- "Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created
and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition
that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance
and conceit."
-
- ---Emma Goldman
-
- 9/20/06: Populist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez had the
sheer audacity to stand before the United Nations and deliver an angry
diatribe against the enemy of humanity. Dispensing with mealy-mouthed pleasantries,
he verbally savaged Bush in his fiery oration. Chavez knows an abhorrent
war criminal when he sees one and he isn't one to mince words or use polite
euphemisms.
-
- George Bush had addressed the assembly the previous day
with an incredibly disingenuous monologue loaded with platitudes and Orwellian
Doublespeak Admittedly, with his credibility around the world and uncanny
capacity to articulate in an intelligent manner, Bush was a tough act to
follow at the UN. But somehow, Chavez managed.
-
- He made a few choice observations:
-
- "The devil came here yesterday. And it smells of
sulfur still today."
-
- Bush may not actually be the devil, but he certainly
qualifies as one of his Earthly agents. And Chavez may very well have been
smelled residual sulfur fumes which had emanated from Satan himself. It
is a virtual certainty that Lucifer was present for Bush's virtuoso performance
on 9/19. How could he have resisted watching his favorite sociopath's attempt
to beguile listeners into believing he is pursuing noble causes?
-
- Chavez went on to assert:
-
- "As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share
his nostrums to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation
and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could
use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: 'The Devil's Recipe.'
"
-
- Underscoring his blasphemy against the predatory capitalism
inflicted on the world by the economic and military titan "affectionately"
known as the American Empire, the champion of humane social democracy waved
a copy of Hegemony or Survival by Noam Chomsky, a vehement domestic critic
of the United States political and economic systems.
-
- Chavez also noted that Bush "stole the elections"
and "is, therefore, a dictator."
-
- Tough point to argue given that Bush came to power via
two bloodless coups, one engineered by Katherine Harris and the other by
Diebold.
-
- In the aftermath of Chavez's blistering verbal attacks
on US imperialists and the miscreant conducting their symphony of the macabre,
"patriots" emerged to defend "our president". Given
the overt fascism and aggressive militarism emerging in the United States,
it is almost inconceivable that such a regime would continue to enjoy popular
support. Yet economic tyranny, consumerism, and relentless pressure to
conform to the American Way are so powerful that many US Americans have
sold their very souls by offering their voluntary complicity in the subjugation,
exploitation, and (in some instances) extermination of billions of human
beings around the globe.
-
- And some of these "patriots" originate from
some surprising segments of the United States' population.
-
- New York Democrat Charles Rangel, a member of the treasonous
US Congress which has enabled the Bush administration in its steady march
toward becoming a tyrannical regime, took serious umbrage to Chavez's remarks:
-
- "You don't come into my country; you don't come
into my congressional district and you don't condemn my president"
-
- How telling that a member of the opposition party in
a self-proclaimed "democratic nation" would publicly support
a war criminal and characterize him as "my president".
-
- He may be a ruthless potentate, but he is OUR ruthless
potentate. And don't you dare criticize George W. Bush!
-
- Sadly, the reality in the United States is that there
is little difference between Republicans and Democrats. While both parties
give ample lip service to meeting the needs of the working class and the
poor, most of the Duopoly's "elected" officials zealously devote
themselves to advancing the interests of their corporate and aristocratic
patrons.
-
- Some might defend Rangel's remarks as evidence of his
"patriotism" or allegiance to his nation. Yet the virulent nationalism
that has swept the United States since 9/11 is not a healthy loyalty to
fellow countrymen. "Patriotism" in the United States today is
a symptom of the rapidly spreading malignancy of fascism. Sadly, being
a "patriot" in the United States requires one to support egregious
crimes against humanity, domestically and abroad.
-
- Consider James Bryce's thoughts on patriotism:
-
- "Our country is not the only thing to which we owe
our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism
consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall
be righteous as well as strong."
-
- Given its economic might and obsession with militarism,
the United States is certainly strong. But righteous? While she may be
305 feet of towering nobility, Lady Liberty is up to her eyeballs in the
fetid fecal matter ceaselessly flowing from the bowels of an empire built
on economic oppression, genocide, bellicosity, racism, and the pernicious
lie known as the American Dream.
-
- Even some of the most oppressed people in history have
succumbed to this infection of pathological "patriotism". A group
of indigenous people in Alaska recently refused Chavez's offer of free
heating oil.(1) Facing 25% unemployment rates, winter temperatures as low
as minus 15 Fahrenheit, and heating bills of $300.00 per month, these psychologically
enslaved individuals rejected Venezuela's assistance because Chavez insulted
George Bush.
-
- Bear in mind that these are people descended from victims
of genocide waged by the predecessors of Bush and the members of his regime.
Despite surviving the attempted extermination, these Native Americans face
significant structural barriers to overcoming perpetual poverty, including
years of under-education and marginalization.
-
- Yet Justine Gunderson of the tribal council for the Aleuts
in Nelson Lagoon is convinced that they "did the right thing"
by choosing to suffer to defend a war criminal's "honor":
-
- "As a citizen of this country, you can have your
own opinion of our president and our country. But I don't want a foreigner
coming in here and bashing us. Even though we're in economically dire straits,
it was the right choice to make."
-
- Dimitri Philemonof, another leader in the Aleutian community,
further exhibited the efficacy of the US corporate propaganda mill when
he opined:
-
- "I think we have some duty to our country, and I
think it's loyalty."
-
- Many of those Justine and Dimitri represent have been
doomed to the misery of chronic poverty by years of institutionalized racism.
Yet they live in a state inundated with the oil for which they pay such
an outrageous price. And they have chosen to forsake their own well-being
out of loyalty to the guardians of a rapacious economic system principally
dominated by wealthy White elites. The same elites who tenaciously strive
to ensure that the poor and minorities continue to wallow in wretchedness.
At least they can still wave the Stars and Stripes with pride.
-
- Hugo Chavez embodies nearly everything the working class
and poor in the United States have been indoctrinated to fear, hate and
ridicule. Like Evo Morales in Bolivia, he champions indigenous poverty-stricken
people and their long unfulfilled needs. Both men are on the cutting edge
of a South American political revolution in which the people are wresting
power and resources away from corporations and the minority wealthy elite.
Morales' administration is in its infancy, but Chavez has had time to deliver
free health care, free education, and food at subsidized prices to many
of the staggering numbers of Venezuelans who had been living in abject
poverty in a nation flush with huge reserves of precious petroleum (2).
-
- Meanwhile, in the United States, Bush and his accomplices
have persistently striven to replace a constitutional republic with a fascist
regime. Invading and occupying a nation that posed no viable threat the
United States and had no connection with 9/11, exterminating an estimated
655,000 innocent Iraqis (3), legalizing torture, staging fraudulent elections,
jettisoning the Constitution and legal principles from the Magna Carta,
and consistently advancing the interests of the super rich at the expense
of the working class and vulnerable members of society (4,5,6,7) qualify
the US government as a fascist regime.
-
- In Bush's "ownership society", a relatively
tiny slice of the population does most of the owning (8). Lulled into a
dogmatic slumber, many US Americans are content to fulfill the roles of
obedient workers and consumers. Bread and circuses, the idealization of
"go it alone, rugged individualism" personified by cultural icons
like the Marlboro Man, and the perpetuation of the delusion that their
nation is a meritocracy serve to cripple the minds and consciences of many
citizens of the United States.
-
- Thus those leaders (like Chavez) who fight for the poor
and oppressed are treated as threats and pariahs, champions of the privileged
elite like Reagan are enshrined in the pantheon of American politics, and
malefactors in the Bush Regime garner enough support to continue perpetrating
their heinous crimes.
-
- Thomas Paine penned these words in The American Crisis:
-
- "These are times that try men's souls. The summer
soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the
service of their countryTyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered"
-
- Today's American Crisis? These are the times that enslave
men's souls. And the hell of the Bush Regime will not be easily conquered.
-
- Tragically, many spiritually shackled US Americans remain
blissfully ignorant of their bondage. And a myriad of myths and distractions
shield them from awareness of (or concern for) their complicity in the
United States' over-consumption that threatens the perpetuation of life
on Earth (9), genocide (10,11), and campaigns of mass murder like the one
in Vietnam.
-
- Relentless psychological manipulation has armed the US
ruling elite with a vast army of "patriots" eagerly submitting
to the yoke of economic subjugation and enabling governments like the Bush
Regime to inflict abject misery upon hundreds of millions of human beings.
-
- The staggering 43% of US Americans who still embrace
a tyrant who has unleashed hell upon the world with impunity (12) are a
testament to the power of the siren call to be a "patriot" in
the United States.
-
- If the melodious strains of Orpheus' lyre don't captivate
more listeners soon, the ship of humanity may be doomed to share a watery
grave with mythological mariners.
-
- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He writes prolifically,
his essays have appeared widely on the Internet, and he volunteers at a
homeless shelter. He welcomes constructive correspondence at willpowerful@hotmail.com
or via his blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, at http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/.
-
- (1) http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/09/alaska.oil.chavez.ap/index.html
-
- (2) http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/09/richard_gott.html
-
- (3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6139677,00.html
-
- (4) http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/3344/1/180?TopicID=1
-
- (5) http://www.businessweek.com/@@*7OQP4YQG8gs
PxgA/magazine/content/04_44/b3906038_mz007.htm
-
- (6) http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/4007/1/43
-
- (7) http://www.abpnews.com/817.article.print
-
- (8) http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7055911
-
- (9) http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1834360.ece
-
- (10) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10881
-
- (11) http://www.countercurrents.org/us-miller010306.htm
-
- (12) http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Bush_Job_Approval.htm
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