A Love of America Turned Ugly

[babylonsister]

A Love of America Turned Ugly

By Nina Berman, AlterNet. Posted October 11, 2007.

White House photographer Christopher Morris' reveals how American pride has blinded us to the reason others hate us. Hint: It's not because we love freedom. An interview follows.

Photo essay at link~

Christopher Morris has been covering George Bush as TIME Magazine's White House photographer for the last seven years. Morris recently published My America, a book of photographs that affords us a complex and quietly creepy look inside the Bush bubble.

AlterNet and multimedia co-sponsor BAGnewsNotes are pleased to host the above slideshow of images from My America, followed by an interview with the photographer, Christopher Morris, conducted by Nina Berman.

Nina Berman: The best description of your work came from a powerful introduction you wrote for an exhibition of your images in France. You excluded this from the book. Can you share with us what you wrote?

Christopher Morris: In the Name of God the Flag and Bush Almighty. This is my America, my New Republic. If the hijackers on September 11 accomplished anything, this is it. They have given us the divine Bush. A man who has said, "you're either with us or against us." A man who teaches our children that "they hate us because we love freedom".

This is my America. An America with Homeland Security, a Patriot Act. An America with paranoia. An America with hatred and ignorance. An America that wraps itself in its President and its flag. This is my America.

Now when I see the eagle of freedom, I see an eagle of fascism. Now when I see the American flag, I'm afraid for my America. We have become an ugly nation. A nation that has wrapped its eyes so tightly in red, white and blue that it has gone blind. Blinded by nationalism. This is my America. And this is why they hate us, and its not because we love freedom. They hate us because we think like that.

more...

http://alternet.org/story/63710/

[melody]

1. It depends upon WHY they hate us ... some people have always hated us

It wouldn't matter what we do or say. And right now the "nationalistic" barracuda group among our primary economic competition in the global market, the EU, is trying to whip up that frenzy. George Bush is their handmaiden in that aim.

If people hate US as people, then they're bigots. They're wishing to project onto us the failings of our government because they
don't like us as a subspecies. If they hate our government, then I'm right there with them, but then so are you. Ergo, where
are these evil Americans they're hating -- the 23%? They aren't the majority. They're just the stand-ins for the loud,
arrogant Frenchman every American nutjob thinks of when they're putting down the French. Bigots always think they have a good
reason for their bigotry.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. People in other countries know the difference between

a nation's government and its citizens.

There's a lot of opposition to the American government in both the UK and Japan, the two countries I have visited most recently.

However, British people were unfailingly polite and friendly on my two recent visits, and people in Japan have always been the same. In 2004, nearly everyone I had a serious conversation with asked who I supported for president, and when I said "Kerry," they beamed, as if to say, "You're all right." Due to their experiences of having been bombed to rubble within living memory, most Japanese people are anti-war, but they can separate that from their interactions with individual Americans. I've been treated with kindness and courtesy even in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Compare and contrast that with what happened in the U.S. after 9/11. Middle America has a tendency to turn xenophobic in times of crisis, something that goes back at least to World War I, when gangs of youths went around beating up German immigrants, and World War II, when locking up Japanese immigrants and their American-born children and grandchildren was national policy.

When foreigners "hate us," it's our government's actions they hate. Unlike Middle Americans, they don't hate the individuals.

[melody]

6. Some can, some can't ... and it would seem you can't

Which middle Americans? My neighbor is Lebanese and Muslim. He runs a local store and got numerous threatening calls
three days after 9/11. He also had at least twenty people (a couple off-duty police officers) offer to come down and
sit with him to make certain no one hurt him. Which person is a "middle American"? One of the most helpful was a man
from Mobile, Alabama.

What would the response to an American have been in Japan the day after the bombing? What would the reaction have been
the UK reaction to a German the day after the London blitz? ALL people become xenophobic at times. A man I know spent
several days in an Irish hospital after having the crap kicked out of him for answering the wrong answer to a Dubliner
when he asked "Are you a Yank?"

I think it's deeply sad when so many liberal folk devalue our own people and system.

[Vilis Veritas]

2. Product of Fear...

We are a nation that is a product of fear used to manipulate the masses in the forever march towards global corporo-fascism.

I have travelled to China several times since the war/oil-cupation began.

Each time, the Chinese people seem to have no problem with Americans. The biggest problem I encountered? An American. He told me to shut up while I was having a conversation with an Doctor from India about American Imperialism and the Selected COC...our conversation was not derisive or mean spirited, we were just talking about events and realities...he overheard me say that the 2004 election was fraught with problems.

The American who told me to shut up was wearing a huge cross around his neck. I saw more FEAR and HATRED in his eyes than in any of the people I met.

I think that hate references are meant to instill fear in the populace and are useful tools in aligning the sub-concious mind to accepting the Fascistic Nationalism that is being brainwashed into the American populace. People need to break free of the mind washer devices (TV, radio, newspapers) and think critically. <--- JMO

No Fear.

[sinkingfeeling]

4. I think I'll try to locate his book. The pictures in the sideshow could be matched one to one

with those taken of the Third Reich.

If one loses their nationalism and becomes a citizen of the world, there is no hate directed toward them. People around the world fear the American Empire and the deadly militarism of the right. Very few hate the citizens of the country and are not bigoted toward them.

[bpeale]

5. my idea of freedom

is not a piece of land, and it's not a government. it's an idea, a dream, a hope, a promise of something better. for so long i have thought that this must have been what it was like when this country was founded ... running from oppression 24/7. now we are the runners but there's nowhere to run to.