What in the name of all that is good and holy has happened to my country???

[TimeSnowDemos]

20. As a history teacher..

Last edited Thu Jun 14, 2018, 08:53 AM - Edit history (2)

You can't be THAT surprised... Or at least I'm surprised that you're surprised.

It's like in a million movies... The main character thinks that THEY are the special one that can e.g. time travel with no consequences... Their friends beg them not to do it, but they do, and it kills them.

The US has been doing this to other countries for generations. It has propped up dictators and strongman, funded and planned and orchestrated far fight coups to protect anti-democracy militias, etc. etc

It was naive to think that the US could behave like this forever, without it eventually happening to us. That's magical thinking.

This - some version - was always going to happen.

We are just so used to lying to ourselves about all the lousy things we do to ourselves and others. And when I say lying I'm including schools, which deliberately excuse and gloss over and hide vast American crimes. And why?

Well just two nights ago Chris Matthews said what we've all heard a million times: America is the best country on the planet, everyone knows it, and the entire world is desperate to come here because it's the best. Period.

None of that is true, but it's a mantra that is drilled into the head of every American since they day they're born.

That has two immediate and apperent outcomes. The whole country, more or less, has long believed:
- you don't need to fix the best country in the world
- if we're the best country in the world, and we have e.g. tested WMDs on our own citizens, then testing WMDs on civilians is just something the best country in the planet does. And it's justified.

You can see the legacy of this everywhere though.

We could end gun the epidemic of gun violence in a year - after almost 100 years of school massacres - if we wanted to... But the best country in the world won't change to fix its problems. It won't even admit it has them.

We could end poverty, fix Healthcare, fix schools and make universities universally accessible for those who qualify academically.

We do none of it. And still claim - as if in a trance - to be "number one".

So this slide towards what we've long supported elsewhere in no shock. It was as predictable as the tides and sunset. This is the consequence of many generations living in and perpetuating national delusion and amnesia.

And guess what, this is just the beginning. You know what solves this: vast civil engagement, trusted gatekeepers in the media, honesty about America's behavior on a national scale, a change in foreign policy - away from doing what Americans have suddenly decided is immoral behavior (when it happens to them, naturally) - etc.

The alternative is essentially the end of the American dream, as in the dream of the Founding Fathers, replaced with nothing more than a corporate vassal state run by the most corrupt and least qualified.

Anyway, I'm shocked your shocked.