Home > FOURTH OF JULY
INTRODUCTION
Americans are programmed to be an ignorant and arrogant people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: money, media, and an ignorant, violent, racist version of Christianity. No adequate understanding of American culture and cultural celebrations such as the Fourth of July is possible without first examining these three major elements and the pervading impact they have had on the people.
The USA’s cultural system has proven functionally useful globally to imperialists because it provides them with citizens, soldiers, suckers, and slaves whose conditioned behavior patterns of obedience and consumption dominates their daily life. These accepted behavioral patterns have been developed over a short period of little more than two hundred years and are celebrated on holidays saturated with drunkenness, barbecued pork and all manner of self-indulgent excess. It must be remembered that the founders of the USA are the children of imperialist Europe. Like their European forebears they commonly accept a view of the world as basically "for the taking and raping.” They christened it as their “Manifest Destiny.” They called it “Discovery” in the past and they call it “Democratization” today.
In response to these various stimuli, cultural attitudes have been produced which are characteristic of violent, greedy, brain washed narcissists. The language exerts tremendous influence on personal interaction and emotional tenor. The national religion, an odd mix of Calvinism and evangelical Christianity, is an ultimate expression of skepticism and greed which denies any brotherly love for the poor and down-trodden. The dominant cultural concerns include: continuation of the ability to make money; an addiction to mind numbing media; the desensitization of the youth to violence, and McDonaldization through Christian neo-conservative fundamentalism.
US CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
Wealth, Prosperity and Power
To the US citizen there is none really worthy of worship except the holy trinity of wealth, prosperity and power as represented by the obscenely rich four percent of families who own approximately eighty percent of the world’s resources. The significance of their American dream is the belief that the only purpose of life is to make money and surround oneself with stuff. This illusion is maintained and at times achieved through adherence to the teachings and practices of the corporate media and Wall Street.
The mass media, including public education, are built on five core values:
1. Faith in US supremacy and the finality of manifest destiny.
2. Belief in what pretends to be the “fair and balanced” mind controlling media outlets such as FOX news, CNN and the hundreds of other channels bolstering and promoting Imperialism and inhuman capitalist prerogatives.
3. An obsessive individualism whose main goals are the attainment of wealth and power.
4. Self-gorging through binge eating, sexual debauchery, alcoholic consumption and drug addictions.
5. Pilgrimages to Disneyland and other sites of religious and secular tribute to a sociopathic society for those who can afford to do so.
Rituals
Shopping is the obligatory practice that is performed, sometimes on a daily basis, and is a direct link between the consumer and their real God, The Bank. There is no higher authority in America than the banks and the main regulatory body is the IRS. A person who knows stock market and IRS loop holes is generally revered by all Americans. Shopping mantras are advertised all day and night in media outlets.
Although it is preferable for Americans to shop together in a mall, an American
may shop almost anywhere, such as in small towns, gas stations, and airports. Many visitors to the US are struck by the centrality of shopping and materialism in American life.
The Call to Shop is a mantra that sounds something like this:
I want a Big Mac
I need a Starbucks
I testify that Money is the messenger of my worth.
I testify that Money is the messenger of my power.
Come to the mall!
Come to the Wal-Mart!
Come to Bank!
Money is Great!
Money is Great!
There is none worthy of worship except Money!
Taxes: The financial obligation upon citizens, soldiers, suckers, slaves.
An important principle of the USA is that everything belongs to the Federal Reserve (a private banking institution) and the Federal Government. There is a miserly setting aside of a proportion of taxes for those homeless, starving or poor. For the laboring class of the society there is much rhetoric but no regard. Each American calculates his or her own taxes individually. This involves the annual payment of a fortieth of one’s income and assets to the government. If these payments are not made individuals can be fined and/or jailed. People reduced into poverty are starved, many suffering with untreated diseases in order to hasten a decrease in the non-consuming population.
An individual may give as much as he or she pleases to charities but these donations are highly discouraged and monitored by the government unless the “giving” is corporate-approved. Some who have organized charities for Palestinian and Muslim victims of aggression have been persecuted and imprisoned for their efforts. America has perverted the ancient "golden rule" of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” into the anti-social operational maxim "He who has the gold rules.”
Celebrations
Every year during the major holidays such as the Fourth of July, citizens are exhorted to shop, over-eat and over-indulge. Above all they must shop for Christmas, celebrating a Jesus Christ who they allege “died for their sins.”
The Pilgrimage
The pilgrimage to Disneyland and Disneyworld is an obligation specifically geared as a socialization process for the children and youth of the USA, even those who cannot afford to go to Florida and California each year from all over the country. The Disneyworlds provide a unique capitalist opportunity for acculturating the people to consumer living , reinforced through meeting the cartoon characters which influence their lives from their earliest years.
The Family.
The primary major factor overshadowing all other societal demands of life in the USA is the complete erosion of family and kin while pretending that family is a fundamental cultural value. The lack of family and intimate relationships is really the foundation of American society. The disconnection and isolation produced by the lack of a stable family unit is greatly valued and promoted in media as “freedom”. Behind the scenes this alienation is recognized as essential for the manipulation and control of its inhabitants. A controllable social order is created by the existence of a massive federal government and a police state. Children, who are comodified and sexualized by the mass media, are kept in front of TV’s, play stations and computers until the time they can serve in fast food restaurants, the militaries or prisons.
Parents are greatly disrespected in the American tradition. Mothers are particularly abhorred and blamed for all manner of psychological problems in TV pop-psychological talk shows.
The cultural style of American parenting is responsible for much of the behavioral traits. American children have difficulty establishing an acceptable pattern of ethical conduct and differentiating between love and bribery. Crazy Horse spoke of this when he said that the "White man speaks with forked tongue."
An American marriage is both a capitalist act and a legal agreement which may be dissolved when shopping in bars and dance halls for a new partner to enhance the ego. Either partner is free to include pre-nuptial conditions in a marriage. As a result, divorce is permitted as frequently as desired. Marriage customs across race, class and orientation encourage infidelity and multiple sexual partners.
CONFLICT
The people of the US are programmed towards a propensity for violence. The US expanded rapidly after the Holocaust of the indigenous people and the kidnapping and enslaving of Black people from the continent they named “Africa”. The US Empire continued to expand its conquests into Central America, the Caribbean and Africa and its version of Christianity gradually became the practice of the majority of the collaborators in those countries. The Crusading assault has now turned to concentrate its efforts on Arab and Muslim lands. Among the reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity was the simplicity of its indoctrination program— an educational and psychological project accomplished via the dismantling of culture by stripping away of language, symbols and history and reinforced and supplemented by violence designed to effect speedy conquest and “conversion” of subjected peoples.
Reasons for fascination with conflict may lie with the dysfunctional family where competitiveness and hostilities are instilled at an early age, and life generally exists under various forms of intense pressure. Two American sayings aptly describe the competitive, hostile spirit bred into American
children:
"It’s Us against the World" and “Looking out for Number One”.