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October 2,
2001
Patriotism and Terrorism
By Richard Manning
It has not at all changed since 11 September.
In fact, real patriotism barely exists.
Since learning--firstly, as a civilian
intelligence officer managing a Vietnam Province, 1967/8--just
how consistently our government lies, fabricates and covers-up
what can't be excused, I believe claims of "Patriotism"
made by anyone except the young or naive most likely result
from some combination of fear and ignorance. That is when the
remarks are not simply self-serving, as is most commonly the
case, particularly with government dependent workers.
Later, once understanding the true history
behind our forty -year aggressions in Indochina (1945-1985, both
covert and overt), I researched, read and experienced much else
concerning US government and corporate economic exploitation
and outright criminality. Actions overseas mostly, but also
at home. Such an education helps determine an honest basis for
feelings of Patriotism, helps clarify national myths and false
history. Shows us what may be true and what may be indoctrination
blindly to be accepted without thinking beyond briefing manuals
and TV news programs.
(When seeking opinions on Patriotism
one must also be aware of the vast number of Americans who work
in some area of that octopus nominated the "National Security
State" by sage commentators. Statistically it is the largest
Industrial grouping in the world: now employing somewhere over
ten million workers producing products and services totaling
over fifty percent (50%) of the US Gross Domestic Product)
With little abstract sense of patriotism
- it's usual, unreflective, emotional side - I admit to maintaining
some hope that the good ideals of many Americans will slowly
continue to awake to the reality behind the distortions, lies,
and false history they have been so well propagandized with over
the years. Although our Arcadian-minded founders repressed the
social pathologies they imported into their 'New World', upon
escape from what they called the "evils" of Old World
Europe, America's leaders post-World War II have studiously enriched
the worst parts of Machiavellian politics into a highly sophisticated
business-political art form.
For example, slavish England is, particularly,
aggressively proud resting behind US power, while independent
France flavors their aesthetically humane disdain with touches
of mentor jealousy at our neo-colonialist profits. Even some
Germans speculate that the Third Reich possibly could have lasted
longer had it not perpetrated so much evil against fellow Europeans,
but, instead, had concentrated its superiority complex on enslaving
and exploiting 'inferiors' in the Third World. As Seigneur Silvio
Berlusconi honestly reiterated the other day with unusual Old
World feudal honesty.
There rests my patriotism! With the working
class American people only. Not at all with our various governments,
whether elite Republican or Democrat, operating at the same unethical
and or illegal levels, selling-out their pocketbooks, minds and
souls to Big Business. Thereby blatantly compromising the honesty,
integrity and equity of our idealistically founded systems of
republican government and capitalist economics: to the iniquitous
degradation of everyone below the top 10-20 percent of the public.
As a number of economists and social analysts, from Gailbraith
and Chomsky at MIT onwards, have well shown in substantial publications.
So, hopefully, maybe this tragedy will
somehow prove a catalyst, helping the people begin to dispel
some of the historical, political and cultural ignorance under
which they have been nurtured and media inundated. A system the
US oligarchy - by far the most sophisticated greed merchants
in the world - counts upon to continue its efficient economic
exploitation of the "other" everywhere in lays it bloody
hand.
If we do learn, and change our policies,
possibly America will stop being counted one of the most distrusted,
disliked, even hated, countries operating in the Third World.
Similarly, by many in Europe where people on the street often
classify US as first-rate hypocrites of greed.
Only when Americans so educate themselves
on what the government really does in their name overseas shall
we also stop being the only country in the world, outside of
Israel, whose embassies, cultural centers, tourist and visa offices,
etc. often appear like prisons - protected and managed as if
forts in the middle of Indian territory. If we no not think more
clearly, and so learn, from these attacks but merely retaliate
with historical Western aggressiveness against that "other",
there will be more to come. Maybe acts even more inhumane.
Is it any wonder that while most foreigners
tend to like us as individuals they also consider Americans
generally unconscious about different cultures and values, naive
about any history not directly effecting their personal security?
Perhaps this national narrowness of perception is why many
people in rich America are much more insecure in their own so-well-policed
homesteads than peoples elsewhere; as well, insecure when out
in the larger world where their self-centered paranoia has been
noted a not uncommon symptom. CP
Richard Manning
lives in Antibes, France
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