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extermination of the Indians, and has always been an imperial endeavor "of, for and by" the rich and the white--or you can look at it like this: although America's foundation was laid with slaves and slaughtered Indians, and has prospered due to the vast natural resources that the country appropriated to its use, there were nevertheless certain people with revolutionary vision who laid a foundation that favored civil rights and popular rule, and the people took them at their word, and eventually freed the slaves, and, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, sought an increasingly more equitable society--with unions and collective bargaining, with a bustup of the railroad barons and a great populist movement in California (that spread east), with enfranchisement of women, with FDR's economic recovery program, with a post WW II commitment to international law, peaceful cooperation and human rights (the United Nations), with integration of black citizens into the armed services, and eventual integration of schools and all public agencies, with extensive movements in the 1960s toward greater equality for blacks, women, gays and other unequally treated groups, and with an impressive movement against unjust war that continued into the early 1980s and included popular sentiment against imperial aggression in Central/South America and other places. There were even efforts to acknowledge the genocide against the Native Americans and to compensate the remaining tribes with land and other assistance. The 1960's antiwar movement brought down two presidents and likely prevented the use of nuclear weapons against the Vietnamese people, but nevertheless failed to stop the slaughter of upwards of two million Vietnamese and southeast Asians, and failed to result in a dismantling of the offensive military-industrial war machine, created in WW II, that was bent on manufacturing more war. The latter was a fatal mistake.
Against this strong march of history toward greater equality and more populism--and against unjust war--the inevitable fascist elite (which had in truth sided with Hitler and the Nazis) began organizing in earnest in the 1970s to undo the vast social progress of the previous century and to appropriate all resources including the government's military machine toward creation of a new "Holy Roman Empire." This junta began with Reagan, and has culminated with Bush II and the effort of a distinct minority to, a) loot the country blind (possibly deliberately to create conditions for a Hitler to take power), and b) to undo every government support of social progress and equal rights, despite a huge majority (60%) in opposition to it (to be achieved by stolen elections, and more and more brazen power grabs).
So, we have two hundred years of social progress, and of increasing equality and popular rule--all based on certain ideas of the better Founders of the Republic ("all men are created equal," protection of free speech, separation of church and state, at least a limited enfranchisement of the popular majority, acknowledgment of human rights, etc.)--as opposed to twenty-five years of a concerted effort at retrenchment, which has assaulted each and every one of the pillars of democracy, some of it in devious ways (for instance, free speech curtailed by corporate news monopolies). 1776 to 1980 (the period of rocky but relentless progress), vs. 1980 to 2005 (a period of fascist retrenchment).
It's difficult not to see the "Roman" historical arc in all this--from an idealistic Republic, to a vast empire enforced by military rule and headed by a "Caesar" (i.e., dictator)--an empire that nevertheless had progressive notions of religious tolerance, education and learning, and some ideas of inclusiveness--to a seriously degraded "Holy Roman Empire" of one religion enforced by the sword.
But, in truth, history does not repeat itself. It is more like a gyre (William Butler Yeats' notion) with certain themes that keep repeating--that come back round every once in a while--whereby we achieve opportunities to improve, and even to consciously evolve, the human race.
In recent history, the great revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries (the foundations of modern democracy) were followed by the "Ancien Regime"--a 20 to 30 year period of backsliding and retrenchment (partly in reaction to Napoleon, but not entirely). I think that this recent history is perhaps more relevant. Bush II may be reaching back to the 5th Century AD (i.e., that's what Howard Ahmanson's "Chalcedon" foundation is all about). But people just won't go there. The memory of freedom, equality, civil rights and responsive government is too fresh, and much, much too pervasive throughout the world. Look at the recent leftist/democratic revolutions in South America, for instance--the whole subcontinent has gone "blue." The world is going the other way from Bushism.*
What will happen here? I really don't know. But what sticks out to me is this 60/40 progressive American majority that persists, despite the relentless propaganda and fearmongering. The Bushi'ites simply do not have the base support to proceed with their plans. They might try to do it by force. I don't think they will succeed.
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*(And it's interesting that ALL the democracy movements we see in the world today, to a great degree, derive from the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both slaveholders--albeit, slaveholders who saw the need to end slavery but could not pull it off, politically. Slavery was endemic throughout the Americas. They were born into it. It is remarkable that they saw its evil, and imagined that it could be ended.)
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