Arrogant Nation

[norml]

Arrogant Nation

By Doug Soderstrom

29 April, 2005
Countercurrents.org

The arrogance of ignorance, a profoundly dangerous and ill-informed presumption that one’s own people are better (wiser, morally and spiritually ascendant, and more capable) than others, seems rather well entrenched within the American populace. It is such that seems to have created a social-political environment that continues to encourage the American effort to build a World Empire. All of the elements are there, in fact, it seems that at this very moment, at the very dawn of the third millennium, the foundation has been laid. The people have been primed, the leadership (The Bush-Cheney Administration) is in place, and The Great American War Machine is ready to take action.

But how did things get to such a point? What was it that allowed our country to have become so arrogant? Was it our taming of The West? Was it our near annihilation of The American Indian, the original inhabitants of this country? Was it our ability to have been so successful in an enslavement of The African American people? Was it our capacity to have economically ravaged Central America and The Caribbean? Was it our capacity for technological development? How about our having bombed Viet Nam and Cambodia into near stone-age oblivion? Then there was our war with Iraq in 1991, and the fact that we were able to kill 350 Iraqis for every American soldier who died. And what about our ability to have been so good at polluting the earth’s atmosphere setting the stage for a rather tragic warming of the world? Or the fact that four percent of the world’s population has been so successfully able to have consumed 35% of the world’s wealth? And what about the fact that we, no doubt, have the greatest military force in the history of the world, one that could destroy the entirety of the human race several times over? And what about our willingness to have thumbed our noses at nearly every institutional effort to resolve some of the world’s most grave problems (The World Court, The Kyoto Treaty on Climate Change, The Anti-Ballistic Treaty with Russia, The 2001 UN Conference on Racism, as well as other international attempts to resolve pending world problems). And finally, we can bask in the glory of having been so successful in bringing peace, prosperity and security to a democratic Iraq!

So given “such a fine history”…….. what is it about The American Citizen, on the eve of another Bush-Cheney four-year administrative reign, that qualifies him to be a candidate for such a grand design? What is it that seems to have paved the way toward empire? What is it about our own people that have made them so absolutely vulnerable, so inordinately willing to be led down the primrose path of a mad dash toward the building of a worldwide empire?

I would like to suggest that there are eight factors that have moved the American public to such a point. The first of which is an inclination toward ethnocentrism. Americans seem to be wracked with ethnocentric bias, a rather pride-filled tendency to reject anything that is not American, an attitude that leads our people to evaluate that which is American as better than that which is not of American origin. For example, it is common for Americans to believe that capitalism, the free enterprise system, is inherently better (more God-inspired) than any other economic arrangement, especially that of socialism which is, by many, considered to be evil and perhaps even devil-inspired. Also rather endemic is the presumption that Christianity is the one and only “right religion,” the only theological system that will enable an adherent to enter “the pearly gates” of Heaven, condemning all other religions to the category of false faiths that necessarily lead to Hell. And, of course, given our country’s current 9/11-oriented fear of another attack by “the terrorists,” the converse of such a proposition is a resolute hatred of The Moslem Faith as well as those of The Middle East who tend to follow its precepts. Representatives of the conservative-fundamentalist Christian community such as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have pretty well summed up these folks feelings.



snip



http://www.countercurrents.org/us-soderstrom290405.htm

[kliljedahl]

1. Wow, that's one long piece

Just saved it as a document to read later. What I did read (half?) was very insightful & echoes many of my own thoughts. Very well written piece.


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[wurzel]

2. We are the "Ignorant Nation"

We have developed a culture of self congratulatory ignorance. Our people know almost nothing about their own country and even less about the rest of the world. But we don't know we don't know. Our culture has become a culture of relentless lies and delusion. And we have come to prefer it to the truth. Who can blame us for that, given our history since the assasination of Kennedy? Can anything else can explain the re-election of a man like Bush, and a Congress and Supreme Court such as we have today? I am beginning to wonder if we are suicidal.

[kliljedahl]

4. But we don't know we don't know?

Rummy?


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[BrklynLiberal]

3. Excellent! thaks for posting.

[norml]

5. Thank you!

I found this while doing a news search for new articles on PNAC.

[sweetheart]

6. just another stupid declining empire

There is nothing unique about america... it is just the latest member
of the dying/dead empires list... when, at the end, the most evil and
despotic fools come to power, to steal all that remains before it falls
apart.

It is ethnocentrism to presume the american empire will miss the
historical cycle of empires.... nothing new... same old shit.