THE AMERICAN DREAM IS NOW A NIGHTMARE!

It is interesting that Cheney is visiting Australia today. Both interesting and very sad. Why?

When God-fearing people from Europe, centuries ago, bravely sailed in their thousands across the turbulent Atlantic to the New World, they were filled with hope for a new beginning. A wonderful dream filled their minds, one that was based upon a complete rejection of the old, rigid, class-based, Church-dominated European ways. They hoped that a whole new society would be born, one where individual freedom, equality and opportunity would prevail for all.

From the very beginning the wonderful dream ran into trouble. The Red Indians, rightly, were not impressed with the invaders who, imperially and arrogantly, began to take their land and kill them in large numbers with their vastly superior weapons. Guns and violence ruled supreme in America from the very start. Large scale genocide was one of the foundation stones of the infant nation (as it was in Australia). It was hardly an auspicious start for a 'perfect' society.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, while the genocide was occurring, there were the imperial ambitions of the British and the French to contend with. Finally, after the War of Independence against Britain, America was able to function as a nation though a fragmented one. However, genocide, war and happily-ever-after dreams make uneasy bedfellows.

Slavery, ironically, was quickly introduced into this ‘land of freedom and equality’ with hapless Africans being captured by unscrupulous ‘blackbirders’. Naked greed was its motivator, a not uncommon human trait, one demonstrated over many millennia. The slaves were, in the main, treated horrifically and were considered to be sub-human. The dream diminished a little further although the rich landowners on the tobacco and cotton plantations probably didn’t notice.

America was divided by slavery and finally the matter was resolved by a vicious Civil War fought between the North and the South. The dreamers killed each other in large numbers in a series of battles and hatred between Americans was born, remnants of which I believe still survive today. However, at least slavery was abolished but violence and conflict to resolve differences was further entrenched.

In the Wild West, having killed most of the Indians with bullets or diseases or shoved them onto reservations, the citizens began to shoot each other. The law of the six gun prevailed and colourful, notorious ‘heroes’ arose with lots of notches in their belts. Everyone had guns and frequently used them. In a violent High Noon environment, the gun culture, there from the beginning, was further locked into the foundations of the American psyche. It survives today and most Americans appear to own guns. Many sleep with handguns under their pillows.

Tied in with guns was the use of brutality in punishing wrongdoers. People who were deemed to be guilty of crimes were sometimes just hung from the nearest tree rather than have to wait for a judge and the slow legal process. Then came the notorious Hanging Judges. As part of their legacy, the death sentence is still used in many of the States of America which generously gave up the barbarity of hanging and now use poisoning and electrocution instead.

Then followed the World Recession and Prohibition, Bonnie and Clyde and gangsters like Al Capone who used machine guns to maintain their territory. By way of variation the Klu Klux Klan carried out lynchings of inferior black folk while hypocritically proclaiming their strong Christianity. Slowly the slaves, free but at the bottom of the social ladder, struggled to gain some rights, some freedom, some equality in 'The God-Blessed, God-Worshiping Land of Freedom and Equality'. It was a grinding, difficult mission, still not fully complete even today.

WW2 began, and America, which inexplicably waited for several years before it entered the fray, finally began to put together a massive military industry which culminated in the atom bomb. Two of them were dropped on Japan. Killing on a scale not previously imagined became possible. Then atomic weapons gave way to nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery system like missiles were developed. No one and nowhere on earth was safe anymore. At the end of the war, America, eyeing Russia with concern, continued with its arms build-up while simultaneously establishing military bases across the world. It also occupied Germany and Japan for a time so it got a little taste for colonial imperialism and the financial rewards that it brought.

People with hungry eyes and powerful ambition in America began to see that America could become THE world power simply by exerting influence through sheer economic and military power. America, flexing its muscles, began a decades long series of foreign policy blunders which have lost it many friends and created many enemies. Its failed invasion of Vietnam and the humiliation of its withdrawal was especially damaging to a country that still clings to the ridiculous belief that brute force and violence is the answer to all problems.

And now, in 2007, the Cold War long over, the wonderful dream carried by earnest people that came in sailing ships across the stormy Atlantic has culminated in an America, under Bush and Cheney, having already engaged in invasion and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan based upon lies, which is about to engage in a nuclear attack against Iran. Why? To control the bulk of the world’s oil. After all, who controls the oil controls the growth of all nations. They also want to demonstrate that America will use demonic military force to stop any nation that might, in the future, threaten its clear mission to completely dominate the world.

It’s purpose for doing this? Pure self interest and greed! Those who lead America (plus an unknown but possibly large number of its citizens) want to ensure that it maintains its gross over-consumption of the world’s resources and to ensure that a minority of rich Americans become even richer. And to hell with the freedom and equality and dreams of the other 95% of the world’s people!

America’s Dream, so idealistic in the beginning, has slowly but surely become the World’s Nightmare as well as its own. It is an irony of universe-sized proportions.

America must be stopped before its nightmare destroys both it and the rest of the world!

P.S. This article is crossposted on The Peoples Voice.