted and dumps more destructive chemical compounds into the earth's atmosphere.

But it is sadly more likely that strategic natural resources around the globe have been mapped out and we have been covertly militarily campaigning to protect our access to those resources on so many levels that our legislators will feel impotent to oppose those decades long activities.

I'm still so sad about all those decades we lost since the 70's when we were told that solar power was "just too expensive" to develop, while we have spent billions on incredibly brutal warfare to protect our access to the "cheap" petroleum and other strategic resources.

Thanks for your posts. I hope it helps more people recognize how very expensive our so-called "free market economics" (i.e. dominated by those with the cash to brutally crush alternatives) has been and support alternative approaches. Or at least allow other countries to develop alternatives without the brutal interference we have practiced in the past.

[Time for change]

21. Thank you -- I don't have much optimism that dwindling resources will

serve to dampen U.S. imperialism. In fact, I'm afraid -- as you note -- that it is more likely to have the opposite effect.

I believe that the underlying problem -- not just for our country today, but throughout world history -- is that there is a disturbing tendency for the most ruthless of humans to rise to the top. Those people care little for other peoples of the world or for future generations. They don't mind using up dwindling world resources, as long as it benefits their own needs. Hence the preponderance of genocides in the 20th century, and throughout world history.

Our challenge is to understand those people and how to combat them. Working in their favor is their utter ruthlessness. Working in our favor is that decent people vastly outnumber them. But decent people need to wake up and become better able to see reality as it is, rather than the way they would like it to be.

[RufusTFirefly]

16. Mining Nicaraguan harbors

Another gem, TFC!

I thought it was important to add that after its harbors were mined, Nicaragua took its case to the ICJ and won.

The Republic of Nicaragua v. The United States of America was a case heard in 1986 by the International Court of Justice which ruled in favor of Nicaragua and against the United States. As part of its judgment, the International Court of Justice awarded reparations to Nicaragua. The International Court of Justice found that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The United States refused to participate after the Court rejected its argument that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction to hear the case. The US later blocked enforcement by the Security Council, making Nicaraguan attempts at obtaining compliance futile.

Link

Also, on a personal note, although I was still relatively young at the time, it was the war against Nicaragua that really opened my eyes to the extent of U.S. propaganda.

I remember being bewildered by how Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega always seemed to do something brash and threatening just as Congress was considering a vote on additional funding for the Contras. (I was naive then, but not for long!) One case I particularly remember was a report that said Nicaragua had received shipment of Soviet MIG fighters. The implications were obvious. Not surprisingly, Congress responded by voting to continue funding. Also not surprising, the report turned out to be a complete fabrication.

Not long after, I first encountered the story of two-time Medal of Honor winner General Smedley Darlington Butler, who famously (although perhaps not famously enough) wrote

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

[Time for change]

25. Thank you Rufus

Catching on when you're young is quite a feat.

I don't think I can point to any one event that caused me to catch on. The more I read the more I catch on. And I'm still in the process of catching on.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

20. Far too many "Liberal" ambassadors for the trans-national

corporations in bed with moneyed interests as well. It it past time to oust the Feinsteins, Emanuels and Nelsons.

An excellent post, TFC.

[Time for change]

27. Thank you -- Yes, we need some big changes

[OnyxCollie]

23. K&R. nt

[Citizen Worker]

24. CIA

CIA="Capitalism's Invisible Army." Wish I had thought of it.

[gtar100]

28. Eye-opening. We've been living under a system that believes the end justify the means.

This article rips the facade of the United States to show what it has stood for *in reality*. It has been a class war from day one.

Well it's not over.

[nikto]

29. Americans can build a BETTER GUILLOTINE

The Elites' intransigence may make a French-style
Reign Of Terror unnavoidable.

Right now, WE FEAR the Gov't and the Corporations.

It needs to be the other way around.

Bigtime.

And forever.

[MikeH]

30. The most egregious abuse and mistreatment is typically justified as being for the other’s “own good"

This is true whether justifying imperialism or slavery, as indicated in the Chomsky quote in your post, or whether justifying abuse or mistreatment of children.

The Swiss writer and psychotherapist Alice Miller has written a book, now online, titled For Your Own Good, with subtitle “Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”. Her book documents horrendous child-rearing practices advocated in child-rearing manuals of past centuries. These include manuals that were written and used in Germany in the late 1800’s and early 1900‘s, right at the time that Hitler and the future perpetrators of the Nazi holocaust were raised as children.

Alice Miller documents the harmful effects of what she terms “poisonous pedagogy”, which was very blatant in child rearing manuals of past centuries, but which still persists even now.

Alice Miller’s main thesis is that the abuse and mistreatment of children, which includes spanking, and which is justified as being for the child’s “own good”, is not harmless, but has very harmful consequences. A person who has been abused and mistreated as a child, and who has been told and who has accepted that such abuse and mistreatment was for the child’s “own good”, as an adult will very likely unquestioningly submit to accepting, believing, and/or doing what he/she is told by those in authority, and will also be very likely to perpetrate abuse or mistreatment on others, usually one’s own children, but also on those deemed to be “inferior” or “unworthy” by those in authority. And of course the person will justify such abuse or mistreatment as being for the other’s “own good”, just like the person as a child had accepted abuse and mistreatment as being for his or her “own good”.

She has one very telling passage about how the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss was raised as a child, in a section of her book titled The "Sacred" Values of Child-Rearing, which includes a quote by him:

The strong emphasis on obedience in Rudolf Höss's early upbringing left its indelible mark on him, too. Certainly his father did not intend to raise him to be a commandant at Auschwitz; on the contrary, as a strict Catholic, he had a missionary career in mind for his son. But he had instilled in him at an early age the principle that the authorities must always be obeyed, no matter what their demands. Höss writes:

Our guests were mostly priests of every sort. As the years passed, my father's religious fervor increased. Whenever time permitted, he would take me on pilgrimages to all the holy places in our own country, as well as to Einsiedeln in Switzerland and to Lourdes in France. He prayed passionately that the grace of God might be bestowed on me, so that I might one day become a priest blessed by God. I, too, was as deeply religious as was possible for a boy of my age, and I took my religious duties very seriously. I prayed with true, childlike gravity and performed my duties as acolyte with great earnestness. I had been brought up by my parents to be respectful and obedient toward all adults, and especially the elderly, regardless of their social status. I was taught that my highest duty was to help those in need. It was constantly impressed upon me in forceful terms that I must obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents, teachers, and priests, and indeed of all adults, including servants, and that nothing must distract me from I this duty. Whatever they said was always right. These basic principles by which I was brought up became second nature to me.

When the authorities later required Höss to run the machinery of death in Auschwitz, how could he have refused? And later, after his arrest, when he was given the assignment of writing an account of his life, he not only performed this task faithfully and conscientiously but politely expressed gratitude for the fact that the time in prison passed more quickly because of "this interesting occupation." His account has provided the world with deep insight into the background of a multitude of otherwise incomprehensible crimes.

Her book also includes an entire chapter about Adolf Hitler, and how he was constantly beaten by his father.


My own dad very often used the phrase “for your own good”. He would yell at me or bawl me out, or talk to me or treat me in a certain way like I had committed a crime, if I had honestly forgotten something, made an honest mistake, or something did not quite meet his standards. And he would always say that what he was saying or doing was “for my own good”. He would do this even when I was already an adult.

I wish I had thought of telling my dad, and had dared to tell him, that he was not God, and that he did not have the goodness of God or the wisdom of God, and that whatever his concerns might be about a particular matter, he had no right to decide in Godlike fashion what was “for my own good”.

Even though my dad did many very good things and many very nice things, and was far from being the worst father anybody ever had, I have had a very hard time forgiving him. The things for which I most do not forgive him are those things he made a point of saying were “for my own good”, as opposed to when he was honestly angry or upset.

[Joe Chi Minh]

31. Another consummately informed and insightful post from you. In a way,

I wish that could be a compliment to you, but no matter how fulsome-seeming a compliment I could compose, it could never be other than a plain statement of fact. You're a giant. Period. Keep up the good work.

[Blue_Tires]

32. kick for later reading