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Related: About this forumAmericans are Powerful & Safe; So why do they feel Like Victims?
http://www.juancole.com/2015/09/americans-powerful-victims.htmlAmericans are Powerful & Safe; So why do they feel Like Victims?
By contributors | Sep. 30, 2015
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com)
Given the cluttered landscape of the last 14 years, can you even faintly remember the moment when the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War ended in a stunned silence of shock and triumph in Washington, Eastern Europe was freed, Germany unified, and the Soviet Union vanished from the face of the Earth? At that epochal moment, six centuries of imperial rivalries ended. Only one mighty power was left.
There hadnt been a moment like it in historical memory: a single hyperpower with a military force beyond compare looming over a planet without rivals. Under the circumstances, what couldnt Washington hope for? The eternal domination of the Middle East and all that oil? A planetary Pax Americana for generations to come? Why not? After all, not even the Romans and the British at the height of their empires had experienced a world quite like this one.
Now, leap a quarter of a century to the present and note the rising tide of paranoia in this country and the litany of predictions of doom and disaster. Consider the extremity of fear and gloom in the party of Ronald Its Morning Again in America Reagan in what are called debates among its presidential candidates, and its hard not to imagine that we arent at the precipice of the decline and fall of just about everything. The American Century? So much sawdust on the floor of history.
If, however, you look at the country that its top politicians can now hardly mention without defensively wielding the words exceptional or indispensable, the truly exceptional thing is this: as a great power, the United States still stands alone on planet Earth and Americans can exhibit all the paranoia they want in remarkable safety and security.
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Americans are Powerful & Safe; So why do they feel Like Victims? (Original Post)
unhappycamper
Sep 2015
OP
Because one of the two major political parties uses that paranoia as an electoral tool.
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
Sep 2015
#1
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)1. Because one of the two major political parties uses that paranoia as an electoral tool.
It's why we're perpetually in foreign "adventures" as well, alays having a 'foe' from whom we need 'protected'. Almost entirely propaganda, but effective after decades of repetition.
GoneFishin
(5,217 posts)2. +1. Bingo. Manipulation of low information voters.
djean111
(14,255 posts)3. Claiming to be a victim is a handy campaign tool.
Not restricted to any one party.
Also, claiming to be a victim means more money for the MIC, the NSA, etc.