O, Say, Can You See

O, Say, Can You See

By Paul Edwards
Information Clearing House
July 8, 2019

All rise! It is the anniversary of this conflicted, sclerotic, blind,
self-destructive country.

There will be celebrations.

Glitzy extravaganzas of flash and fireworks providing the
shimmering eye candy to camouflage the corpse of the myth
that is centerpiece and theme our national shivaree.

A nation built on genocide and slavery, with a Constitution
launched with sanctimonious pieties never meant to be honored,
ranking property over people, with blood-and-guts Capitalism--
wealth and privilege--enthroned to rule an emasculated citizenry
concussed by propaganda: this is the, “exceptional” America we
swarm on this day to extol.

From infancy we are indoctrinated with the fairy tale of our own
magnificence; inoculated with the toxic serum of race arrogance;
infected with the poisonous virus of violence.

And what noble wonders has America wrought behind
its hero story?

We’re told we won two World Wars.

In fact, we barely showed in the First, after Europe cannibalized
itself; and we stalled until Russia, at staggering human cost,
pulverized the Wehrmacht to win the Second.

We made the world safe not for Democracy, but for Wall Street
Capitalism, which made a killing on both bloodbaths, and on
destroying and nukeing Bushido-addled fascist Japan.

Hey, but how about the job we did on Latin America?

We turned that entire continent into a ghastly vivisection lab for
psychotic military monsters, paid to run their countries as Dachaus,
gulags, for American Capital.

What we could not buy, or steal, we raped.

Where we couldn’t install our native murderers and US-trained
military brutes to crush their people we did our own crushing--in
Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba--and where rebellion lived, we funded the
murder of generations of defiant young idealists in Chile, Argentina,
Brazil.

The dead hand of our “intelligence” vampires is at its grisly
trade now, bleeding Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras.

And what of our notorious “Nation Building”, seeding our lethal,
“freedom and liberty” wherever there is some wealth we have
not pirated, or some native eccentric that won’t sell his soul to
our IMF ganefs.

This is best exemplified by the sickening, barbaric massacre of the
simple, guiltless peasants of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Libya.

According to one sick US Harpy, “we” feel that killing their children
is, “worth it”.

The depraved Hillary, queried on our Libyan gorefest, cackled:
“we came, we saw, he died”.

Ah, well, you will say, even if all that is true, you leave out the
many grand, humane things America has done for its own people.

Yes... And what are those things?

Social Security! Medicare!

True, in 1935 the U.S. passed the Social Security Act and in ‘66,
Medicare, programs that now rank below those of every developed
nation on earth.

It has rued them ever since, damning both as unjustified,
“entitlements” vowing that inadequate, inflation-devoured rates
and benefits will not increase, but rather must be abolished as
immoral.

Their doctrinal fantasy, “invisible hand of the market” exists only
as a fist to smash the people, never to care for them, though they
are the state.

Under both duller, dumber Republican, or slick, bullshitting
Democrat presidencies, there has been total stagnation in workers’
wages for fifty years, jobs eliminated or exported, obscene profits
only to the Super Rich.

The gap between the .001% and the rest of us was not so vast
even under J.P. Morgan and the Robber Barons.

Four men now have as much wealth as the lower 50% of the
country.

But if you are fairly well off, have a soul and all this appalls
you, you will retreat to the defensive posture you know:

No matter the evil and falsity of America, it has provided you
a decent life, a home, a job, some comfort and safety.

And there’s the cognitive rub.

Americans are comfortable enjoying every privilege available at
their level, from Bud Lite and food stamps, to Romanee-Conti
and Kobe Beef.

There is nothing inherently evil or even remarkable about this.

It’s what humans do.

What is disgraceful is to do it out of willful ignorance of how
such privilege is possible.

What is unforgivable is to know it is due to the rape and looting
of the world and celebrate it... because it’s for you.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51862.htm