Land of the Credulous

I’ve been listening to the news and thinking about all the lies that most — or at least many — of us swallowed in the past.

1) The entire “Cold War” was a hot war against Third World independence disguised as a battle with Communism. We killed millions of Third World civilians in their own homes and villages during these wars; 3,000,000 or so in Vietnam alone.

2) The entire “War on Terror” was a scam. Studies show 95% of suicide terrorism is caused by our troops overseas. This was again, the same war against Third World independence and again the same death and destruction without any stated goals being met.

3) The Vietnam War supported wealthy Catholic Francophiles against the vast majority of poor Buddhist subsistence farmers in a “nation” carved out of a traditionally united Vietnam by NATO and not by the indigenous people.

4) Wealthy Cuban exiles are the NOT the legitimate voice of the Cuban people and, when they were Cubans, maintained their control of the Cuban economy through a partnership with wealthy and powerful interests in the U.S.

5) Trickle-down Economics flowed out of the country and into offshore accounts, buying back company stock, buying foreign competitor stock and relocating divisions overseas to be free to pollute, pay even lower wages and mistreat employees and their environment.

6) Deregulation, defunding, and impeding US regulatory agencies by both Reagan and Trump led to widespread abuses. (ENron, Too Big To Fail, California’s bankruptcy, the prescription drug addiction problem, killing the Union movement, etc.)

7) Reagan was clearly behind Iran/Contra and the illegal support of violence against the legitimate democratic government of Nicaragua. Like Trump, he was a popular celebrity that pretended popular sentiments while feathering his own nest and those of his financial backers.

8) Kuwait was a colony carved out of an Iraqi deep water port and oil reserves adjacent to Saudi Arabia and suitable for shipping the “black gold” spoils of World War I back to the colonial powers and their supporters that prevailed against their colonial adversaries. Like Palestine, it betrayed our First World War Arab allies for profit and power. Kuwait’s history as part of Iraq seems to be largely unreported in the U.S. Kuwait now has 6 permanent US military bases.

9) Iraq did not have WMDs or terrorists. Richard A. Clarke, the primary US MidEast expert, contradicted Bush 43’s lies before the invasion and was fired for his knowledge and honesty. April Glaspie, our career ambassador to Iraq, lied to Saddam Hussein about our intentions a week before Saddam punished this colony for stealing Iraq’s oil (by slant-drilling under the “border”) at the behest of our President and his Secretary of State.

10) The ACLU is not an ultra-liberal organization. Its sole purpose is protecting the Bill of Rights for all citizens. There is no US organization that I know of protecting the Third World’s rights against US aggression. And the need for those protections seems to have completely escaped the notice of voters on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States.

11) Liberal, socialist and communist ideologies have been deliberately conflated and slandered. Within the US, there is a studied ignorance of what these words actually mean. That democracy and socialism peacefully coexist in many of our allies as well as our own country is a fact rarely noted or appreciated.

12) The Republican Party consistently used the term “Radical Islamic Terrorism” while almost every terrorist was protesting our military in their region and not our religious faith. Primarily, they opposed the real and present terror our military has created and nurtured throughout their region. (Robert Pape, Dying to Win)

When you think about it, Americans generally believe a host of myths about the efficacy of our military activities overseas that are not even remotely true. As far as I can tell the only positive effects the United States policies have had in the Middle East are the wealth and military power in our colonial outposts and military-supported client states, the sustained animosity to any and all leaderships which deposed those we installed and controlled, and the positive outcome of Jimmy Carter’s leadership in defusing tensions in the region and returning the Teheran hostages unharmed and without much bloodshed or escalating violence.

13) Both parties smeared the USSR, Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Syria, Libya, and Cuba (among others) by demonizing their despotic leadership when it opposed our influences or welcomed the influences (however minor) of our supposed “adversaries” while supporting almost identical despotism when they “played ball” with our military and economic aspirations in their region.

14) The National Rifle Association and its political allies have spread the false beliefs that guns, atomic weapons, land mines, and overseas violence are keeping our population safe while statistics correlate violent crimes and accidents with widespread and available weaponry.

15) While the Second Amendment specifies that the right to carry guns must be “well regulated,” the vast amount of money spent by a minority of gun enthusiasts and the corporations that profit from making and selling lethal weaponry has overwhelmed the majority opinion in blocking effective gun regulation.

16) Both parties spread the false belief that violence and threats of violence are the keys to preserving democracy, creating security, and winning peace. The US has thousands of nuclear weapons all over the world, abrogated SALT II, and funds the maintenance of a vast force of 200,000 combatants spread out in other countries with an obscene “defense” budget larger than the next 10 countries’ combined while our rightful territory is secure and relatively unthreatened. Ronald Reagan and his associates even tried to extend the battlegrounds into outer space and our violent tendencies into socialist movements resulting from democratic elections that clearly followed the will of the majority of their citizenship.

17) The intentional and ongoing abuse of legislation, election and judicial appointment by wealthy influences against the popular will by deep pocketed individuals and consortiums continues unabated and supported by a judicial hierarchy that has weeded out all advances in jurisprudence that cannot navigate the intricacies of Constitutional Amendments (Including the Equal Rights Amendment, which should have been a slam-dunk).

I still don’t understand why NONE of the original Democratic Candidates cited cutting the vast and growing war budget as a source of money to support universal health care. If we can support 200,000 US troops infringing on the sovereignty of a bunch of other nations (including half of them in Germany, Japan, and South Korea alone — nations that are thriving), why can’t we support the same thing poor Cuba provides to each and every citizen and has for the last 45 years despite our persistent economic and political sanctions?

I think Trump, with his mental disorder (antisocial narcissism) merely stepped up the amount of lying and stepped down the subtlety behind it — and still 47% of us bought into his alternative “reality.”

It wasn’t the first time. Behind rhetoric going back to before the Revolutionary War are wealthy people looking to become wealthier and extend their undemocratic influences by spreading lies about the government and its controls and constraints upon their power to use and abuse laborers and slaves and, through the power of money and influence, control what laws are passed and enforced. Part of the unseen motivations behind the Revolutionary War were the anti-slavery movements in England and France. And the racism against “New World” natives as well as imported African people continued unabated after declaring “all men are created equal.” The two political parties are funded primarily by a small elite who control almost all “sides” and “balancing powers” of our “democratic” government.

We are still a republic (just like the Communists were) and not a democracy. The proof is the fact that Hillary Clinton got 3,000,000 more votes than her opponent and still lost the election and Joe Biden got 7,000,000 more votes and still the election was contested by the losing party and the Democrats’ right to legislate is being hindered excessively by the party not chosen by the American electorate. Furthermore, Republicans are still claiming (falsely) that they represent the majority when they represent their funding agencies like the NRA and wealthy business interests. As a Democrat, my party contacts me various ways daily and each and every one asks for my money while only asking loaded and slanted questions that are designed to mold my opinion, get me against their opponents, and in the mood to donate more money. Both parties together spent $100.00 per voter on a runoff election in Georgia to decide control of the US Senate!

Our votes and opinions are commodities on the open market and it is beginning to dawn on me that maybe this isn’t a modern phenomenon, that it is only our awareness of it that’s changed.