Is The USA Really #1???

As a very interested foreign observer, I've been waiting a long time for this article:

Our government, media and schools start burnishing the false notion of American moral superiority into our brains at a very young age...

More specifically:

There is a great body of evidence which obliterates the inane notion that the United States is a benevolent world leader. Despite the ready availability of contrary evidence, many Americans remain blind to the truth about our despised nation, and choose to believe the fairy tale version of “truth, justice and the American Way ”. The sad reality is that America is an imperialistic, avaricious war machine ruled by the wealthy...

And oh, yes...!

Acting with impunity and arrogance, America’s leaders have an unprecedented military might at their disposal, possess a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to destroy the world thousands of times over, ignore international law but impose it on others, use the UN to inflict damage on other nations but openly defy its rules, hoard the world’s riches and resources, defile the Earth which sustains us, support ruthless dictators, and employ terrorism through the CIA...

If you are a patriotic US liberal, I know this is hard to accept. True, the USA has been a beacon of hope for many, many people over the past 50 years. But was that hope ever truly justified? Nowadays, it appears that we have all been duped by a USA which, whoever the President may have been, has only ever had its own interests at heart.

I know there are good people in Bush's USA who despair of the direction in which their country is heading. But from a foreigner's perspective, it is simply impossible to understand how the US public can remain so damned ignorant. Even now, 38 percent of US citizens still think Bush is doing a good job. As Juan Cole says, someone please tell me what these people are smoking!

Because that is what's going on, isn't it? Bush-lovers get pissed or stoned or watch the NFL or "go shopping" on a daily basis, ignoring the plight of their own country just as they ignore the daily realities of the wider world. Similarly, across the glove, the rich generally get pissed or stoned or distract themselves by other measures, ignoring the plight of the poor and oppressed in nations beyond shooting distance. We don't rate the deaths of foreigners on the TV news as anything equitable to the loss of "our own". We know that millions are starving in Africa and the rest of the Third World, but we choose to ingore that uncomfortable fact because it poses an extremely uncomfortable challenge to our much-cherished "lifestyle choices".

And that, in essence, is the dilemma at the heart of this whole Iraq conflict: some of us are happy to look upon the rest of the world as "untermenschen" (the Nazi term for those somehow "less human" than ourselves) while others among us hold firm to the ideal that "all men (and women) are created equal". Some of us bleed a little bit with each and every Iraqi death, while others could care less.

Of course, the majority of people in my own alleged "democracy" in Australia have re-elected pro-war, anti-immigrant, racist scum and liar PM John Howard three times, so what they hell are we smoking? But at least our ignorance does not contribute to global decline at quite the same rate as the USA (even if we are responsible for dog-droppings like Chrenkoff).

Our leaders are out of control but we let them get away because we have no answer to their obscene public displays of moral relativism.

Or, to put it another way: fascist dictators have generally acted under Machiavelli's principle that "if the act accuse him, the result will excuse him" ...

20th century manifestation of such a way of life was called "Fascism." In 21st century, it is the same thing but the fascists call it “freedom and democracy.” The original fasces were bundles of thin rods bound together with an ax among them; they were carried before the highest magistrates of imperial Rome as a symbol of authority and of the strength that comes from tight unity. Recent fascism is distinguished not by the novelty of its elements or the profundity of its thought but by the flair and efficiency with which these elements have been interwoven and presented as the most humane ideology and civilized way of life.