FWD A Clearly Written Rant by Rev. Jim Crotty
Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 16:52:00 -0500
--------
Crotty Farm Report, January 29, 2005
THE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE "GIFT" OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
By James M. Crotty
Jim@Monk.com
There should be a curse these days in the Middle East -- and for all I
know there is -- that says "May You Be a Candidate for American-Style
Democracy." Because when America decides a country needs the Democracy
treatment, it usually means that country is in for a whole lot of hell.
This is not unique to Iraq. This is what happened in Central America
during the Reagan years. When Reagan did not get the Democracy he
wanted there -- one totally beholden to U.S. corporate interests -- he
backed anti-democratic forces in the name of "freedom" to insure he got
what he wanted. When there's money on the line -- and in Iraq there's
that big lollipop called Oil Money -- America doesn't play around.
So don't get too enamored with the President's lofty inaugural
rhetoric. One hopes it's sincere, though it may turn out to be another
American cover for violence against people who don't tow the U.S. line.
As abhorrent as the Iraqi "insurgents" are, as wrong in their own way,
you have to give them a begrudging nod for grasping the horrible truth
about us: We are hypocrites.
For Americans who genuinely believe in liberty, the reality of our
hypocrisy casts a pall over every celebration, every meal, every happy
moment. That we continue to read coverage of "American Idol" or Melania
Knauss shows us who we are. No use hiding from it. Google's Zeitgeist
tells us where our heads are at. We are cowards. The focus of our
entire nation should be on Iraq, and the frightful forces that we've
unleashed there, but, instead, we hide out from the painful truth in
mindless minutiae.
Tomorrow's election in Iraq should be a day of celebration, but,
instead, it will be the day of the great American reality check.
Certainly Bush, Inc. and its paid lackeys inside American Media, Inc.
-- we no longer raise a hue, let alone a cry, that we've been so
brazenly manipulated by our journalists -- will celebrate the election
as a triumph of Democracy, but for those of us with the ability to peer
beneath the facade, one can't shake a sad but undeniable fact: There
are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who no longer want
what America is selling.
This is our country's blind spot. Like late-night infomercial sales
cads, we reason that once people taste our brand of Wild West anything
goes screw-the-safety-net brand of freedom, they won't turn back to the
competing brand. But they are turning back in droves in Russia, in
China, in Uzbekistan, in Iran, and now in Iraq. In the Middle East, in
most of Africa and Asia, freedom is a distant mirage. We miss the
larger point when we say the people in these regions are so poor or
uneducated or desperate or oppressed that they cannot seize freedom for
themselves. Certainly in each of these regions there are sizable
numbers who crave freedom but are stymied by external forces. But there
is also an equal number who crave order and stability at almost any
cost. They would rather have the truth of homegrown tyranny -- which
does not disguise its ambitions behind a veil of lofty rhetoric -- than
a foreign invader, whose sudden and extreme interest in their plight
belies its craven desires. It's Hobbes versus Jefferson right now on
the world ideological battlefield, and Hobbes is turning the tide.
Can freedom and stability coexist? Yes, but always in an uneasy
balance, and only after decades of soul-searing struggle. Look how long
it took this country to achieve the balance. The Civil War, the Great
Depression, the civil rights struggle -- each in its own way nearly
tore America apart. And it wasn't even about religion. Look at Iraq,
with its deep-seated theological divisions, and China and Russia, with
their long histories of autocracy, and Africa, with its tribal
hierarchies still intact -- and greed and corruption the norm (if you
think Nelson Mandela is free of this stain, guess again) -- and you
wonder whether we are poised on the precipice of a golden age of
freedom or a dark age of dictatorship with a semi-capitalist face.
Because when push comes to shove, and a major trading relationship is
at stake, America drops the democracy schtick in a heartbeat. The
almighty dollar calls the shots around here. And that's the way most
Americans want it. We ceased being an idealistic people a long time
ago. We are no longer sinners before an angry God, but yellow belly con
artists before a ferociously leery world.
We are so self-centered and consumerist that Presidents don't even ask
us to sacrifice anymore. The last President who launched the rhetoric
of self-sacrifice was Jimmy Carter, and he was crushed by that
feel-good salesman Ronald Reagan. Bush may have preached freedom in his
second inaugural, but after 9/11, when he really had our attention,
when we would have sacrificed anything to preserve our freedom, he
asked us to go out and consume. It was a cynical spit in our face. It
said, "you channel-surfing, mall-hopping, narcissistic sheep, you can't
handle self sacrifice. You've become so enamored with your
technological gizmos, your designer homes, your SUVs, your
Entertainment Tonight, you'd be basket cases if anyone asked you to
forego your wanton materialism. So, instead, I am going to ask you to
indulge it. It's the only thing you understand anyway."
Sure, we give hundreds of millions of dollars to tsunami relief, but
that only proves the point. We can pick up the phone, check a little
box, but we still want others to do the work. We don't want to stretch.
We don't want to connect the dots between our excessive lifestyle, our
governmental protection of it, and people in the Third World, whose
miserable living conditions make them unnaturally vulnerable to natural
disasters. We want to pay the money, assuage the guilt, and go back to
sleep, like an alcoholic millionaire who gives the family inordinate
allowances so they'll shut up about his drinking.
If we are disgusted with our President, it's because we are disgusted
with ourselves. George W. Bush understands us for who we are (it's how
he got reelected). And all the world, not just our German and French
comrades in cowardice -- who are willing to let thousands of innocent
Iraqis die in order to make their sophomoric point about U.S.
unilateralism -- is starting to see us for who we are too. Not as great
liberators, but as great pretenders. We talk a good line, but, like the
Roman people before Rome's great fall, we've grown soft. We don't know
about sacrifice. We want to buy our way out of trouble. We spend
hundreds of billions on defense boondoggles, but little trying to
understand the people we are supposedly "liberating." We pay poor
soldiers -- often recent immigrants who can barely speak English -- to
fight our wars. We outsource most of the logistical support.
The wounded are sanitized. The thousands of innocent civilian
casualties are never shown. We hide the dead in body bags that rarely
make the evening news. We won't send our own children to a war we know
is specious, but are happy to let others die for a war based on not
just one lie (the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction"), but on a
second (Iraqis will "welcome us as liberators") and a third (Iraqis
want American-style democracy). We hide behind our remote controls,
ashamed and afraid to say, "the way we justified and prosecuted this
war is wrong. The terror and heartache we are unleashing upon those who
genuinely want freedom is unconscionable."
American hypocrisy is why there is a determined insurgency in Iraq. It
is why there are still threats to our homeland security. The Visigoths
are at our gates because we need a wakeup call. It's not just about
failed governments. It's not just about fundamentalism. It's about us.
We delude ourselves in America. We deluded ourselves that the Nazis
were a rogue force until it was unequivocally shown to us that average
Germans were "Hitler's willing executioners." We delude ourselves that
the insurgents are a force apart when, in fact, they would not survive
a day without the support of average Iraqis.
A suicide bomber collapses the false distinction between a government
and its people. This is not to excuse suicide bombing, only to call
attention to the fact that we are no different than our governments. We
are the anti-democratic Central American policy of Reagan. We are the
cozy oil shenanigans of George H.W. Bush. We are the hypocritical
Haitian policies of Clinton. We are the violent regime changes of
George W. Bush. We are the willing torturers at Abu Ghraib.
We are the decadent, dull-headed Yankees, the cowardly consumers, who,
in the name of freedom, are turning millions against freedom itself.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To read other Crotty Farm Reports, please go to http://www.Monk.com
and click on "Crotty."
To receive Crotty Farm Reports by email before they are published
online, please write SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of an email to
Jim@Monk.com.
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to Jim@Monk.com.
In the digital dharma,
James Marshall Crotty
MONK MEDIA: Design + Marketing + Production http://www.MonkMedia.net
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"The world of travel writing has seen some big bylines. Chaucer,
Kerouac, and, of course, Kuralt. Now some might add the Monks." -- Ed
Bradley, CBS TV
"Jim Crotty and Michael Lane never planned to change the world. But in
1986, when they quit their jobs, bought an over-the-hill van and hit
the road with two cats and a Macintosh, they began a journey that would
forever alter the bounds of technology and entrepreneurialism." --
Portable Computing
"[The Mad Monks' Guide to New York City is] as astute and oddball a
guidebook as that heavily over-guidebooked megalopolis could hope for."
-- Los Angeles Times
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Correspondent:: Rich Clark aka Left Rev Egg Plant
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 17:04:11 -0500
--------
Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
>
> Crotty Farm Report, January 29, 2005
>
>
> THE HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE "GIFT" OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
> By James M. Crotty
> Jim@Monk.com
>
> There should be a curse these days in the Middle East -- and for all I
> know there is -- that says "May You Be a Candidate for American-Style
> Democracy." Because when America decides a country needs the Democracy
> treatment, it usually means that country is in for a whole lot of hell.
>
> This is not unique to Iraq. This is what happened in Central America
> during the Reagan years. When Reagan did not get the Democracy he
> wanted there -- one totally beholden to U.S. corporate interests -- he
> backed anti-democratic forces in the name of "freedom" to insure he got
> what he wanted. When there's money on the line -- and in Iraq there's
> that big lollipop called Oil Money -- America doesn't play around.
>
> So don't get too enamored with the President's lofty inaugural
> rhetoric. One hopes it's sincere, though it may turn out to be another
> American cover for violence against people who don't tow the U.S. line.
> As abhorrent as the Iraqi "insurgents" are, as wrong in their own way,
> you have to give them a begrudging nod for grasping the horrible truth
> about us: We are hypocrites.
>
> For Americans who genuinely believe in liberty, the reality of our
> hypocrisy casts a pall over every celebration, every meal, every happy
> moment. That we continue to read coverage of "American Idol" or Melania
> Knauss shows us who we are. No use hiding from it. Google's Zeitgeist
> tells us where our heads are at. We are cowards. The focus of our
> entire nation should be on Iraq, and the frightful forces that we've
> unleashed there, but, instead, we hide out from the painful truth in
> mindless minutiae.
>
> Tomorrow's election in Iraq should be a day of celebration, but,
> instead, it will be the day of the great American reality check.
> Certainly Bush, Inc. and its paid lackeys inside American Media, Inc.
> -- we no longer raise a hue, let alone a cry, that we've been so
> brazenly manipulated by our journalists -- will celebrate the election
> as a triumph of Democracy, but for those of us with the ability to peer
> beneath the facade, one can't shake a sad but undeniable fact: There
> are hundreds of millions of people on this planet who no longer want
> what America is selling.
>
> This is our country's blind spot. Like late-night infomercial sales
> cads, we reason that once people taste our brand of Wild West anything
> goes screw-the-safety-net brand of freedom, they won't turn back to the
> competing brand. But they are turning back in droves in Russia, in
> China, in Uzbekistan, in Iran, and now in Iraq. In the Middle East, in
> most of Africa and Asia, freedom is a distant mirage. We miss the
> larger point when we say the people in these regions are so poor or
> uneducated or desperate or oppressed that they cannot seize freedom for
> themselves. Certainly in each of these regions there are sizable
> numbers who crave freedom but are stymied by external forces. But there
> is also an equal number who crave order and stability at almost any
> cost. They would rather have the truth of homegrown tyranny -- which
> does not disguise its ambitions behind a veil of lofty rhetoric -- than
> a foreign invader, whose sudden and extreme interest in their plight
> belies its craven desires. It's Hobbes versus Jefferson right now on
> the world ideological battlefield, and Hobbes is turning the tide.
>
> Can freedom and stability coexist? Yes, but always in an uneasy
> balance, and only after decades of soul-searing struggle. Look how long
> it took this country to achieve the balance. The Civil War, the Great
> Depression, the civil rights struggle -- each in its own way nearly
> tore America apart. And it wasn't even about religion. Look at Iraq,
> with its deep-seated theological divisions, and China and Russia, with
> their long histories of autocracy, and Africa, with its tribal
> hierarchies still intact -- and greed and corruption the norm (if you
> think Nelson Mandela is free of this stain, guess again) -- and you
> wonder whether we are poised on the precipice of a golden age of
> freedom or a dark age of dictatorship with a semi-capitalist face.
>
> Because when push comes to shove, and a major trading relationship is
> at stake, America drops the democracy schtick in a heartbeat. The
> almighty dollar calls the shots around here. And that's the way most
> Americans want it. We ceased being an idealistic people a long time
> ago. We are no longer sinners before an angry God, but yellow belly con
> artists before a ferociously leery world.
>
> We are so self-centered and consumerist that Presidents don't even ask
> us to sacrifice anymore. The last President who launched the rhetoric
> of self-sacrifice was Jimmy Carter, and he was crushed by that
> feel-good salesman Ronald Reagan. Bush may have preached freedom in his
> second inaugural, but after 9/11, when he really had our attention,
> when we would have sacrificed anything to preserve our freedom, he
> asked us to go out and consume. It was a cynical spit in our face. It
> said, "you channel-surfing, mall-hopping, narcissistic sheep, you can't
> handle self sacrifice. You've become so enamored with your
> technological gizmos, your designer homes, your SUVs, your
> Entertainment Tonight, you'd be basket cases if anyone asked you to
> forego your wanton materialism. So, instead, I am going to ask you to
> indulge it. It's the only thing you understand anyway."
>
> Sure, we give hundreds of millions of dollars to tsunami relief, but
> that only proves the point. We can pick up the phone, check a little
> box, but we still want others to do the work. We don't want to stretch.
> We don't want to connect the dots between our excessive lifestyle, our
> governmental protection of it, and people in the Third World, whose
> miserable living conditions make them unnaturally vulnerable to natural
> disasters. We want to pay the money, assuage the guilt, and go back to
> sleep, like an alcoholic millionaire who gives the family inordinate
> allowances so they'll shut up about his drinking.
>
> If we are disgusted with our President, it's because we are disgusted
> with ourselves. George W. Bush understands us for who we are (it's how
> he got reelected). And all the world, not just our German and French
> comrades in cowardice -- who are willing to let thousands of innocent
> Iraqis die in order to make their sophomoric point about U.S.
> unilateralism -- is starting to see us for who we are too. Not as great
> liberators, but as great pretenders. We talk a good line, but, like the
> Roman people before Rome's great fall, we've grown soft. We don't know
> about sacrifice. We want to buy our way out of trouble. We spend
> hundreds of billions on defense boondoggles, but little trying to
> understand the people we are supposedly "liberating." We pay poor
> soldiers -- often recent immigrants who can barely speak English -- to
> fight our wars. We outsource most of the logistical support.
>
> The wounded are sanitized. The thousands of innocent civilian
> casualties are never shown. We hide the dead in body bags that rarely
> make the evening news. We won't send our own children to a war we know
> is specious, but are happy to let others die for a war based on not
> just one lie (the nonexistent "weapons of mass destruction"), but on a
> second (Iraqis will "welcome us as liberators") and a third (Iraqis
> want American-style democracy). We hide behind our remote controls,
> ashamed and afraid to say, "the way we justified and prosecuted this
> war is wrong. The terror and heartache we are unleashing upon those who
> genuinely want freedom is unconscionable."
>
> American hypocrisy is why there is a determined insurgency in Iraq. It
> is why there are still threats to our homeland security. The Visigoths
> are at our gates because we need a wakeup call. It's not just about
> failed governments. It's not just about fundamentalism. It's about us.
>
> We delude ourselves in America. We deluded ourselves that the Nazis
> were a rogue force until it was unequivocally shown to us that average
> Germans were "Hitler's willing executioners." We delude ourselves that
> the insurgents are a force apart when, in fact, they would not survive
> a day without the support of average Iraqis.
>
> A suicide bomber collapses the false distinction between a government
> and its people. This is not to excuse suicide bombing, only to call
> attention to the fact that we are no different than our governments. We
> are the anti-democratic Central American policy of Reagan. We are the
> cozy oil shenanigans of George H.W. Bush. We are the hypocritical
> Haitian policies of Clinton. We are the violent regime changes of
> George W. Bush. We are the willing torturers at Abu Ghraib.
>
> We are the decadent, dull-headed Yankees, the cowardly consumers, who,
> in the name of freedom, are turning millions against freedom itself.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> To read other Crotty Farm Reports, please go to http://www.Monk.com
> and click on "Crotty."
> To receive Crotty Farm Reports by email before they are published
> online, please write SUBSCRIBE in the subject line of an email to
> Jim@Monk.com.
> If you received this email in error, or would like to cancel your
> subscription, please write UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line of an email
> to Jim@Monk.com.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> In the digital dharma,
> James Marshall Crotty
>
> MONK MEDIA: Design + Marketing + Production http://www.MonkMedia.net
>
> MONK HOST: Secure Web Hosting at Monastic Prices http://www.MonkHost.net
>
> MONK: The Spirit of Place http://www.Monk.com
>
> NYC, L.A., Clifty cell: 213-925-8562 Jim@Monk.com
>
> "The world of travel writing has seen some big bylines. Chaucer,
> Kerouac, and, of course, Kuralt. Now some might add the Monks." -- Ed
> Bradley, CBS TV
>
> "Jim Crotty and Michael Lane never planned to change the world. But in
> 1986, when they quit their jobs, bought an over-the-hill van and hit
> the road with two cats and a Macintosh, they began a journey that would
> forever alter the bounds of technology and entrepreneurialism." --
> Portable Computing
>
> "[The Mad Monks' Guide to New York City is] as astute and oddball a
> guidebook as that heavily over-guidebooked megalopolis could hope for."
> -- Los Angeles Times
> Get a Monk Media design makeover. http://www.MonkMedia.net
> Switch your hosting while you're at it. http://www.MonkHost.net
>
I agree with this post.
Correspondent:: brthrn@dangermedia.org
Date: 30 Jan 2005 15:02:29 -0800
--------
"Nothing was coming, Nothing was already here."