PROPOSITION: The USA is a relatively recent nation-state culture. It is an over-sized imperial monster, irredeemable, unreformable, and vertically anti-democratic, enabled by popular obedience & cooperation, even if reluctant, of the vast majority of our non-autonomous population who deeply believe in and materially benefit from manifest destiny, maintained at any cost.
Original wool IS in our eyes
Eurocentric values were introduced into the New World in 1492 when Italian Cristoforo Columbo, sailing under the Spanish flag, invaded the West Indies: “Cruelty never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of” — Bartolome de las Casas, an on-site Spanish priest arriving in 1502 in Hispaniola, describing unspeakable Spaniard behavior (severe, dreadful, vicious, unlimited close-fisted avarice, and barbarisms that “no age can parallel”) inflicted on Indigenous who possessed no vocabulary words to describe such bestiality. (See A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, 1552 by de las Casas).
Wool has never been cleansed from our eyes
I experienced the egregious US version of the Columbus Enterprise in 1969 while in Viet Nam, realizing that invasion was no aberration once learning of the hundreds of US military interventions beginning in the 1790s: “Our business is killing, and business is good.” — Slogan painted on a 9th Infantry Division helicopter in VN’s Mekong Delta. As a consuming nation we enable a pattern of US wars to continue ad nauseum.
1. Rhetoric: Intention and basic values of the Republic of the US are revealed by looking at the rhetoric of Puritans, “Founding Fathers”, basic documents, US politicians, religious leaders, academic pursuits, etc., highlighting our “exceptionalism.”
2. Patterns: Reality of US policy is revealed by carefully examining the patterns of US behavior: At least 560 military interventions have been ordered and publicly funded into more than 100 countries since 1798, always justified with noble sounding rhetoric, in addition to thousands of paramilitary and military operations waged against Indigenous from the 1600s to 1900.
Developing and using Atomic bombs – weapons of cosmic violence – following the wholesale and indiscriminate bombing of concentrated civilian population centers in World War II, launched a deadly militarization of our society and an accompanying huge profit-making enterprise dominating our political economy ever since while demoralizing the Western mind. In effect, the US unconditionally morally surrendered to Nazi and Fascist forces and values.
Thousands of covert operations, all illegal, have occurred since creation of the CIA in 1947. US “Full Spectrum Dominance” has been assured with over 1,000 military installations around the world, Special Forces death squads operating in more than 150 countries, military ships sailing in every seaspace, military planes flying in every airspace, and satellites and weapons launched in outerspace, and insidious myopic propaganda bombarded into our brains every day.
Since our origins, stolen Land by force (Genocide #1), stolen Labor by force (Genocide #2), and stolen Global Resources by force (Genocide #3) have murdered millions, impoverished billions, with total impunity.
3. AWOL: The rhetoric & patterns culminate in the American Way Of Life (AWOL), whereby 4.6% of the world’s people consume at least 25% of the world’s resources on a finite planet, possible only thru massive theft enforced by grotesque violence (imperialism). Even as our society is pathologically narcissistic as a result of believing in its “exceptionalism”, it ironically is annihilating itself and rest of the world. Amazingly, it is our people’s cooperation and addiction to materialism that enables this suicide mission at breakneck speed to continue. The universal energy is desperately begging a spiritual re-discovery of human archetypes of empathy, cooperation, mutual respect, and equity.
Examples of Rhetoric:
John Smith, English adventurer and investor in the southern London Company (Virginia) expedition to Jamestown, VA in 1607, later part of the northern London Company (Plymouth) referred to native Indigenous as “subanimals, more unnatural brutishness than beasts” worthy only of extermination.
William Bradford, a Mayflower Pilgrim, described the Indigenous as savage and brutish men
John Winthrop, severe Puritan lawyer/governor of MA Bay Company, founded a Bible Commonwealth. Believing they were God’s chosen people, he said, “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us… For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us...”
John Underhill, Puritan military commander directing massacre of Pequot Indians in 1637, referred to the Bible justifying the massive killings saying we had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.
John Jay, member of 1st & 2nd Continental Congresses, President of Continental Congress 1778-79, became 1st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1789-1795): The people who own the country ought to govern it.
George Washington: Indians are like wolves, beasts of prey
Thomas Jefferson: (1) merciless Indian Savages as written in the Declaration of Independence – Jefferson decrying King George III’s policies that endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions, describing precisely our US policy in Viet Nam. (2) Later Jefferson described Indian behavior that oblige us now to pursue them to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach. He described the new USA as an empire for liberty. (3) Jefferson advocated for preventive war: If the English do not give us the satisfaction we demand, we will take Canada, which wants to enter the union, and when, together with Canada, we shall have the Floridas, we shall no longer have any difficulties with our neighbors, and it is the only way of preventing them.
English Settlers: Indians are brutes, vermin; Note my commander in Viet Nam called Vietnamese vermin, others called them gooks or slopeheads. In the 2000s, US invaders in Iraq & Afghanistan refer to citizens as towel heads, sand niggers, rag head, haji. Demonizing is a universal principle enabling murdering.
US Constitution, a document despite the later added Bill of Rights, is primarily a document protecting private property and commercial enterprises at the expense of human freedom and liberty.
Note: The US American Revolutionary War was a bourgeois revolution preserving an upper class of successful business people and plantation owners desiring freedom from irritating British rules and taxation. In effect, it was a revolt of Brits against Brits assuring inherited land replaced inherited government. Only 56 selected White men signed the 1776 Declaration of Independence, 48 White men the 1778 Articles of Confederation. Of the original 65 White men selected (but not elected) as state delegates to convene on May 14, 1787 for the totally secret Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia, only 55 attended, and of those, only 39 signed the final document on September 17, many with reservations. None of these men, many slave owners, all learned and holding sufficient interests, were typical representatives of the colonial population.
James Madison, in the secret 1787 Constitutional debates: Landholders ought to have a share in the government…to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. He described the USA as one of imperial republicanism. He made clear in Federalist Paper #10 (1787) why a strong central government was needed: to curb the demand of a majority faction for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked object.
Continental Army Supreme General George Washington’s orders to General Sullivan, May 31, 1779, during the Revolutionary War described his intentions to completely eliminate the Iroquois:
The Expedition you are appointed to command is to be directed against the hostile tribes of the Six Nations of Indians, with their associates & adherents. The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements, and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.
I would recommend, that some post in the center of the Indian Country, should be occupied with all expedition, with a sufficient quantity of provisions whence parties should be detached to lay waste all the settlements around, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner, that the country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed.
But you will not by any means listen to any overture of peace before the total ruinment of their settlements is effected. Our future security will be in their inability to injure us and in the terror with which the severity of the chastisement they receive will inspire them. — [Writings of George Washington. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, XV, pp. 189-93; Drinnon, R. (1980). Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, p. 331].
This order, explicitly or implicitly, established US imperial operating principles: 1. Total War, civilians and combatants alike considered legitimate targets; 2. Preventing/Not Wanting Peace; 3. Preventive and Pre-emptive War; 4. Terror; 5. Torture; 6. Revenge.
General John Sullivan, with Generals James Clinton and Colonel Daniel Brodhead, and their 5,000 troops, dutifully carried out Washington’s orders in September 1779. Sullivan proudly recorded carrying out Washington’s orders to instill “terror” in the Iroquois and “to lay waste all their settlements” in New York State, that their country “may not be merely overrun but destroyed.” The Iroquois Confederacy practiced cooperative agriculture, and was considered the most advanced Indigenous federation in the New World. Sullivan’s troops with their 120 boats, 1,200 pack horses, and 700 cattle, loyally employed a scorched earth policy no less ruthless than General Sherman’s march to the sea during the American Civil War, General Curtis LeMay’s incendiary wasteland bombings of North Korea, 1950-53, or search and destroy missions of US soldiers in Vietnam. In little more than a month (September 1779) the Iroquois were nearly wiped out. This early “manifest destiny” behavior was psychically facilitated by the combination of a “white” ethnocentrism (ethnic superiority) accompanied by a deep racism (fear manifested as hatred) directed toward people of “color,” or those who otherwise looked “different” from white Europeans.
US Senator Thomas Hart Benton (D-MO, 1820-1850): Urged trade and rich commerce with eastern Asia to realize the grand idea of Columbus carrying wealth and dominion with it.
Woodrow Wilson described the theme of the new American century well in a 1907 lecture at Columbia University, six years before he became US president: “Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down … Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”
During Wilson’s administrations (1913-1921) the US intervened in Latin America more frequently than at any other time in its history. This despite Wilson’s reputation as a progressive, and for his famous Fourteen Points speech of January 8, 1918, in which he promised the adjustment of colonial claims to conform with the wishes and interests of the inhabitants, a representation that encouraged the colonized that they might finally be freed. Ho Chi Minh was one who had taken Wilson’s words very seriously in his efforts to achieve Vietnamese independence from all outside nations, especially France, China, and the United States.
Wilson militarily intervened into Mexico in 1913, 1914, again in1916, and several times in 1918-19; Haiti in 1915 where US Marines remained occupiers until 1934; the Dominican Republic in 1916; Cuba in 1917; and Panama in 1918. Throughout his two administrations he maintained effective military and political control over Nicaragua with the stationing of thousands of Marines. So it must be understood that when a US President is thought to be “progressive” while rhetorically speaking of self-determination for colonized peoples, it must be taken with a grain of salt.
Wilson also engineered the first “Red Scare” (fearing “Bolsheviks”) during World War I against thousands of citizens and residents who vigorously opposed US intervention in the war, including systemic domestic surveillance. Thousands were imprisoned and deported without due process, others murdered with impunity.
George Kennan, director of US State Department’s Policy Planning Staff published a top-secret document in 1948 in which he offered an honest assessment for a successful US imperial policy:
: “…we have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task…is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and — for the Far East — unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
The United States’ ability to crush authentic popular movements around the world (incorrectly labeled “communists”), was first demonstrated in Korea, 1945-50, serving an important test of success of its “containment” policy (everywhere) articulated first by Truman in 1947, assuring protection of AWOL.
US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and State Dept Asian specialist George Kennan made it clear in 1949 that the ability of the “democratically elected” Syngman Rhee in Korea to suppress the internal threats to his regime was very important for the success of our containment (of “communism”) policy. The “guerrillas” fighting the post-World War II hated US occupation had to be quickly eliminated so that the world could clearly witness Korea’s successful handling of the “communist threat.” The stakes were high in Korea for the US, and the West in general, and the US wanted to make sure that their puppet Rhee would prevail, no matter the cost to the Korean people or to their aspirations for a reunified country. …Everyone is watching how Korea handles the communist threat.
Attorney General Howard McGrath (1949-1952 under Truman) referred to Koreans as rodents
National Security Council 10/2 1948 (NSC-10/2) established Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) as the covert action arm of the CIA, chartered to conduct endless secret destabilizing activities world over as long as the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them, an ultimate declaration of global manifest destiny.
National Security Council Report #68 (NSC-68), United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, April 14, 1950, “United States Objectives for National Security.” An ultimate declaration of US “Manifest Destiny,” NSC-68 formulated a worldview of polarization between two opposing ideologies where the leaders of the United States asserted the unique right and responsibility to impose their chosen “order among nations” so that “our free society can flourish,” that US policy and action must “foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system.” A global imperial policy was seen as indispensable to protect our belief in ourselves and our way of life. NSC 68 concluded that the assault on free institutions is world-wide and imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership such that we must seek to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish.
Ideologically speaking, this document articulates well our historical addiction to an imperial psychology that continues to this day. It became clear that following World War II, the United States considered all political and economic sectors or regions of influence that it did not control as being a threat to its global objectives of an integrated political-economic capitalism, i.e., promotion of the grotesquely consumptive American Way Of Life (AWOL).
