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    How Black People - And Poor And Middle-Class White People - Are Being Used As Instruments Of Their Own Destruction

    Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree
     
    How Black People - And Poor And Middle-Class White People - Are Being Used As Instruments Of Their Own Destruction
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    I want to preface this assessment of America by assuring the reader that I'm neither a radical nor an ideologue.  In fact, I don't even like ideologues, of any persuasion. Ideologues tend to give ideology priority over truth. Then when truth comes into conflict with their ideology, they try to bend and contort truth into a configuration that's a more comfortable fit with their delusion of reality. On the other hand, I believe in following truth wherever it leads and regardless to whose ox it gores. Thus, I suspect there are many people who are going to have a lot of difficulty digesting what I have to say here about America, since there are many oxes in America that need to be gored.  Because in spite of the delusions we love to embrace regarding ourselves as Americans, the fact is, we are a highly dysfunctional people, who were forged from a grossly dysfunctional land. .
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    Just last month Buzzfeed.com listed at least 15 unarmed Black people brutally murdered by the police for no justifiable reason. If you'll notice, George Zimmerman's acquittal for murdering Trayvon Martin seems to have signaled open season on Black people - men and women - by every right-wing crackpot in America with the nerve and/or opportunity to commit murder. It's been happening so often, and so routinely, of late that I had to go back and lookup the names, circumstances, and statistics. The senseless assaults against Black people have become next to impossible to keep up with. Even as I'm writing this piece the news is reporting yet another grossly unbelievable atrocity that's been committed against the Black community in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were shot to death while attending services at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.  
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    That atrocity was committed by a 21 year-old misguided lunatic by the name of  Dylann Roof, but what Roof, and many others like him, fail to realize is they're victims as well. They've been conditioned, brainwashed, and manipulated into sacrificing their own lives for a corpo-conservative regime that doesn't care any more about them than they do the Black people they're being enticed to hate. Because the fact is, to call this a "White Supremacist" system is a misnomer. This is a "corporate supremacist" system that simply uses race, hatred, and the division of the poor and middle class as a tool to maintain their corporate supremacy.   
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    That has always been the case in America, and the social manipulators' method of operation has always been the same. First, they condition the right-wing nuts and other White people of low self-esteem to believe that they are of  special significance and hold a special place in American society. Then they go on to convince them that whatever group the manipulators happen to be targeting for  demonization at any given moment, is trying to encroach upon White people's special significance in society. That engenders hatred and the need to protect their special position as White Americans. That's what allows people like Roof to be manipulated so effectively. It makes them willing to go die in wars that promote the interests of the 1%ers, and it also serves to keep the poor and middle class so filled with hatred and animosity toward one another that even though they have common interests and the very same enemy, the social manipulators, they find it impossible to come together to protect themselves from being exploited.
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    This has been the case throughout American history. The average poor and middle class American citizen has ALWAYS been exploited. Then, while they're standing at attention and saluting the flag, with tears in their eyes as they're mourning the lost of their fathers, sons or brothers, the 1%ers are at the bank loading down their bank accounts with the proceeds from the senseless deaths of  very  people who are being mourned  (have you noticed that the children of the rich are not even expected to go and die for this country any longer?).       
    Thus, the average American's concept of America as "the sweet land of liberty" is a myth, and it always has been. And what we call the United States Constitution is a very eloquently penned work of fiction - and it's been just that, from the moment James Madison put pen to paper, and it continues to be a myth to this day. Because the fact is, in spite of it's eloquence and highfalutin ideals, history clearly demonstrates the United States of America to be the most evil and brutally vicious nation that has ever been established in human history, and we're seeing clear evidence of that in the brutal assault that's currently being waged against the Black, Brown, and Muslim communities today.  So let us put the American myth aside for a moment and follow the truth of history. 
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    Patriotism notwithstanding, unadulterated truth dictates that this nation was even founded on a lie, since the very first words of the United States Constitution was a lie. The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution says the following:
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    ."We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
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    It should actually read: 
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    "We the wealthy landowners of the United States, in order to form a more perfect instrument of exploitation, establish the illusion of justice, insure the common people don't rise up against us, provide for the common defense of OUR property and assets, promote OUR general welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty FOR OURSELVES and OUR posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
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    The revision of the Preamble stated immediately above are actually the values that America was founded upon, and it continues to be America's values today.  Average American citizens have always been meaningless pawns to be conditioned, manipulated, and brainwashed into going to war and dying to either enhance, or protect, the property and wealth of the rich. Even as the Constitution was being written, Native Americans were being demonized (much like Black people are being demonized today, but more about that later) and slaughtered in land-grabs by the rich, and average Americans were dying in the process, because they'd been manipulated into believing that Native Americans were "savages" for simply having the audacity to try to defend what was theirs.
     
    The True History Of The United States Of America 
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    The United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, so it's been in existence for less than 228 years. Thus, it's still in its infancy based on the standards of most nations (Iraq has been in existence since 4000 years before the birth of Christ), but in the short time that the United States has been in existence - and in spite of its public relations campaign as "That shining light on the hill" - it has more than established itself as the most brutal, greedy, and malevolent nation in the history of all mankind.
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    We demonize Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich (as we definitely should) for slaughtering 6 million Jews, but it has been estimated that the United States slaughtered as many as a 100 million Native Americans, and we can't even get an accurate count on how many millions of African American slaves were slaughtered during slavery, and then continued to be slaughtered during the Jim Crow era and right up to this day.  
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    This nation's behavior during WWII is also instructive regarding the true mentality of this nation and our national character. The United States dropped not one, but two, atomic bombs on Japan, killing innocent men, women, children, babies, and even cuddly little kittens. And previous to that criminal atrocity, they rounded up innocent Japanese AMERICANS, took all of their possessions, and placed them in "internment camps" - that's a euphemism for concentration camps.  And by the way, regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - since terrorism is defined as the killing of innocent noncombatants to promote a political agenda, that one act alone makes the U.S. the most pronounced terrorist state in the history of mankind.
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    Then later the U.S. went into Vietnam and killed by some scholarly estimates up to 3.8 million Vietnamese, 800,000 Cambodians, and a million Laotians. And then more recently, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney actually lied to go into Iraq and killed as many as a million Iraqis. 
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    I love this country because I was born here, and I was raised to embrace all of the American myths about how wonderful we are. But the unadulterated truth dictated, and documented, by history makes the facts clear - when it comes to committing inhuman atrocities, the United States of America is the most brutal, greedy, and malevolent nation in the history of all mankind. The atrocities that the United States has committed in the name of "God, liberty, and justice" makes Hitler and the Third Reich look like incompetent boobs. While we like to claim to be "One nation under God," that's only if the word of God isn't in conflict with our hatred and greed. 
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    Black People Need To Wake Up, And Stop "Forgiving And Forgetting," And Start Thinking
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    Based on the horrendous atrocities cited above, one has to scratch one's head to figure out how the average American - including many Black people - can be so brainwashed as to react with shock over the brutal and unjustified atrocities that's currently being perpetrated against the Black community. The slaughter that's currently going on in the Black community is what America does best - it is its stock and trade, so how can anyone be so naive as to react in shocked over business as usual?  So Black people need to wake up, because "The Final Solution" could be just one conservative lunatic away.  
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    There's an unstated, but carefully forged agenda afoot. The Demographics in this nation is undergoing a drastic change. Radical White people and the powers that have previously controlled this nation can no longer take comfort in knowing they're the majority. Minorities are becoming the majority in this country, and the powers that be are not going to simply sit back and allow minorities to take over the levers of power without a fight. That's why we're beginning to see voter obstruction, gentrification, and the demonizing of Blacks and other minorities.  They're also using religious bigotry, and the rights of women gays to divide the poor and middle class.  If you look back at the history cited above, the first step in ethnic cleansing or nullification of any target group - whether it was the Native Americans, Black people during Jim Crow, the Japanese Americans during WWII, the Vietnamese prior to the Vietnam War, or the Iraqis prior to the invasion of Iraq - the very first step is demonization, and we're beginning to see the result of that ongoing process in the Black community today. That's what's creating people like Dylann Roof and the many cops who seem to feel that it's open season on killing Black people.
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    Racists tend to be the mediocrity of White society, so they try to use the fact that they were born White to define themselves and to compensate for their lack of personal value. Their entire sense of self-esteem is based more upon group association than individual value and accomplishment, and their entire claim to personal significance is, "Well, at least I'm better than them." 
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    That's what's driving radical conservatives so crazy about President Obama - he's walking, breathing, evidence that they cannot claim superiority by virtue of the color T-shirt they were born in, and that simple fact alone is causing them to suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance before the eyes of the entire world. That's also why they're so determined not to allow President Obama to be successful, even if it means destroying the country - and international corporatists are using the social division inherent in those sentiments to lower the standard of living of the American middle class.  
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    Thus, this entire nation, and the future of our children, is being threatened by the desperate attempt of a handful of insecure bigots to maintain their delusions of superiority, and as far as they’re concerned, if it means sacrificing the country, or even their own lives, so be it.  The Republican Party fully recognizes that fact. Thus, their concerted effort to keep America angry, hungry, and frustrated, and their gross disrespect for President Obama stokes the flames of hostility in the nation, and it signals every frustrated conservative wingnut in America that open and blatant racism has now become not only acceptable, but laudable in America again. 
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    So all responsible Americans should hold the GOP fully responsible for the hostile and deadly environment that we now find ourselves in today. President Obama is absolutely correct when he says that race relations have improved tremendously in America since the 50s, 60s. and 70s.  The mere fact that President Obama was elected twice is irrefutable evidence of that. What makes things seem worse is we're witnessing the dying gasp of Jim Crow, but the corporate-GOP alliance are using their vast media resources in a desperate attempt to give him CPR. They're using the media to make a handful of the most radical people in the country, look like a majority.  

    A Message To Responsible Americans

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    The racist animosities of a handful of wingnuts that's running rampant among ALL segments of the American people are playing right into the hands of the those who are our most insidious enemy – the global corporatists. These people are intent upon enslaving us all. The only difference between literal slavery and what they have in mind for us is we'll have to provide our own housing.
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    These people are no longer Americans; they are now globalists, and America is just a virtual cotton field to them. And as long as they keep the poor and middle class fighting and hating one another, we’ll be powerless against their social and political manipulation. So "illegal aliens" and others are far from the biggest threat to the American way of life – the global corporatists are. 
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    If Al Qaeda represents a rattlesnake in America's garden, the corporate/GOP alliance represents a python under our bed. Al Qaeda can only destroy buildings, but the corporate/GOP alliance wants to destroy our entire way of life and replace American democracy with a system of corporate feudalism, where corporations, literally, control the nation.  So it is essential that every man, woman, and child who is a part of the poor and middle class begin to recognize that fact, put our petty hatreds aside, and come together to fight our most insidious enemy - the global corporatist.
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    History is clear. Conservative Republicans don't mind spending money, they just don't want to spend it on those who need it - us. Remember, they're the party of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of fiscal conservatism who believed that only those who owned property should even be allowed to vote - and based on the voter obstruction laws currently being passed in Republican controlled states, they're heading in that direction again. Hamilton said the following:
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    "All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and wellborn, the other the mass of the people.... The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government." Debates of the Federalist Convention (May 14-September 17, 1787).
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    Hamilton's views were rejected by the founding fathers, mainly because many of them left Europe to escape the class system. But those who hold Hamilton's view are still among us. They simply have to remain discreet, and they must contrive various pretexts to camouflage their agenda in order to remain politically viable. But the agenda is clearly visible for anyone who takes the time to look, it's simply being disguised and hidden within the fabric of purposely instigated racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other forms of hatred and bigotry. The GOP specializes in using emotion to circumvent clear thinking.
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    While they have the poor and middle class distracted by hating and fighting one another, the GOP/Corporate alliance is steeped in the process of undermining us all. Clear evidence of that is any and all legislation that benefits poor and middle class Americans is labeled "socialist," and the GOP fights it tooth-and-nail as "un-American." But they had absolutely no problem in bailing out Wall Street, even though the source of Wall Street's repeated problems result from their repeated attempts to swindle the American people. But Americans have been conditioned to believe that protecting ourselves is "un-American"; the American way of doing things is handing our wealth over to the rich. The scam is clear for anyone to see, but again, the American people have been conditioned to blame one another.
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    The Republican Record of Economic Irresponsibility
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    During the George W. Bush administration wasn't the first time that the American people had to bailout Wall Street as a result of Reckless Republican policies. As I pointed in my article, "The GOP: A One Hundred Year Record of Swindling The American People,"  due to the continued freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans, between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion.
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    The GOP's passion to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes seems to know no bounds and transcend all logic. From the moment the New Deal safety net to protect the American people went into place, conservatives have been determined to dismantle it. There are two reasons for that. The first is, it sets money aside for the American people that they'd like to get their hands on. The second is, it insulates the American people from being so vulnerable to corporate manipulation. We'll discuss how that works below.
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    The closest the GOP has come to dismantling the New Deal started during the Reagan administration with Supply-Side Economics, or, "Reaganomics" - and the battle is currently raging in Washington D.C. as we speak.
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    Supply- Side Economics was a scheme hatch by U.S.C. economist Arthur Laffer and the Reagan crowd which was supposed to cut the deficit and balance the budget. The theory behind Reaganomics was ostensibly, if you cut taxes for business and people in the upper tax brackets, and then deregulated business of such nuisances as safety regulations and environmental safeguards, the beneficiaries would invest their savings into creating new jobs. In that way the money would eventually "trickle down" to the rest of us. The resulting broadened tax base would then not only help to bring down the deficit, but also subsidize the tremendously high defense budget. It's exactly the same plan the Republicans in congress are pushing today. But when the plan was first floated, even George Bush Sr., Reagan's vice president to be, called it "voodoo economics." 
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    Reaganomics, for the most part, sought to undo many of the safeguards put into place during the Roosevelt era and create a business environment similar to that which was in place during the Coolidge Administration. What actually took place, however, was even more like the Coolidge era than planned.
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    Instead of taking the money and investing it into creating new jobs, the money was used in wild schemes and stock market speculation. One of these schemes, the leveraged buy-out, involved buying up large companies with borrowed funds secured by the company's assets, then paying off the loan by selling off the assets of the purchased company. This practice cost the citizens of this country its industrial base. In addition, the bottom fell out of the stock market. On Monday, October 19, 1987 the Dow-Jones Average fell 508.32 points. It was the greatest one-day decline since 1914 - 15 years before the Great Depression. 
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    And what about Ronald Reagan's promise to balance the budget and lower the deficit? By the time he left office he was not only the most prolific spender of any president, but he also added more to the deficit than all of the other presidents from George Washington to his own administration combined. And what does the Republican Party propose to do about that? One of the Republican proposals was their "contract with America," a capitol gains tax cut - for the rich.
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    Then in 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. Bush.  The investigation alleged that he was guilty of "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest." The issue was eventually settled out of court with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement. 
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    Then there was the Lincoln Savings and loan scandal in 1987, involving John McCain. The scandal was very similar to the one that played out on Wall Street in 2008. McCain was one of a group of senators dubbed "The Keating Five" involved in a scandal by the same name. 
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    In 1976 Charles Keating moved to Arizona to run the American Continental Corporation. In 1984, shortly after the Reagan era push to deregulate the savings and loan community, Keating bought Lincoln Savings and Loan and began to engage in highly risky investments with the depositors' savings. In 1989 the parent company, which Keating headed, went bankrupt, and it resulted in over 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most of the investors were elderly, and the loss amounted to about 285 million dollars.
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    After having received over a million dollars from Keating in illegal campaign contributions, gifts, free trips, and other gratuities, the Keating Five - Senators John Glenn, Don Riegle, Dennis DeConini, Alan Cranston, and Sen. John McCain - attempted to intervene in the investigation into Keating's activities by the regulators. Later, they were admonished to varying degrees by the senate for attempting to influence regulators on Keating's behalf. Charles Keating ended up being convicted for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he received 10 years by the state court, and a 12 year sentence in federal court. After spending four and a half years in prison, his convictions were overturned. But prior to being retried, he pled guilty to a number of felonies in return for a sentence of time served.
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    Then came the George W. Bush administration that caused close to a million people to die uselessly in an illegal war in Iraq, robbed the American people blind, whose fumbling ignited the longest war in American history in Afghanistan, and whose greed came very close to sending the nation into yet another depression.
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    Now, after all of their repeated efforts to deplete the national treasury, they're unanimously voting against every piece of legislation that the Democrats propose to repair the damage they created and bring relief to the American people. Then they have the audacity to claim that they're doing it because they're concerned about deficit spending. 
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    They're against affordable health care for American families; they're against any kind of spending to put Americans back to work, and they're against extending unemployment insurance to relieve the burden of America's unemployed. What's particularly telling, however, is they're also against any kind of strong legislation to prevent the financial community (them) from being able to rob the American people in the future.
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    Also interesting, considering their deep "concern" over the national debt, is the estimated $4 trillion Bush tax cut for the rich. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "Considering  both the direct costs of the tax cuts and the associated increase in interest payments, the tax cuts would increase deficits by nearly $4 trillion between 2005 and 2014."
    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1811
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    So the fact is, what they really wanted prior to the 2012 election was to maintain the status quo, and make sure that the American people remained miserable, hungry, and divided until the elections so they'd have a better chance to regain power and raid the treasury again. Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, was frustrated and reckless enough to say it out loud - "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" - not to save America, or to bring relief to the American people, but to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Flag pens in lapels and patriotic rhetoric notwithstanding, that says it all about the GOP's lack of concern for America, or the American people.
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    Now that they've lost the 2012 election, their agenda has shifted to making sure that President Obama is not successful, because if he is, and you combine that with the rapidly changing demographic and Hillary Clinton's popularity, that could spell doom for the future of the GOP - and it should, because they're grossly out of touch with reality, and, America's best interest. They're out to create a corporate feudalist society. The government shutdown alone, clearly demonstrates that they have absolutely no respect for democracy.
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    The Middle Class Slide Since the Reagan Administration


    "In 1982, Forbes magazine began its now much-read annual list of America’s richest men and women. At the time of the first list, there were 12 billionaires in the country and fewer than 200,000 millionaires. By the year 2000, there were nearly 300 billionaires and about 5 million millionaires. Smith’s account of the rise of the rich and super-rich tells the story of five types of individuals: entrepreneurs, dealmakers, investors, tycoons (corporate executives, who are distinguished from
    entrepreneurs), and entertainers."
    http://www.beardbooks.com/beardbooks/the_rise_of_todays_rich_and_super_rich.html
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    "No matter how you slice it, when it comes to income and wealth in America the rich get most of the pie and the rest get the leftovers. The numbers are shocking. Today the top 1 percent of Americans control 43 percent of the financial wealth (see the pie chart below) while the bottom 80 percent control only 7 percent of the wealth. Incredibly, the wealthiest 400 Americans have the same combined wealth as the poorest half of Americans — over 150 million people."

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    A recent Princeton study Shows that America is no longer a democracy. We are now an Oligarchy, controlled by the rich. So it is essential that we wake up. Racism is no longer the war; racism is now merely a TOOL of war. We are now knee-deep in a CLASS WAR, and the American people are losing badly - ALL of the American people.
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    Here’s the game that we're allowing the corporatists to run on us. They’ve convinced America that if we give the rich enough money, they’ll use that money to create jobs for the poor and middle class. Now, I don’t claim to be an intellectual giant, but it doesn’t take a great mind to understand that demand fuels supply, not the reverse. 
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    If I made my living selling Gucci Bags, for example, I don’t care how much money you give me, I’m not going to hire anyone to produce any more Gucci Bags than I have in stock if I'm being forced to sell those bags in a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t make sense, because in a homeless shelter no one would have the money to purchase my product. The only way that you’re going to get me to hire people to produce Gucci Bags is if you gave that money to the people in the shelter so they’d have the money to buy my merchandise.
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    That's exactly what's happening in America today. Corporate profits are at record highs, and the information and charts above clearly show that corporations and corporate executives are currently making more money than they've ever dreamed of in the past. So there's no reason for high unemployment. The rich are not putting that money into creating jobs; that money is going into offshore accounts, and we never see it again. That's why the rich are getting so much richer, and the middle class so much poorer.
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    On the other hand, if the Republican congress would allow President Obama to create jobs to repair American's infrastructure - repair bridges, dams, and interstate highways and the like - that money would create jobs, just like it did when it brought us out of the Great Depression. Then, Americans would have money to spend on goods and services. They would go on vacations, so hotels and restaurants would have to hire people to accommodate them, and the food industry would have to hire people to process and serve their food. They would also buy bicycles and toys for their children, and that would create jobs, and they would buy more clothing, gas, and make needed repairs to their homes, and that would create jobs. And as a result of all those jobs being created, more revenue would come into the government in taxes, which would allow us to pay down the national debt.
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    Again, think about it - the business community is making more profits than they've ever made in their history, so there's no logical reason for unemployment in America to be so high. The reason that unemployment is so high is because it's being kept high on purpose.
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    Consider this. In the sixties, Howard Hughes was famous for being one of the richest men in the world.  He was considered so incredibly rich that they made movies about him. But compared to today's billionaires, he'd qualify for food stamps. Howard Hughes only had $4 billion, but today, Bill Gates has $79.1 billion, David Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers has $41.3 Billion, and even the young man, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, has $29.9 billion.  So there is absolutely no reason for the American people to be suffering so severely, and for unemployment to be so high - yet, they have us hating and pointing the finger at one another as the cause of our misery, when as pointed out above, the wealthiest 400 Americans have as much combined wealth as the 150 million poorest half of Americans.
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    So it doesn't take a brain surgeon to see where the wealth of middle-class America has gone. It hasn't gone to "illegal aliens," or people requiring food stamps. Corporate welfare is nearly double the cost of all social programs. About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs.$92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent nearly 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.  http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporat...
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    The GOP's supposed concern for the national debt is only a pretext to block spending and keep unemployment high. They are purposely trying to turn America into a homeless shelter, because the GOP and its corporate cronies have a vested interest in keeping us angry, miserable, and divided.
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    The GOP's motive is political - by keeping unemployment high and the American people miserable, it makes Obama and the Democrats look bad, and they're hoping that the resulting anger and division in the country will help them to get elected in a demographic that's shrinking to the GOP's disadvantage. And the corporatist are trying to squeeze the middle class. They’re trying to lower the American middle class standard of living to a level that conforms to the other countries in the global economy, where in many countries people make less per week than some middle-class Americans spend on lunch per day. So they're trying to squeeze the middle class to the point that it lowers our expectations, and we'll feel grateful for less.
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    Their ultimate agenda is to turn America into a corporate feudalist state, where the American people are totally dependent on corporations for their survival. That will greatly enhance corporate profits, and essentially, allow them to control this nation. That's why the GOP is attacking unions, our educational system, and all social programs that prevent us from being totally reliant on the business community. They want to have complete control over our lives. Here's the philosophy behind it and how it works:
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    I pointed out the following in a previous article: 
     
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    In 1929 during Republican, Herbert Hoover’s administration, the stock market crashed - much like under the Bush Administration - starting the Great Depression, but back then there was no Barack Obama to come to the rescue or mitigate the damage early on. So in spite of the fact that by 1933 the unemployment rate was at 33.3% with 16 million people out of work, the Republican, Herbert Hoover, just sat, thinking that the economy would eventually rejuvenate itself. Much like Republicans of today, Hoover and his Republican Party had absolutely no compassion for either the plight of the American people, or America’s veterans who had put their lives on the line for this country.
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    During Hoover's administration, 15,000 WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding that they be paid what they were owed by the government. Hoover responded by calling in federal troops to throw these ex-servicemen off government property.
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    The conditions were horrific. During the Great Depression there was no such thing as Social Security, so when a person became too old or weak to work they had no income, so they had to depend on their children for support. That meant instead of a husband and wife only having to support themselves and their children, which was tough enough during those times, they also had to support their parents. So three generations of a family could be living in one household - and in many cases, the parents of both the husband, and the wife lived with the family. 
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    In addition, there was no such thing as Medicare or Medicaid, so when one of grandparents became ill the medical costs would devastate the entire family. These conditions kept lower and middle-class families in such dire need of funds that they had to accept whatever crumbs the business community chose to throw at them - and remember, at that time there was no Fair Labor Standards Act or unions to protect a worker’s rights, or a minimum wage, so businesses could treat the worker anyway they wanted, and pay them whatever they wanted. 
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    They could work you 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no overtime, and no paid vacation. In addition, since there was no child labor laws, if your boss didn’t think you were being productive enough, he could insist that you bring your children in (as young as 9 years old) to assist you if you wanted to keep your job. Then if you protested, he could fire you on the spot, in which case, your entire family - sick grandparents and all - would be thrown out on the street, because there was no such thing as unemployment insurance.
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    As a result, in many cases the entire family, including the children, had to work long, hard hours under sweatshop-like conditions in coal minds and the like, which in many cases led to the death and/or maiming of young children. So in a very real sense, Great Depression era workers lived under a form of slavery - the one difference was, they had to go out and find their own housing.

    Think back to the "Little Rascals" we use to watch as kids, and how ragged they were, or the cartoons we use to watch, where a landlord would come to the door (always portrayed in a black suit) and would tell a begging and crying mother that she had one more day to come up with the rent or she and her family would be thrown out in the snow. That was an accurate portrayal of the way people lived in those days, and those are the conditions that the conservative Republican agenda would restore in America today. Those are the conditions that they’re fighting to restore today.
    .
    Think about it - while the GOP comes up with various pretexts to explain their actions, they are oppose to the minimum wage, they would cut unemployment insurance, "modify" Social Security, they’re against Affordable healthcare, they’re leaving no stone unturned to abolish unions, they’re blocking every jobs bill that comes before them, and in spite of record corporate profits, their corporate cronies are sending jobs out of the country and keeping unemployment high until the American middle class caves in and accept a lower standard of living.

     .

    IT'S NOT ENOUGH TO MERELY SALUTE OUR HEROES

    Keeping unemployment high also serves another purpose - it provides an endless supply of young American men and women to use as canon fodder for neocon military adventurism. But what else do you expect them to do? We certainly can’t expect them to send their children over there to die for the country. Dying for your country is no longer for the "rich and wellborn," that’s for the "little people." Then, IF your children come back home maimed and broken from their service to the country, the GOP has absolutely no compassion for them. Just like with Herbert Hoover, they call them deadbeats and a burden on the nation for having to beg for food stamps, and then throw them off the premises. And that’s in spite of the fact that most of the GOP ran - like Dick ‘five-deferment’ Cheney - when they were called upon to serve the nation. The GOP only love our troops as long as they can carry a weapon.

    .

    I WOULD START THE SEARCH IN DICK CHENEY'S
    OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

    The GOP/corporatist agenda also explains why they were so determined to send innocent American children to die in a senseless Iraqi war. The poor and middle class safety net put in place by the New Deal enjoys so much support among the American people that the GOP couldn't attack it head on. So they took us into Iraq to enrich their cronies and passed a tax cut for the rich that squandered trillions of dollars and ravaged our national treasury. That gave them a pretext to now claim, "We can no longer afford to fund the nation's safety net." But they could afford to build an embassy in Iraq that was so extravagant that it rivals the Vatican (U.S. Embassy Building will Rival the Vatican). And they could also afford to send so much unaccounted for CASH to Iraq that they could "MISPLACE" 6.6 BILLION dollars without a whimper from those who now want to count every penny that we spend on the poor and middle class.
    .

     
    .
    The primary challenge for Black people is that many of us have to rid ourselves of our Willie Lynch mentality. What many of us fail to realize is, Black people are the product of the very same racist environment as White folks. As a result, some of us are just as racist toward other Black people as any barefoot Hillbilly.  I refer to such Black people as "bligots" (Black-on-Black bigots).  As a result of such people we find it next to impossible to come together to get anything done.  In addition, such people help White bigots to demonize their own people.  
    .
    Tavis Smiley and Cornel West immediately come to mind.  Such people claim that they're simply addressing the issues, but the Black community resents any criticism of President Obama.  But that's not true at all.  What the Black community resents is the disrespectful tone of their criticism. Their disrespect of the first Black President of the United States gives the enemies of the Black community carte blanche to do the same - "How can you call me a racist? Cornel West said the same thing, and he's Black." 
    .
    And it's not like Cornel West is taking a scholarly tact and offering constructive alternatives to the President's policies; all he's doing is name-calling, and that cheapens the lives of the average Black man.  After all, if the first Black President of the United States ain't about nothing, what does that say about the rest of us?  So I've been convinced for some time that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have greatly contributed to the hostility that's being directed toward the Black community - and I think, with respect to President Obama, they did it on purpose.
    .
    Have you ever noticed that nearly every public pronouncement that spews from the mouth of Cornel West is literally dripping with racial innuendo? One of his latest racist slanders is that MSNBC is the ‘Rent a Negro’ network. West has said at various times the following:
    .
    1). President Obama is "a war criminal."
    2). President Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs . . ."
    3). President Obama is "a black puppet of corporate plutocrats."
    4). President Obama is "a Rockefeller Republican in Blackface."
    5). President Obama "has a certain rootlessnessa deracination."
    6). President Obama Is "Afraid Of Free Black Men."
    7). President Obama is "a global George Zimmerman."
    8). Dr. Harris-Perry is "a fake and a fraud"
    9). Dr. Michael Eric Dyson "is a sellout."
    10). Al Sharpton "is a sellout."
    11). MSNBC is the "Rent a Negro Network."
    12). And if that’s not enough, now he’s quoted as calling the first Black President of the United States “a shell of a man.”
    .
    Yet, when comedian Steve Harvey called him an Uncle Tom, he said, "When you are trying to talk about issues that affect the people, name calling gets in the way. Name-calling is nothing but another weapon of mass distraction."
    .
    So name-calling is only objectionable when it’s directed at him. Such unmitigated hypocrisy is mind boggling - but for once, he’s right. Not one of the above assertions is a disciplined, constructive, or scholarly assessment of the facts. On the contrary, they're the reckless and intellectually undisciplined rants of a bitter, self-serving, and severely discredited academic fraud.
    .
    For Cornel West, there’s something ‘racially defective’ about every Black person who has the audacity to preempt Cornel West from the limelight. West has a propensity for trying to denigrate the character of people whose been in the trenches for years, while West, himself, has done absolutely nothing beyond flappin' his lips. In order to gain clear evidence of that fact one simply has to ask oneself, what efforts have West made to try to improve the plight of the Black community?
    .
    1). Is he in the community teaching 3rd grade to help ensure a better education for our children, or teaching at an Historically Black College or University to help "enlighten" young Black students?
    .
    No. He’s never taught at a school that more than 1% of Black students can even afford to have lunch in throughout his entire career. He’d rather gain props by teaching the children of the economic elites, who he CLAIMS, is the enemy, whenever he MANAGES to do a
    "Drive-by" through the hood.
    .
    2). Is he in the community teaching our young men to cherish, honor, and respect our Black women - the very womb of our culture?
    .
    No. He’s out trying to sell books filled with inane and misleading information, doing $30,000 an hour speeches, and trying to become a hip hop star.
    .
    3). Is he advising his good friend and business partner, Tavis Smiley, to be consistent with his sermons by being "accountable" to the community, and returning the money that he made on the Wells Fargo "Ghetto Scam" loans that he helped to herd over 30,000 poor minorities into?  Or is he out getting arrested in support of the Black Friday Demonstrations against Wal-Mart, the most prolific abuser of poor workers in the world?
    .
    Nope, not a peep.
    .
    The same is true of West's former puppeteer, Tavis Smiley. He can go all over the country in a bus criticizing President Obama in his Wal-Mart sponsored "Poverty Tour," and find the time to go "Dance With The Stars," but couldn't spare even a second of his time to walk down the street from his office to support the demonstration by Wal-Mart employees?
    .
    Nope, all we've heard from Smiley regarding Wal-Mart abuse of  poor workers is crickets
    .
    So what West, Smiley, and their ilk actually see coming from the community regarding their criticism of President Obama is Black outrage over their indulging in the crabs-in-a-barrel tradition that was inbred in us as slaves. Black people recognize that many of President Obama’s Black critics, including Cornel West, aren’t really interested in policy; they’re just using public policy as a pretext for attacking the President himself, and they’re so steeped in their Willie Lynch mentality that they either don’t realize, or don’t care, that they’re doing a grave disservice not only to the African-American community, but to Black people all over the world.
    .
    Because the fact is, many of Obama’s White conservative critics aren’t really interested in policy either. Like Obama’s Black critics, they have an ulterior motive as well, but their motive has nothing to do with crabs-in-a-barrel. Their primary motive is defending their claim of White superiority, and President Obama, in his soft-spoken, laid-back way, is dragging that claim through the mud. That’s why racists and conservatives hate him so.
    .
    Conservatives recognize, as we all should - and especially Black people - that President Obama is not just another president. President Obama is the most high-profile symbol of Black competence in the world. In addition, what he has accomplished is the perfect equivalent of a conquered slave rising to become the emperor of Rome - and, one of its greatest emperors. So Barack Obama is going to be remembered by posterity as one of the greatest men in ALL of human history, and his story will be inspiring Black children a thousand years from now.
    .
    Racists and conservatives recognize that fact, so naturally, they’re desperate to tear down Barack Obama’s image, and build up the image of criminals like Ronald Wilson Reagan, and there is no excuse for Black idiots like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, and Boyce Watkins not to recognize that fact. That’s what makes them so detestable. Instead of trying to help racists tear down this Black icon, they should be offering RESPECTFUL suggestions in an attempt to ensure that Barack Obama is remembered as one of the greatest Presidents that this nation has ever had, even if they have to drag him up Mt. Rushmore kicking and screaming. But instead, they’re allowing themselves to be pointed to by racists who are claiming, "See, even Black people know he doesn’t live up to the standard of White presidents."
    .
    Thus, people like Smiley and West are giving their own egos, self-service, and their Willie Lynch-inspired need to tear-down a Black historic icon priority over Black history, and the role that history is going to play in helping to raise the self-concept of the Black culture. In short, they’re trying to sabotage the self-esteem of Black children who are yet unborn. The mere thought of that kind of ignorant selfishness is absolutely disgusting - and especially when clothed in faux scholarship.
    .
    So Cornel West and the others like him are not Black leaders, they’re clueless Black cultural afflictions, and if I wanted to take even more time (maybe I'll do it in a book), I could methodically take apart every argument that they've put forward against President Obama. But the short version is, there are some things we have to do for ourselves - and with good reason.
    .
    As alleged "educated" men, they should all realize that Obama is merely President Obama, not King Obama.  The United States Constitution is very specific in giving SOLE power over spending to the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Republicans (that’s why they could refuse to pay the light bill and shutdown the government). So President Obama can’t do a damn thing for us without getting the Republicans to go along with him. That’s why he has to slip us everything on the down-low, because if the GOP know it’s for us, they’re going to dig-in, and if Obama goes to war against them over the issue, they're not going to allow him to do anything for ANYBODY. And as President of ALL the people, he can't allow that to happen, so he has to wrap Black interests in the interest of ALL the people.
    .
    FORMER OBAMA CRITIC AND 
    NOBEL PRIZE WINNING ECONOMIST
     
    In addition, as a thinking man (unlike many of you), Obama realizes that he has to think about precedents. If he grandstands like many of you suggest and say, "This is what I'm going to do for Black people," what are you going to do when the next White president says, "This is what I'm going to do for White people?"  And he'll justify it by calling it "The Obama Doctrine." 
    .
    So Cornel West, Tavis Smiley - and also you others who share their backward-thinking proclivities - you need to use some of that alleged brain power to think, instead of burning it up trying to maintain your image, or attempting to hide your true motivations for attacking this President. I didn’t hear you saying a damn thing when Bush was in office. So you can try to clothe your true motivations in a tux, but it still has the funky smell of Willie Lynch all over it.
    .
    I warned at the outset that there were many oxes that needed to be gored. I singled out Tavis Smiley and Cornel West because while  they are constantly giving aid and comfort to those who seek to demonize our people, I have yet to hear either one of them offer a constructive solution to address any of the problems in the community.  They'r singular specialty seems to be badmouthing other Black people.
    .
    And Here's My Final Ox 
    .
    Where are the Black Churches, and where are all of the millions of dollars in tithes they're collecting every Sunday going?
    .
    Our churches do a great job of giving inspirational speeches, but quivering voices are not what we need at this point in our history. There's plenty of time to quiver and shout on Sunday, but what are you doing to help the community Monday thru Saturday? I think that's what the Lord would ask.
    .
    The Black churches in every community should be forming consortiums, pooling the tithes they're collecting every Sunday to purchase businesses to provide jobs for our young people that pay a living wage; purchase property to provide affordable housing in the community; and churches should be open 7 days a week to provide affordable childcare for working mothers, and hire unemployed mothers to help in the daycare centers.  That would go a long way toward relieving the suffering in the Black community.  But most of preachers  don't to want to do that. It's too much trouble.  When the community needs something the preacher will tell us to take it to the Lord in prayer, but when the preacher needs something, he comes to us.  So the community must start demanding more of them.
    .
    In short, it's time to turn off MTV, BET, and ESPN, and start investing in our children, our community, and building our political clout. That way, WE'LL be in control of who's patrolling our streets. Many of the problems that the Black community is facing across this country is a direct result of our tendency to be reactive rather than proactive.  Take Ferguson, Mo, for example.  The Black community could have avoided the problems they had in that city by simply voting.  The Black population in Ferguson is 67%, yet only 7% turned out to vote.  As a result, the police department is 94% White. In the last election they corrected that problem with record Black voter turnout, but it was a little too late for Michael Brown. So let us learn from the Ferguson experience and be PROACTIVE in our response to what's taking place in our communities, because much like in the case of Michael Brown, it's going to be much too late to try to demonstrate AFTER the fact. So NOW is the time to get up-in-arms. 
    .
     
    Eric L. Wattree
    .
    Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.
     

    Comments

    The United States is worse than Nazi Germany? Seriously? The dropping of the atom bombs on Japan is the worst atrocity in history--worse than Nazi exterminations, worse than what Stalin or Pol Pot did? It wasn't even worse than what Japan did.

      Let's compare the bomb to the Holocaust(the latter was not the only Nazi crime).

     The Holocaust killed about twenty-four times as many people as the atomic bombs. There was no attempt to wipe the Japanese out of existence. The Japanese were not being killed simply because of their ethnicity, but because they had started a war. Japanese weren't worked to death in camps, and they weren't used in medical experiments(of course, the U.S. government has conducted experiments on people--not as frightful as Nazi or Japanese experiments--but not on this occasion). Finally, we do not know for sure that the dropping of the bomb(the first one anyway) was unnecessary. There were other options, but we don't know if they would have brought about surrender.

      I  think Wattree writes a lot of things without thinking them through first.


    OK, Watree believes America is worse than the Third Reich (Holocaust, genocide) or the Empire of Japan (see as a start Rape of Nanking, or My Hitch in Hell, The Bataan Death March), if we are going for 'most malevolent in all the history of mankind" how about Ashurnasirpal (the guy didn't even have guns, tanks or nuclear weapons..if he did...?)

    From Assyrian records of torture and conquest:

    “I carried off captives [and] possessions from them. I cut off the heads of their fighters [and] built [therewith] a tower before their city. I burnt their adolescent boys [and] girls....in strife and conflict I besieged [and] conquered the city. I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with the sword ... I captured many troops alive: I cut off of some their arms [and] hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears, [and] extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one pile of the living [and] one of heads. I hung their heads on trees around the city."

    Pretty malevolent? And it bypasses a lot of other malevolency, being from 1500BC.

    One would have to conjecture Watree's knowledge on the history of the world is not as encyclopedic as it is of the chicanery of Mr's Smiley and West.

    Does anyone miss Watree's rants about the US Post Office, the most malevolent employer in all the history of mankind.......?


    Aaron,

    I noticed that you failed to mention the 100 million Native American that were slaughtered, nor the countless African Americans that were slaughtered during slaves, the Jim Crow era, and right up until today.  Now, I recognize that the Jewish people have a political incentive to maintain the distinction of being perceived as the most persecuted people in the world, but it's just not true. But even if it was true, the gross atrocities being committed by Netanyahu against Palestinian people is causing any empathy that the world has had for the Jewish people to wear very thin. Netanyahu is proving without a doubt that there are monsters among us all. He would have fit right in with the Third Reich - and probably would have been a Field Marshal. Boko Haram is driving the exact same point home about Black people.
    .
    There are only two kinds of people - good people and bad people. While arrogantly, and euphemistically, tend to refer to ourselves as humans, the fact is, we're all animals - some of us are just a little better trained than others.
    .
    So you're wrong, Aaron.  I assure you, I think through what I write very carefully. I simply make it a point not to allow my thinking to be clouded by ideology, programming, or childhood conditioning.   


    I think it would be worthwhile to provide a source fo that number (100 million) you're using. I've never seen any suggestion that there were even close to that many Native Americans alive when the US was founded.


    Actually, Wattree, I DID refer to the "100 million Native Americans" and pointed out the problems in what you wrote. I don't think that slavery demonstrates that America is "the most evil country that ever existed" since everybody else practiced slavery or serfdom. The empires of antiquity never abolished slavery, so how are we worse than them?. I don't think it is minimizing lynching or recent police killings to doubt that these things surpass what Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union did.

     Actually, friend, I don't think I've encountered anyone who is more clouded by ideology than you.


    Good points. I have mentioned to Watree before that to say people are either 'good or bad' is without a doubt an ideology. A very precarious ideology.

    It is the ideology of the Inquisition, Stalin, Hitler, ISIS, the slave seller, Khmer Rouge, and the US Army members who committed the My Lai massacre. It's the philosophy of murderers and despots down through history.

    No mainstream religion I am aware of has such an ideology. It is a very dangerous way to look at your fellow humans. It's as simple and easily manipulated as what Orwell wrote about in his novel Animal Farm.

    As to the 'slaughter' of Native Americans, what ever figure you start with, 90% were gone by the end of the 1600's throughout the western hemisphere. The United States was not in existence until 1776, and then only in the 13 colonies. The Spanish still controlled the southern states and the SW and California well into the 1800's. The Russians controlled Alaska until the 1860's. So it was European governments who could be blamed.  And anthropologists tell us Europeans originated in Africa tens of thousands of years ago.

    Most of the deaths were due to disease. Most who died probably never even saw a European before they died.

    Some Native American tribes allied themselves with Europeans in wars against dominant local tribes that had oppressed them. For instance Cortes was aided by Totonacs of Cempoala and the Nahuas of Tlaxcala in his fight against the Aztecs.

    The more the details and historical facts, as known, and considered, the greater the difficulty in reducing nations and populations to 'the most malevolent in the history of mankind'.

    That is, if you care about facts and the nuances of history. However, if your devotion is to an ideology of 'good or bad', the grey areas, of necessity,  vanish.


    Holy Jesus!

    I gotta read this six times before I hope to 'get it' all.

    I have written about books I have read documenting hatred of the Jews; let alone hatred of the Blacks.

    O'Reilly is out of his mind lately (a phenomina that seems to prevail every couple of months, or less, hahahahaha)

    http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/24/oreilly-on-fox-news-being-criticized-by-the-med/204125

    And the racist prick Nugent shows up and 'honors' our President for using the 'N' word. hahahahah

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/06/25/nras-ted-nugent-praises-use-of-the-word-nigger/204136

    Here is Hannity conflating the treasonous flag with Rap or Hip Hop or whatever.

    http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/24/sean-hannity-conflates-selling-confederate-flag/204123

    I aint even getting into Scarborough's crap about how he had to suffer the indignities of studying with Black Folks following BROWN.

    http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=joe+scarborough's+interracial+education&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=ED7A1E878D713B0C269AED7A1E878D713B0C269A

    Of course this asshole would never use the term indignities. hahahahaha But somehow we are to forgive all our sins as a nation since Joe had three Blacks in his classes. hahahaha

    This new housing decision? It is a big deal.

    Rmrd discussed this in my short note on breaking news.

    http://news.yahoo.com/reaction-supreme-courts-health-care-decision-182053599.html

    1968 legislation is not entirely dead!

    I witnessed the reaction to rmrd's fine blog this week and then I just added another new news item on that new news blog site and I just ended up picking up the anger and ire over that one.

    http://dagblog.com/comment/209300#comment-209300

    It was fun watching MSNBC last night.

    That is all I got right now.

    You cover so much material...

    Thank you

    I wanted to add this though; there was this old song of hopelessness that I cannot get out of my tiny mind. It has something to do with a class/caste system. Hell, turned around I guess the KKK could use it. But I love this song.

    http://<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/atCwKBeq76w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

    See ya later.

     

     

     

     


    Thank you, Richard.


    "history clearly demonstrates the United States of America to be the most evil and brutally vicious nation that has ever been established in human history,"

    It's absolutely necessary to look with clear eyes at the mistakes, brutality, even atrocities that American has perpetrated. But this isn't it. There's a small group of those on the left like wattree  with a poor grasp of history who are determined to make the US  the most evil regime in the history of the world. A kind of reverse American exceptionalism. If we've been evil we must have been the greatest evil the earth has ever seen. This makes the left look like idiots and gives republicans an easy way to avoid looking or talking about the real extent of America's mistakes and brutality.

    Here's a great video mainly about deaths, both military and civilian, in WWII. At about 14 minutes there's a brief comparison of war deaths throughout history.

    https://vimeo.com/128373915


    By the way, what source says the United States killed a million Laotians?


    "In addition, as a thinking man (unlike many of you)"

    Have a nice day.


    Nothing good can come from comparing suffering and death at the hands of the state. Slavery and the Holocaust were both brutal and tragic. Both are memories. The suffering under slavery, Jim Crow in the current era of tolerance of white supremacy manifested by injustice in the legal system, housing loan abuses, redlining, etc is mere unpleasantness comparing with slavery.

    There are those of us who say the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. There are others who say "No Justice, No peace." One group feels that there is a slow, ongoing process that ends with justice. The other group wants justice now.These battles have been fougt by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and now between present leaders like Al Sharpton and a new crop of activists like Phillip Agnew of the Dream Defenders.

    When I read the controversy about Wattree's words about conditions in the United States, i remembered that I heard similar condemnation of the United States before

    Edit to add:

    I see Wattree is commenting now

    I found if hilarious that people had forgotten that others have been harsh about the actions of the U.S.

     


    I lost it.

    I am watching our President give a great eulogy to Reverend Pinckney. right now on MSNBC.

    This is a great great speech.

    I would give you a link, but I cannot get to it.

    It is a GREAT GREAT speech.

    The closest I can get is this

    http://www.newshub.org/president-obama-give-eulogy-funeral-rev-clementa-pinckney-17341196.html

    OKAY JUST GO TO MSNBC


    Thx Richard, I've got my DVR recording it for viewing tonight.


    I don't agree with most of Eric's rants but he is correct about the US being among the leaders of the Murder Parade.

    Since WW2 the US has been directly or indirectly responsible for between 20 to 30 million people killed mostly civilians and ten times that number of injuries. About half of those  murders were caused directly by the US in Korea, Vietnam and the two Iraq wars. The rest are spread between thirty some countries where proxy conflicts or other interventions occurred but those people are just as dead.and we are just as responsible. I think this tally moves us past Hitler and he had to start a World War to reach his infamy.


    There's no doubt that America has a bloody history but I don't accept your figures. They don't match any of the research I've done over the years. For the Viet Nam war, "The most extensive survey estimates deaths in the war from 1954 to 1975 at between 1.5 and 3.6 million people. This estimate includes both civilian and military deaths in North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia." Korea, 1.1 to 1.6 million. Even if we were to blame America for all the deaths on both sides of any war we were involved in the numbers just don't add up. I also don't see how you can place the blame for every conflict we were involved in on the US. By no stretch of the imagination is America the cause of the Korean civil war.

    Even if I were to accept your numbers they don't reach the numbers from previous conflicts. WWII 70 million, Mao 40 million, Stalin 20 million.

    I just don't understand this trend by some on the left to exaggerate the deaths caused by America and to down play the deaths caused by other regimes. The truth without exaggeration is sufficient to horrify and shame us. Falsifying data just makes those on the left who indulge in it look foolish and reflects on those of us on the left who try to deal in facts.


    As important in Vietnam is to understand Ho Chi Minh really killed a couple hundred thousand civilians in the 50's while Mao killed off 10 million+ in the Great Leap Forward - the implementation of Communism was ugly. Our response was not the best, but ignoring a real threat (much more of a nation/region changer than Al Qaeda) would have not been smart foreign policy


    I have read higher and lower estimates and we will never know the exact numbers but they are huge, growing and they are our responsibility and these deaths all occurred outside our country because of our projection of power, no one was threatening our existence. You and i are only responsible for what our country does in our name supposedly for our benefit. Other crimes by other regimes are not excused by acknowledging our crimes even if we are only third or fourth on the list. and again there was no real threat, revolution or World War to justify these murders, maiming, starvation, disease and poisoning of these people.

    You use unverifiable and possibly biased estimates for WW2, China, the  USSR and the US as if they were facts to minimize the mid-range reasonable estimates I referenced and then project that there is some left wing conspiracy to .place undeserved blame on the US.

    Your metrics for justifying the Korean War, whatever they may be,  must also apply to Vietnam so we can write them off as Good Wars which will make our insane war mongering almost palatable compared to the real Bad Guys we are constantly warned about before we again go off to war.

    You might have noticed that to justify our recent return to blood sport in Syria and Iraq that Obama used the pretense of protecting the Yazidis while the military chiefs stated clearly the actual reason was to protect our interests in the region, they don't even try very hard to hide the real reasons anymore.

     


    it has been estimated that the United States slaughtered as many as a 100 million Native Americans,

    By who? I've not seen any where near that number. Ward Churchill, perhaps the most vociferous advocate for calling the killing of the Native Americans genocide, estimates 12 million. Most estimates that I've seen claim 75% to 90% of the Native population was killed by diseases. While there was some occasional biological warfare, giving infected blankets to natives, most were the simple vectors of highly contagious diseases spreading among populations with no immunity.

    The atrocities we committed against the natives who survived the epidemics were horrific. But even had we been saints the outcome was inevitable, 75% mortality, given our understanding of diseases and medicine at the time.


    100 million is the highest estimate of the Indian population in ALL of the Americas in 1492, not just in North America. A pretty small minority of those Indians were in the area that became the United States.

     I agree that the whites usually weren't answerable for the deaths from smallpox, with one or two exceptions, it wasn't part of anyone's plan. I doubt that the number killed by violence was in the millions. There were about 70--80 Indian wars in the thirteen colonies and the United States, and the death toll in each was rarely higher than the low thousands, sometimes less. And it is relevant that in some of the wars it was the Indians who attacked the whites.

      This 20-30 million figure is nonsense, and kat is right that it is dishonest to cite numbers without regard for who started the wars, and without a breakdown between soldiers and civilians.

     People need to realize that overstatement can ruin a case.
     


    Yes, and this rant is a list of outrageous exaggerations. There's this: "they rounded up innocent Japanese AMERICANS, took all of their possessions, and placed them in "internment camps" - that's a euphemism for concentration camps."

    The internment of Japanese Americans is a national embarrassment but they were not concentration camps. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, but there were no gas chambers. There was no effort to systematically eliminate Japanese Americans. There was no genocide. No Japanese American in an internment camp would chose to trade places with any Jew in Auschwitz. And then to use these examples to claim that, "history clearly demonstrates the United States of America to be the most evil and brutally vicious nation that has ever been established in human history," It's beyond exaggeration and beyond ridiculous. This is the most ignorant post I've seen on this site.


    Ocean-Kat,

    I anticipated people like you and discussed such people in the very first paragraph of the piece:

    "I want to preface this assessment of America by assuring the reader that I'm neither a radical nor an ideologue.  In fact, I don't even like ideologues, of any persuasion. Ideologues tend to give ideology priority over truth. Then when truth comes into conflict with their ideology, they try to bend and contort truth into a configuration that's a more comfortable fit with their delusion of reality. On the other hand, I believe in following truth wherever it leads and regardless to whose ox it gores. Thus, I suspect there are many people who are going to have a lot of difficulty digesting what I have to say here about America, since there are many oxes in America that need to be gored.  Because in spite of the delusions we love to embrace regarding ourselves as Americans, the fact is, we are a highly dysfunctional people, who were forged from a grossly dysfunctional land."
    .

    Notice how casually these good "Christians" are standing around.  That should give you some idea of how routine an occurrence this was. Those were people's loved ones hanging and lying there.  But, of course, if you're not of color - Black, Hispanic, or Native American - it wouldn't hit home as powerfully. But let me reiterate - THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS THE MOST BRUTALLY VICIOUS NATION THAT HAS EVER EXISTED IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND - PERIOD!
    .
    In addition to being Black, I'm a former Marine, so I know. One technique of interrogating Vietnamese soldiers was to take a group of them up in helicopters and, without asking them a word, just throwing two or three out, as casually as if they were a sack of wheat, to make the others talk.  And remember, these were someone's children. But non-White lives have no value to many in this country.  
    .
    So the reason what I'm saying sounds so ridiculous to you is you've been conditioned by watching too many John Wayne movies. If it were not for that conditioning, there would be no Republican Party, because what many White Americans fail to realize is that we're not knee-deep in a class war, and they've been targeted as well.

    The True History Of The United States Of America
    .

     


    It's not hard to digest because it's already been predigested years ago. None of what you post is new to me or to others here. That's why it's so easy to spot the errors. I've studied the history of the Native Americans in America so I immediately knew your figure of 100 million was way off. In America the correct number is about 12 million. I've studied the internment of Japanese Americans and the Nazi genocide of the Jews so I know there is no comparison between internment camps and concentration camps.

    Yes America has committed terrible atrocities. The numerous lynchings is just one. But Auschwitz alone killed about as many Jews every day for years as were lynched in the whole history of the US.

    Your facts are incorrect. Your data is wrong. Your numbers are way off. As bad as America has often been there's simply no comparison to the atrocities committed by some other countries. It's simply not true that the US is the most brutal and vicious nation in the history of the world.


    Could you understand that a young black man growing up in parts of Ferguson or parts of Baltimore might feel that the country wants him dead and that he has zero opportunities? If you can understand that, might not that young man feel that he might as well be under Nazi occupation? Life for Jews under the Nazis was hell, but could you understand that the hopeless young black man feels trapped and might say his life is just as bad?


    Of course I can understand it. Knowledge isn't gained by osmosis especially historical knowledge. One must study. But I would expect that if he read just a little about Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot that just a few facts would disabuse him of the notion that life as a Jew in Nazi Germany was equivalent to his life. Or that the US has been the most evil nation in the history of the world

    Yes we need to face our failings and our atrocities. We need to discuss not just slavery but the way the prison system was used as a substitute for slavery after the Civil War. We need to discuss not just overt racism but unconscious racism. We need to look at poverty, lack of opportunity, and both abusive and inadequate policing in the inner city.

    Wattree is not an under educated young man. The US has not been the most evil and brutally vicious nation that has ever been established in human history. And many of his facts and figures are incorrect. I don't think such gross hyperbole as this post helps anyone at all.

    Or do you think lying to young black men or anyone about the history of the world is a good thing?


    I think that as long as he has no hope, he will feel that he is in Hell and that the police, judicial system, and society at large is full of Nazis.

    If you don't own properly or have foreclosed property and a dead end job or no job, what are you loosing if you burn stuff that you don't own? The CVS was not going to hire me anyway. His friends died young. He'll die young. He's in Hell and surrounded by Nazis and people are arguing numbers or just blogging (like me tonight). 


    This is not directed at you. If I were to guess I'd guess you're one of the people who are walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

    But, damn it, I'm so tired of hearing this sort of shit. I hear it all the time. It's not about race. I go to Rainbow Gatherings which are 99% white and hear the same crap. It's hell, they're all Nazis. Well what the hell are you doing to change it.

    Every where I've been, every time I've moved there was some group of activists working hard to make change in their local community. I found that group and I joined them. I guarantee you there were and are activists in Baltimore fighting for change. And they need help even if it's only a body on the line. Get the fuck off your ass and do something. If enough of you do maybe there'll be change before the only choice you have is a incoherent scream of rage by burning down the local CVS. I've posted that I think that scream of rage is justified but it doesn't have to come to that. What were you doing the year  before you got on the street to scream your rage?

    I listen to millennials bitching about the boomers. You want to talk about history? Tell them the history of  what life was like in the 1950's and look at how it is today. Tell them what it took to make those changes. Tell them how we got here, the amount of work, the danger and difficulty of the fight. Tell them the stories that might inspire them to do the same. That's the history they need. Not some lying bullshit that America is the most evil nation in the history of the world.

    My generation carried that ball and we carried it a damn hell of a long way. I'm proud of the boomers. I'm proud of my small part in making those changes. Get off your ass and pick up the ball.

    You're unemployed? Well then you have lots of free time to get involved. There are people in your local community that are fighting to make your life better. They need your help.

    Wake up. Get up. Get involved.


    Ocean-Kat, 

    I did teach both of my children history, but I taught them the  TRUE history of this nation, not that sanitized bullshit.  And there's another thing, the fact that this is a brutal nation doesn't negated the fact that there are many wonder people in it. In fact, I think they constitute the majority, or President Obama wouldn't have won the presidency, twice.  But the problem is, most of the best people in this country are so busy trying to survive, and they are focused on their lives, that we tend to allow the most radical and reactionary factions in society to control our political environment, and that's the way it's ALWAYS been. So the key is, we're going to have to wake up the silent majority before it's too late.
    .
    Regarding the values I taught Eric Jr., after he was discharged from the Air Force, about 6 months later they contacted him and requested that he return to duty for another hitch as a special request from the President of the United States, which of course, he did.  But he hadn't returned but less than a year before he was plucked out by one of the federal agencies that he routinely worked with as part of the presidential detail. As a Special Forces person on special detail, he worked with the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA. They were literally fighting over him.  The Air Force tried to give him a commission to keep him.  He's currently a federal agent:  Here's what the United States Air Force had to say about him:  
    .

    MEMORANDUM FOR OFFICER TRAINING SCHOOL SELECTION COMMITTEE


    FROM: 92 SFS/SFO
    2 E. ARNOLD STREET
    FAIRCHILD AFB, WA 99011

    SUBJECT: Recommendation for Staff Sergeant Eric L. Wattree

    1. I wholeheartedly concur with Staff Sergeant Wattree’s request to attend Officer Training School. He represents the enlisted ranks with the highest standard and will bring that dedication and professionalism to the officer corps.

    2. Eric continues to lead a stellar military career; his enlisted performance reports speak for themselves. His leadership and experience, especially in contingency environments, remains a vital asset to our unit and wing. As one of my primary Phoenix Raven team leaders, he’s propelled to the forefront of all major deployments throughout the world. He’s repeatedly secured aircraft and crews, supporting a wide variety of missions, in the most austere and terrorist-ridden environments where security is severely inadequate. The diversity of these missions never limited SSgt Wattree’s capacity to adapt to each situation. For this reason, Eric was selected as our 2000 Outstanding Phoenix Raven Member of the Year and the 2001 Air Force Reserve Component Airman of the Year for the 92d Security Forces Squadron.

    3. Whether operating under peacetime or contingency operations, Eric easily assumes control and tackles every situation with meticulous tenacity, a quality highly desired in our Air Force officers. Requested BY NAME, Sergeant Wattree, provided security for presidential Banner missions throughout Greece, Peru and Viet Nam. While deployed to Afghanistan, he flew numerous combat missions in our nation’s pursuit to eradicate terrorism through Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Additionally, he provided round-the-clock force protection for aircraft in other high-threat environments including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Oman. 

    4. Sergeant Wattree motivated his personnel during the worst conditions and raised the level of esprit de corps to integrate personnel from other Air Force specialties into a cohesive team. His leadership, integrity and devotion to our Air Force play an integral part in our future leadership. Eric has what it takes to become a commissioned officer and earns my full support to attend Officer Training School.

    FRANK HELLSTERN, JR., Captain, USAF
    Operations Officer

    Eric L. Wattree, Jr.


    .


    So no, Ocean-Kat,

    I'm not a bitter Black man. I'm just a realist who believes in following truth wherever it leads:

    ONE FOR BOOMER
    Receding hairline, failing vision,
    hair now turning grey,
    an aging boomer in final protest,
    Father Time his foe this day.
     
    Donning his headband, tie-dyed jeans,
    and scorched draft card of protests past,
    he set out for one last battle,
    as in his youth that had quietly passed.
     
    Ode to an aging Boomer,
    a different kind of man;
    colleagues all now in the wind,
    as he makes his final stand.
     
    But he found no placards or the sound of Trane,
    no passionate speeches in the gentle rain,
    no pretty girls wearing mini skirts,
    and no solemn guards on pig alert.
     
    All he found was a new America,
    and more freedom across this land;
    the fruit of his struggle
    for women's equality,
    and the rights of his fellow man.
     
    He found Martin, Chavez, and Malcolm X,
    all standing by his side;
    He found Thomas Jefferson
    and all his forefathers
    beaming down with pride.
     
    He found minority children across this land
    whose reach now exceed their grasp;
    He found Jim Crow angrily cursing him,
    as he took his final gasp.
     
    He found pride as an aging boomer,
    more hero, than common man;
    He found a quirky old fart embraced by history,
    for having the courage to take a stand.
     
    Alone, an aging Boomer,
    fellow travelers now in the wind;
    but one last time he limps to his trench,
    to defend his fellow man.
    .

    Eric L. Wattree


    Ocean-Kat, 

    The very last thing one has to do is lie about the vicious brutality of the United States of America. You've been conditioned all your life to believe in utter bullshit. You're just in denial: Dealing with many Whites on this issue is like trying to convince a religious fanatic that their particular religion didn't come directly from God. So let me repeat this, and you can accept it or reject it. The United States of America is the most viciously brutal and malevolent country in the history of humanity - period. 
    .
    In addition to what you see in the photo below, they wiped out an entire continent of Native Americans. Look up the "Indian Removal Act" that was signed into being by Andrew Jackson, and then go read the bullshit Preamble of the United States Constitution. That should clearly demonstrate that the nation was BUILT on complete and utter bullshit. The founding fathers walked through the door intent on robbing and stealing Native American land through the means of ethnic cleansing.  And what made it even more disgusting is they did it in the name of God - Manifest Destiny. In other words, God wanted them to perpetrate their brutality and theft.  
    .
    Now, I'm done with it.


    The very last thing one has to do is lie about the vicious brutality of the United States of America.

    Yes, I know. As I posted above, The truth is sufficient to horrify and shame us. I just don't get why you have to falsify data and distort that truth. What's the point of lying?

    There were not 100 million NA in the territory that is now the US. The best estimate is 12 million most of whom died of disease. Most were not slaughtered. The greatest population density was in the Aztec and Mayan empires. The Spanish killed off the far largest number of NA.

    Anyone who knows anything about the Nazi concentration camps knows how different they were from Japanese internment camps. There was no systematic extermination. Japanese Americans were illegally detained, deprived of their possessions, and incarcerated without due process of law. That is quite a bit different than a concentration camp.

    I could go on, there is much more but what's the point. You are either blinded by your ideology or woefully uneducated and ignorant.


    Americans seem obsessed with rankings. Maybe other peoples too, I don’t know, but lists of the best or worst or biggest or longest etc abound. Too much emphasis on the rankings by numbers is a distraction I think when nearly every other question which jumps up when we are looking back and trying to understand historical wars and maybe what they tell us about today and our hopes for tomorrow are more important.  My point is not even clear to me so I surely cannot make it clear to anyone else but here are a few thoughts and/or questions.

     Your video link was very good, IMO, and I have saved it for reference but so far I think that the staggering numbers from WWII are most important to us today as a warning of horrible possibilities going forward rather than as a descriptor of who was to blame and who paid the biggest price to win and bla bla bla.

    So, back to the rankings, this time of the evildoers apparently to blame. Was Hitler really ‘worse’ than Pol Pot, for instance, just because he ran up the higher numbers? Were Hitler’s henchmen who efficiently carried out his exterminations less evil than the boss? If so wouldn’t another way of saying that be to say that Eichmann was ‘better’ than Hitler? Is some caudillo supported by a powerful foreign government who burns out a village of one hundred people after turning loose rapists and torturers only some minute fraction as evil as the tyrant who kills 20 million? Is he less evil than the ones who gave him the money and guns that empowered his evil? Which is ultimately the most responsible?

    The banality of evil, Arendt’s  famous phrase, should be addressed with something beyond the banality of counting. Kissinger, for instance, was just as willing as Hitler to implement the slaughter of as many hundreds or thousands or millions as it took to twist the world into the way he thought it should be and he did so while basking in the glow of admiration that he still gets from so many others. We may be more humane than him but he was just as human as we are which begs a question. What the fuck is wrong with us?  

    OK, this  is veering from the subject, rambling, and incoherent, but I’ve been up since 3am waiting for the five o’clock alarm. That is my only excuse. Cheers.  I need a nap.


     


    Oh please, read a Jim Thompson book instead. Comparing Kissinger to Hitler? That is indeed fucked up. Aside from being Christopher Hitchens' favorite punching bag, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything that warranted comparison & didn't have a host of exculpatory justifications. No doubt leading our foreign policy in complicated times Kissinger had some horrible mistakes & significant blood on his hands - but extermination? back to sleep, Peter Pan.


    I didn't intend to say they were equivalent in all ways and I actually do realize that their situations were different. My point, again, is that Hitler could already be fairly judged as evil when he was early in his years of control and had only the blood of a few hundred thousand on his hands. Kissinger, like many others, has a greater number than that. Hitler was just spectacularly successful for long enough to run up the numbers. If he had choked on a pretzal a few years earlier he would have died as the same evil prick that actually did die many millions of people later. 


    I agree, I hate the numbers game. Too often when people point at Stalin, Hitler, and others it's to excuse America's atrocities because they weren't as bad as those other people's atrocities. I don't excuse us from our failings. An atrocity is an atrocity is an atrocity. We need to face ours. But when someone says, "history clearly demonstrates the United States of America to be the most evil and brutally vicious nation that has ever been established in human history,"  I couldn't let that stand unchallenged.


    I want to see the list. Rank 'em.

    Top Ten Worst Countries in History (based on willful killing of humans)

    10. ?



    Your links simply show that Aaron was correct when he posted "100 million is the highest estimate of the Indian population in ALL of the Americas in 1492, not just in North America. A pretty small minority of those Indians were in the area that became the United States."  and you were wrong when you posted "it has been estimated that the United States slaughtered as many as a 100 million Native Americans." Some how you think the people here are too stupid to see through your selective editing. Certainly you don't think the US is responsible for the Aztec, Mayan, and other tribes killed by the Spanish or the tribes in Brazil killed by the Portuguese. The accepted number of Native Americans that died on United States soil, most of whom died of diseases, is 12 million. The number "slaughtered" by the US is at the most a couple of million. A significant atrocity but 2 million is quite different than 100 million.


    Ocean-Kat ,

    The estimated numbers of slaughtered Native Americans vary widely. The genocide took place over a span of more than 100 years, and no one ever bothered to do a head count of Native Americans,  so everyone's numbers are speculative at best. But again, we're talking about over a 100 years. That means that the systematic extermination of an entire continent of people was going on for 5 to 6 generations. And by the way, of many of those who died of disease, they died of diseases that were PURPOSELY introduced into their population.
    .
    But I'm not going to go in circles with you on this, because I wasn't there, and neither were you, and of course, the statistics are going to be doctored in order to play down the atrocious behavior of the American government. But the bottom line is, this government committed systematic genocide against Native Americans in the name of God and greed. And unlike the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jews, the American government, for the most part, succeeded.  
    .
    Then they went on to commit further atrocities against African American slaves, and then continued those atrocities throughout the Jim Crow era and right up to this day. Thereafter, they went from one country after another killing millions of other people. And when they dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they dropped those bombs on innocent noncombatants, which makes the United States the most pronounced terrorist state in human history, bar none.
    .
    So if you deny my contention that the United States is the most brutally vicious nation in human history, prove it by naming another nation that was more prolific in its mayhem. The United States has been on a vicious rampage of murder and mayhem every since its founding, and even prior to its formal founding. The United States of America is the national version of murder Inc. So again, if you deny what I'm saying is accurate, you name one nation in human history that has been more brutal, vicious, and prolifically murderous, and document it.  
    .
    I'll be awaiting your response.


    Historians love to argue, they'd fit in well here at dagblog. The estimates do vary widely and just as there are historians with biases that lead them to estimate low there are historians with biases that lead them to estimate high. I'm as inclined to doubt the low ball estimate of 50 million for the combined North, Central and South American continents as I am inclined to doubt the high ball estimate of 100 million given the bias on both sides. Yet even those with an extreme far left bias like Ward Churchill don't propose anything like 100 million NA in the territory that has become the US. Your number for the US is off by a factor of 10.

    of many of those who died of disease, they died of diseases that were PURPOSELY introduced into their population.

    That's simply not true. You don't need to trust the historians, the  biological science of infectious diseases will tell you why. There is no evidence of the wide spread use of purposeful infection of NA. Given the number of atrocities committed by Europeans across all three American continents it wasn't from any attachment to high moral standards. It's extremely rare simply because it was unnecessary. it's not like every Native had to catch a disease from a European immigrant. Natives picked up a disease from an encounter with a European and following NA trade routes carried the diseases west that decimated whole tribes years before the whites even moved that far west.

    So again, if you deny what I'm saying is accurate, you name one nation in human history that has been more brutal, vicious, and prolifically murderous, and document it.  

    I already have. You ignored and now you want me to repeat it. If we're looking a recent history Nazi Germany ranks high. Internment camps were not concentration camps. No comparison. As I pointed out Nazis killed more Jews daily than the US lynched in it's whole history. We see the atomic bomb with a special horror because one bomb killed 60 thousand people. But Germany killed 60 thousand in England alone deliberately targeting civilian populations with their bombing campaign. Those people are just as dead from thousands of bombs.

    Stalin murdered 20 million in the Gulags. He also stopped civilians from fleeing Russian cities in advance of Nazi attacks. He certainly deserves some responsibility for the deaths from starvation and attacks from the advancing Nazi army. Mao killed 40 million people during and after his communist take over.

    But you're talking about the whole history of the world. I think the creation of the Roman Empire killed far more proportionately and that the every day governance of the empire was far more brutal than the US. But as an amateur historian who just likes to read I'd have to choose the Mongol invasions as the most brutally vicious and evil regime  in history. They slaughtered several times as many as Nazi Germany as a % of the population of the time. Whole cities and regions were slaughtered or enslaved.

    I really don't have time to write a blog on the history of the world and the periodic extremes of  evil that has manifested. But you really should have some minimal grasp of world history before you claim for the US the title  "Greatest Evil in the History of the World"


    All right, some nominations. Wattree is sticking with the good ol' U S of A. ocean-kat is offering The Mongol Empire (gotta say I didn't see that one coming), The Roman Empire (or that), Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union and Communist China. Can I get a second?


    Many historians blame Genghis Khan for the many atrocities of the Mongolian empire. I have to place a large part of the blame on Genghis Wolraich. I think we can all agree those flashy shirts were atrocious and forcing us to look at them in his picture in every blog he wrote was a particularly vile form of torture.


    Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China are definitely the twentieth century's big three for badness. I myself wouldn't rate the Roman Empire as one of the worst in history; many empires of antiquity were just as ruthless, and the Pax Romana had some positive aspects. Sixteenth century Spain's body count at least equaled that of Stalin. The three famines Britain caused in India in the last quarter of the nineteenth century killed something like ten to twelve million people. But I doubt any of this will make an impression on Wattree.


    Blacks making the Middle Passage considered themselves living in Hell. Blacks living under the whip of slavery considered themselves living in Hell. Blacks under Jim Crow were living in Hell. Black South Carolinians who face barriers to voting, education, and employment who saw a local black icon lay in state under a racist flag consider themselves to be in Hell. That is why you saw the tremendous release in church services when the President's eulogy was met with great relish. Their pain was being recognized.

    If you told the slave to be thankful for not having to endure the Middle Passage, they would think that you were delusional. If you told the person living under Jim Crow that they should be thankful that they were not slaves, you would get the same response. Tell current day Black people to be grateful that they were not in the Jim Crow era, you will get an earful. Hell is different for different people.

    There are pockets of poverty in the United States where your argument that the United States was not a tyranny would be dismissed. That is the power of Wattree's statement. People in pain at any point in time would not accept the argument that other societies were worse. That argument does nothing to ease pain experienced in 2015.


    So when he says I'm right, does that mean he is admitting that the U.S. isn't the most evil state that has ever existed?


    Aaron Carine:  But I doubt any of this will make an impression on Wattree.

    Wattree: You're absolutely right, Aaron.


    I think Wattree is thinking that if the argument is that at least the United States isn't as bad as Ancient Rome, the Nazis, etc., you've already lost the argument.


    Since the argument is about whether the U.S. is the worst society that has ever existed, I don't see how we have lost the argument if we demonstrate that there have been worse societies. There are plenty of options between "America is the incarnation of virtue and justice" and "America is the most evil entity that has ever existed".


    Again the choice in the form of a question seems to be 

    Name the tragic events

    A)  The Holocaust

    B) Slavery

    C) Neither 

    D) Both

    Answer: D

    Or the question

    Who was worse?

    1) John Wayne Gacy

    2) Jeffrey Dahmer

    Answer: Gacy was a better painter


    "Worst Society Evvah!" is certainly an argument that has drifted into the conversation, but I wouldn't say it is the argument. I thought the thrust of Wattree's post had more to do with how easily The Working Class in The United Stated is distracted and manipulated by the "Corporate Supremacists" from the real sources of the oppression they endure regardless of color, creed affiliation, etc. It's kinda ironic, no? 


    Yeah, that's what he was getting at, but historical truth is not irrelevant. We couldn't let that hyperbolic statement stand.


    No, of course not. Proceed governor.


    I wouldn't say it drifted in. If wattree hadn't claimed for the US the greatest evil in the history of the world award we wouldn't be having this conversation. I still might have pointed out some of the gross errors of historical fact, but not comparatively. We wouldn't be discussing which was worse.


    You're absolutely right, Aaron.
    .
    I'm a former Marine myself, and believe it or not, I love this country, because I believe that the majority of the American people are good  and decent people.  But just as we're seeing today, the majority of the people have, and always have, allowed our political environment to be controlled by the most evil, greedy, and malevolent forces in our society.
    .
    As I've pointed previously - and as I ALWAYS point out to Black people - this is not a "White supremacist" society, it's a "corporate supremacist" society.  And the corporatists have a vested interest in keeping the majority of the people angry, hungry, and hating one another, in order to maintain their supremacy.  So in order to snap out of that "Shining light on the hill" bullshit somnambulism that they have us drifting around in, we've got to open our eyes and see it what it really is, and what its done, in order to correct our course. After all, you can't cure a disease until you acknowledge it. 
    .
    And by the way, I've been referred to here as a leftist several times. I'm not leftist, right-wing, or centrist. I'm a rationalist. My position is to follow whatever course of action is in the best interest of the most number of people - and I'm against all "isms," I don't care what they are, because, by definition, they're all contrary to independent thought.

    .


    Bernie Sanders finally realizes that he has to make a direct outreach to minority voters. Right now 95% of Black could see voting for Hillary Clinton. Only 25% can see themselves voting for Bernie Sanders. This is mainly because Sanders is an unknown quantity for many blacks.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/06/27/sanders-...

    Hillary has already managed to upset some likely black voters. Sanders has an opening

    http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/24/hillary-clintons-...

     


    I love the way you developed your concept of corporate supremacy. Keep writing and I'll keep reading.

    Thank you, Danny.


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