Ten tough truths about the U.S.A.

By Kersasp D. Shekhdar

"I want the truth!" "America, you can’t handle the truth!" This well-known snatch of dialogue, slightly amended, from "A Few Good Men" perfectly illustrates the U.S.A.’s state of mind today: it can’t handle the truth. And that is if the truth is spoken, especially in these times when the truth-teller is smeared as being ’unpatriotic’ and ’anti-American’. For a nation in the grip of near-collective narcissistic delusions, unwilling and unable to see the truths about itself square in the eye, I present ten tough truths about America.

1. A Salute for the American ’Fourth Estate’

Fact: The America media-newspapers and television-economically depend on millions upon millions of dollars in advertisements from corporations and big-business.

Fact: Corporations and big-business subsist on millions of dollars of grants and subsidies, on corporate tax-breaks, and on million-dollar contracts from (various branches and agencies of) the government.

Fact: Nearly every major American media outlet is but the media property (i.e., possession) of one or another American big-business corporations.

You get your news about the government, its policies, and its activities from these same media. Now what do you think you will read and hear as the ’news’? What will you not read and hear? Try to figure it out.

2. EXTRA! EXTRA! Bribery and Corruption Legal in America!

Somebody finally had the guts to write what many socio-political observers have privately thought all along, and he said it without any ifs, ands or buts. Professor Huck Gutman of the University of Vermont does not beat around the bush when he writes "Americans legalize bribes by calling them ’campaign contributions’. . . ." End of story. So that’s why KBR of Halliburton walked off with that humongous Iraq contract and nothing too bad has happened or will happen to that crooked Ken Lay. Now about that recently-published list of most corrupt nations with the likes of Bangladesh and Colombia leading the pack, anyone care to make revisions after American euphemisms and word-play are accounted for?

3. Department of Defense? Could it be . . . Department of War?

Strange indeed that for the past hundred years America’s Department of Defense has been called upon to defend the country perhaps once or twice, yet has mounted invasions, conducted military campaigns, and started all-out wars-overt, covert, declared, and dirty-about a dozen times and counting. Why don’t they just call the Pentagon the ’Department of War’ instead? What? It used to be called the ’War Department’ until the late-forties at which time the pols decided that ’Department of Defense’ had a kinder, gentler ring? Mercy me! Leopards never change their spots and evidently War Departments never change their blood-thirst for war either. Once a war department, always a war department, so let’s please call it by its true name, shall we?

4. Made with Pride in America . . .

Americans seldom write ’Made in America’ on their products. It’s nearly always ’Made with Pride in America’. Yet these humble blokes have a way of diffidently walking away from some of their finest products. To give credit where it is due to this oh-so-modest country, we present: The Taliban-Made with Pride in America. (To single out the mastercraftsmen for special praise: Take a bow, Reagan, Bush, Casey, Weinberger, et. al.)

There’s more: Islamic fundamentalist madressahs, the narcotics-funded arms trade, GM frankenfoods, the IMF’s buttoned-down arm-twisters, the Contras in Nicaragua, Marcos in the Phillipines . . . the only thing these (and many other) varied products have in common is the stamp, "Made with Pride in America."

P.S. Ever notice the shoddy quality of goods bearing this label?

5. The ’Right Wing’ . . . Not!

I do not see any logic behind the term ’right wing’, and I certainly do not care about its coinage-subliminal messages come in many forms and appropriation of words with positive connotations, such as ’right’, for propaganda purposes is one of them. I reject this term because I see little that is right about the so-called ’right wing’ while I, like most thinking humans who are unblinded by state-sponsored misinformation, see much that is wrong about it-just consider the other nine tough truths in this exposition, most of which are strongly related to the so-called ’right wing’. Therefore, I prefer to call this sector of political doctrine and policy the wrong wing, and its adherents wrong wingers. I suggest you do the same.

6. Only Outlaw Terrorist Countries that Manufacture and Possess Biological and Chemical Weapons

So the U.S. government and their media stooges would lead us all to believe. Okay, fine. Now consider that the world’s most active and advanced programmes of biological and chemical weapons are the ones (secretly) conducted by the U.S.A. American governments have tried to keep a low profile on this issue after they made world headlines with their horrifying use of the chemical weapon Agent Orange. And not only does America have such a programme, it also has the world’s largest stockpile of biological and chemical weapons, besides having proactively provided the know-how and components to make them to countries such as . . . Iraq. So, if one is to believe the American government’s line about countries who make and possess biological and chemical weapons being outlaws and terrorists, what does that make America?

7. Is There Any Such Thing as ’Anti-American’?

Wherein the germination of the term ’anti-American’ and what its purpose? To dispose of the current usage of this term in one sentence, it is merely a crude verbal crowbar used by the wrong-wing’s media-goons against people of conscience around the world who present the facts about American terrorism. The American government-media alliance’s shrill rhetoric distracts us from the reality that it is not so much a case of the rest of the world being ’anti-American’ as the U.S.A. being anti-World. One rather doubts that Panamanians, Grenadians, Iraqis, Afghans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Somalis, Lebanese, Nicaraguans, etc., ever attacked America-it is America who attacked and invaded them and their countries. Nor have other nations overthrown or assassinated Roosevelt or Reagan-though America has either tried to, or actually did, overthrow or murder a few dozen heads of state from Mossadegh and Lumumba way back when to Allende and Sukarno (even) in (relatively) enlightened times to Castro and Chavez yesterday and today. So now, who is anti-whom?

8. Introducing the Obstructionist Anti-World Country

On the issue of banning landmines, the World says ’aye’, the U.S. says ’nay’. On the issue of recognizing the International Criminal Court, the World says ’aye’, the U.S. says ’nay’. (And tries to strangle it in the cradle.) Ditto for the WTO’s anti-Aids initiative, sabotaged by Bush Jr. and his big-pharma pals. Same goes for the Kyoto environmental accords, deep-sixed by American oil and motor-vehicle interests. Likewise the U.N. resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 boundaries, opposed by the all-powerful Zionist lobby in the U.S. More examples abound, but notice a pattern of obstructing humanity’s progress? And on this matter of being an obstructionist and going against the grain of the rest of the world, which U.N. Security Council permanent member has vetoed the most resolutions all-time? (Hint: It is neither China, France, Russia, nor the United Kingdom.) Hmmm . . . all these unhappy facts really do betray an anti-World policy, don’t they?

9. But Anyway, Who Really Is ’Anti-American’ (And Who Really Is Guilty of ’Treason’)?

No, dear brainwashed Green-Beret, I am not ’Anti-American’. In fact I still believe in all those awe-inspiring ideals and values proclaimed (and supposedly espoused) by the American state, and I once (naively) believed that the American state itself did believe in the same. In truth, it is your leaders Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and all their fanatical ilk who are anti-American, doing as they do so many misdeeds that run directly counter to American values of truth, freedom, and justice for all, not to mention against the country’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. Add to that their enactment of police-state totalitarian laws that are downright unconstitutional. And for waging illegal and reckless military invasions (among many other villainies) that have the result of making large areas of the world unsafe for Americans, it is the Bush-Cheney regime and the amoral sensationalist rag-writers who pimp for them, rather than a nameless bunch of so-called ’liberals’, who are the ones guilty of " . . . other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," if not Treason.

10. That Fond Myth Taught in First Grade: ’Children, Today We Will Learn that America Is a Democracy!’

Do you still truly believe that the U.S.A. is a Democracy? Dear, dear! Democracies do exist . . . in Northern Europe! A gradual subversive process of political transformation is today almost complete-America’s form of government by now is, to be accurate, a Plutocratic Fascist Totalitarianism. Totalitarian because all effective power rests with the government, with the, in the final analysis, shell-game ’separation’ of the Executive and the Legislative and a so-called ’independent’ media being not only illusions, but worse, distracter shills, and also because of being only one party removed from being a one-party state. Fascist because of increasingly extremist, corporate-militaristic, Habeas-Corpus-suspending rule, one of illegal detentions, FEMA, and the so-called ’Patriot Act’. And Plutocratic because of being puppet-mastered by, and serving the interests of, the wealthiest, most privileged and most powerful, the philosophy of these leeches being "Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose."

And for reading this far, a bonus: The ultimate tough truth about America.

Bonus Truth. Of the Who, by the What, for the Which?

Abraham Lincoln (not merely a great American but a great all-time man and leader) was being honest and idealistic when he declared " . . . of the people, by the people, for the people." But he was being honest and prescient when in 1865 he wrote "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." It came to pass.

America in the twenty-first century is "of the people, by the people, for the people"? I think not. Pretty words, but the actions of American leaders in all sectors of influence through the past hundred years have turned this catch-phrase into merely another bright and shining lie. So where do we go from here? Try "Of the wealthy, by the powerful, for the privileged."

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