- "America does not go abroad in search of monsters
to destroy."
- --John Quincy Adams
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- While it certainly was not his intent, Adams' assertion
serves to remind us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential
rivers of blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder,
mayhem, and misery in its wake, America does "go abroad," but
not, as Adams noted, "in search of monsters to destroy." What
Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native American
genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America is the
monster.
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- Yet like most monsters that exist outside the boundaries
of imagination, the printed word, celluloid, or digital imagery, the United
States and its denizens ostensibly appear rather harmless and mundane.
In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that a fair number of
people still perceive us as downright heroic, cloaked as we are in our
beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy.
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- "You need to ask why is it that we're so surprised
when the alleged BTK killer [in Wichita] ends up being someone who lives
among us and works in our church and is a Cub Scout leader," says
Daryl Koehn, an ethicist at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and
author of a new book, "The Nature of Evil." "We want evil
to be monstrous," she says, "because if evil is monstrous, then
by definition it doesn't look like us."
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- -"Calling Evil by Name" from the Christian
Science Monitor (3/10/05)
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- While Jefferson penned the words, "life, liberty,
and pursuit of happiness" in our Declaration of Independence, the
notion actually evolved from Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit
of estate" and Adam Smith's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
property." Smith's version even found its way into The Declaration
of Colonial Rights, crafted by the First Continental Congress in 1774.
We in the United States act monstrously because in spite of Jefferson's
re-wording, we did not divorce ourselves from Locke's and Smith's notions.
We perceive an inextricable link between our happiness and the degree of
material success we achieve.
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- Forged within the context of capitalism, which has become
savage beyond comprehension as it rages against its inevitable self-destruction,
our relentless devotion to our "inalienable right" to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" focuses primarily upon enhancing
our own lives (others be damned), filling our heavily-mortgaged homes to
the rafters with as much "stuff" as we can acquire, and satiating
every hedonistic desire the law will allow, and then some. We rarely pursue
the spiritual form of happiness to which Jefferson was probably alluding.
In a nation where "I" rarely defers to "we" and property
rights trump humanity, we US Americans tend to be all about "me"
and hell-bent on dying a winner by possessing the "most toys."
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- "About 24,000 people die each day from hunger or
hunger-related causes. Three-quarters of the deaths are children under
the age of 5."
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- --The Hunger Project, United Nations; Fall 2003
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- "You can find your way across this country using
burger joints the way a navigator uses stars."
-
- -Charles Kuralt
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- Think about that figure of 24,000 for a moment. Each
day that passes, nearly three times as many human beings succumb to malnutrition
and hunger than the total number of people we have lost in our illegal
and murderous invasion of Iraq that began in 2003. Yet as Charles Kuralt
pointed out, there is no shortage of victuals in the United States. Fast
food restaurants, the progenitors of numerous evils, including factory
farming, Mcjobs, the corporatization of culture, and the "throw away"
society, are nearly ubiquitous. We US Americans are "lovin' it"
and having it "[our] way" so much that highway weigh stations
stops may eventually become mandatory for all motorists. 40 million of
us are obese and 3 million more are morbidly obese.
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- Ironically though, we are so selfish and self-absorbed,
that not only do we use our immense military and economic might to extort
and force the rest of the world to supply our tiny percentage of the world's
population with a shockingly gluttonous one fourth of the Earth's resources,
we allow hunger and homelessness to exist amongst our own people!
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- Television, which is both our grossly distorted window
to the world and a Siren's call to viciously lacerate our souls upon the
jagged coast of the Isle of Avarice where we ultimately find ourselves
spiritually devoured by the beast called Consumerism, acts as a powerful
catalyst for America's pathological fascination with shopping.
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- While our multi-national corporations rape and exploit
developing nations, our insanely over-funded death machine wages wholesale
terror with a vengeance, our power-brokers on Wall Street man the bulwarks
of predatory capitalism, our almost infinitely corrupt government protects
and advances the interests of a cynical plutocracy, and the corporate media
cover their collective asses, we US Americans disregard our consciences
(which have been rendered virtually impotent by the inculcation of the
notion of American Exceptionalism anyway) and pursue our "happiness"
through serial retailing. What better way to inject a dose of instant nirvana
into our lives without becoming another of the 300,000 non-violent drug
offenders behind bars in the US?
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- Aside from its legality, shopping's beauty lies in the
ease with which one can attain the high it offers. We merely arm ourselves
with a fistful of readily obtainable credit cards (remaining oblivious
to the usurious interest to which we are obligating ourselves), jump in
our SUVs that were actually designed to be used for public transit but
somehow became modes of personal transportation, and head for the nearest
leviathan, cookie-cutter retail establishment. (Who knew the stairway to
heaven had only three steps?)
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- Once one arrives, there is a high probability of having
a profound spiritual experience, like this for instance:
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- Entering the mall, you find yourself captivated by a
kiosk peddling expensive sunglasses. One pair in particular demands your
attention. Initiating a moment of narcissistic bliss, you casually don
the shades and catch a glimpse of yourself in one of the many mirrors the
vendor has generously provided. Smiling with self-satisfaction, you tell
yourself you look "killer" in those $300.00 Dolce and Gabbanas.
Madison Avenue's indoctrination has convinced you that you deserve them
and that you need them to show people who you are. So of course, you make
them yours. You, my friend, have just been elevated to a higher plane of
existence in retailing paradise.
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- On a really good shopping day, we find ourselves in the
midst of an enchanted world where the line between reality and the American
Dream becomes an indistinct blur. An upscale mall in suburban America is
THE place to be on a weekend afternoon if you fancy yourself to be one
of the "beautiful people"-white, at least comfortable financially,
attractive, and thus amongst the only people who truly matter in this world.
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- Yet there is also plenty of room for the rest of us-those
who refuse to relax our death grip on the losing lottery ticket that our
magical thinking tells us is a guaranteed winner. Why do we refuse to let
go of a pipe dream? Because we see ourselves as a nation brimming with
Horatio Algers. "The good life" is just around the corner, if
we just work hard enough. So potent is this pernicious lie, they will have
to pry this metaphorical lottery ticket from our "cold, dead hands."
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- Posturing, preening, styling, profiling, seeing, being
seen, and best of all, exercising their patriotic duty to God, country,
and retailer, the "beautiful people" set the trend for the rest
of us. It's hard to conceive of something more "inspiring" than
the most spoiled and privileged human beings on the face of the planet
filling their Hummers with bags emblazoned with the likes of Abercrombie,
Neiman Marcus, the Limited, Nordstrom, and Saks so they can stay ahead
of the fashion curve, play with the latest electronic toys, best the neighbors,
and to have more contents to dampen the echoes reverberating throughout
their relatively empty McMansion domiciles, which are large enough to house
fifty people but often afford shelter to only a few.
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- Whether we are amongst the "blessed elite"
of humanity or not, as US Americans it is our patriotic duty to shop. Shopping
was our first "counter-terrorism measure" after 9/11, remember?
Our very way of life depends upon our wallets and our willingness to open
them.
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- If we falter in our sacred duty to over-indulge our desires
at the expense of humanity and the Earth, dear reader, our world as we
know it will be lost to the "Islamic hoards", "Godless Communists",
and "Hispanic invaders."
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- As long as greed, self-absorption, selfishness, and consumerism
are so deeply woven into our sociocultural fabric, we who comprise the
collective in the United States will exist as a living testament to Victor
Hugo's observation that, "Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes
monsters."
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- Jason Miller is a wage slave of the American Empire who
has freed himself intellectually and spiritually. He is Cyrano's Journal
Online's associate editor ( http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes
Thomas Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
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- You can reach him at
- JMiller@bestcyrano.org
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