CAPITALIST IMPERIALISM

(Written on or about 3-11-02;
Updated on 4-16-04)
By S. Wolf Britain

“…. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it … watching the beginning of the American industrial system: ‘Things are in the saddle and ride mankind(!)’ The protection of corporate property is deemed more important than the protection of human life(!) Indeed, the (U.S.) Supreme Court decided in the late nineteenth century that a corporation was ‘a person’ and so protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, more protected, in fact, than black people, for whom that amendment was originally written ….”! [Note by me: This is the insanity we live under, but much worse today, in the U.S.A.; and what is most insane of all is that most of “us” think it (capitalism, materialism, selfishness, self-centeredness, greed, love of money, and/or love of “things” more than fellow human beings) is wonderful, “normal”, and to be greatly sought after and prized! That is the ultimate in absolute insanity, no matter how normal it is thought to be by the insane majority!](Copyright © 1999 by Howard Zinn {1922- }, author, historian, activist, and emeritus professor at Boston University.)

When the British monarchy carried out a stranglehold of imperialistic power and control on both its own people and many of the people(s) of the world, including the American colonies, as the U.S. government is committing against its own people and many people(s) of the world today, The People of the colonies justly revolted, revolutionized the colonies, and brought about the existence of the United States of America. So today The People must revolt against the extremely oppressive imperialism of George W. Bush and his cohorts, take their government back, and restore True Freedom!

It is no wonder that England and the majority of its corrupt government, including the “royal” family, are presently in support of “President” Bush and the U.S. government’s ‘reign of terror against terror’, retaliation(s) and revenge for terror against the United States and its Allies which their own governments have instigated with their own terror for over half a century; as the British government has been “for” such imperialism for hundreds and hundreds of years. British historians are probably laughing, or ought to be, at the irony of the U.S. government’s actions at the present time, an effort to subjugate the “American” people and the so-called “backward” countries of the world to “American” imperialism and domination, just as the British government sought to do with their form of imperialism and world domination!

Such an “effort” has largely been successful, because the majority of “The People” are now blindly in support of it and allowing it to happen, and have been allowing it to happen for over a hundred years! Read the true history, by such great author / historian / political scientist / professors as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, of what big-business interests and the United States government have been guilty of perpetrating by way of their foreign policies and actions just in the twentieth century alone, and you will be amazed at how little of the real Truth you were taught in history classes all through your schooling, at least short of college, if you were so blessed as to have attended a college that had professors like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, etcetera, and/or others who tell it like it is, and to have understood them, about True History! The slaughtering victors have long been wrongly glorified as heroes, while the very large numbers of innocent victims have always been de-emphasized to the point of being nearly, if not completely, very conveniently and very sadly, forgotten and/or put out of mind; but we must totally stop glorifying the trained professional murderers, and never forget any of the many innocent victims that we know of!

“THE TWENTIETH CENTURY”
“A People’s History”,
Chapter 10,
“The Coming Revolt of the Guards”,
pages 281-293,
by Howard Zinn, Ph.D.
(Author, Historian, Political Scientist,
Social Activist, and Professor Emeritus
at Boston University)
[Copyright © 1980, 1984 by Howard Zinn.
All rights are reserved.]

[Notes by me: I’m going to again break with my usual tradition of only posting my own writings to my blogs, and post the following chapter because it is so good! I think you’ll find this chapter very enlightening!]

“….(H)istories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crisis everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions.

“The idea of saviors has been built into the entire culture, beyond politics. We have learned to look to stars, leaders, experts in every field, thus surrendering our own strength, demeaning our own ability, obliterating our own selves. But from time to time, Americans reject that idea and rebel.

“These rebellions, so far, have been contained. The American system is the most ingenious system of control in world history. With a country so rich in natural resources, talent, and labor power the system can afford to distribute just enough wealth to just enough people to limit discontent to a troublesome minority. It is a country so powerful, so big, so pleasing to so many of its citizens that it can afford to give freedom of dissent to the small number who are not pleased.

“There is no system of control with more openings, apertures, leeways, flexibilities, rewards for the chosen, winning tickets in lotteries. There is none that disperses its controls more complexly through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media—none more successful in mollifying opposition with reforms, isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.

“One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the property-less, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.