On Ideology: Do We Live In A Non Ideological Society & Can We Afford To Ignore It?
Bodies of the 290 civilians murdered by the United States on flight 655
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the wake of George H W Bush death with the increasingly detached and deluded media clamouring on how Bush was an angel sent from heaven himself I’m reminded of his words:
“I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are. … I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”
(George H W Bush made the above statement on the campaign trail responding to comments made by the downing of an Iranian airliner with 290 people on-board (including 66 children).
Not “caring what the facts are” is a beautiful depiction of someone dripping in ideology. The ideology underpinning US society is part white supremacy, part American exceptionalism and part Christian crusader (the need to “spread democracy” like cancer?).
On White Supremacy:
George H.W. Bush: Currently residing in Hell., his rightful domicile.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hite supremacy has and will continue to be part of the glaring underbelly of US society. The first wave of White supremacy was the taking in chains the people of Africa and bringing them to America as slave labour to build most of their cities. The wiping out of the “indigenous” populations and forcing these people onto “reservations” where they eek out a miserable existence. Where the suicide rates are sky high compared to the rest of American society and where “huffing gas” is a past time.(1)
White supremacy allowed the US to enter Korea and murder 20 percent of the population there.(2)
To be sure, what American would even know today of the extremely brutal and racist bombing campaign the Americans did there? Or the massacre of hundreds of refugees huddled under a bridge by US troops? That the US denied doing for decades?(3)
As we move through the 20th century from 1945 onward the US has left a trail of broken little nations either outright destroyed and bombed to smithereens like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya or a banana republic dictator with CIA trained death squads and torture squads all across Latin America.
The refugee crisis in Latin America has its roots in American imperialism. Hilary Clinton recently scrubbed from the paperback version of Hard Choices her involvement in the Honduran coup of 2009 which ushered an era of unprecedented violence in Honduran society. (4)
One of the paragraphs from the 2 pages she scrubbed was
“We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future,” Clinton wrote.
In the hardcover edition of her memoir, Clinton trumpets the resolution of the coup through a new round of elections as a triumph for regional diplomacy.
The horrible reality is that the US now reinforces and militarises its borders because of its deeply racist foreign policy and actions it has taken against countries in the global south.
On American Exceptionalism:
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]merican exceptionalism is a key component to explain of how saturated and soaked in ideology the average American is. It means George H W Bush (May He Rest In Piss) can get up and say he “doesn’t care what the facts are!” and that he won’t ever “apologise for America!” even when America has just murdered 290 people (66 of whom were children) and Americans will stand up and cheer for him.
To quote Zizek: “That is pure ideology”.
On Christian Crusader/Democracy Spreading:
It is very entertaining watching a public rendition to an American crowd of the Star Spangled Banner in which they hit that particular note (you know the one!) and for a fateful second you are seriously wondering if the audience has just come in their pants.
You can see it in the wet, glistening eyes of the audience whilst they hoarsely shout over and over again that word, waving the stars and striped flag: “freedom” or “U-S-A”.
Which is unfortunate for these people because the US doesn’t even live in a democracy. In a Princeton and Northwestern study in 2014 the researchers prove that the US has become an oligarchy: a society that only works for the rich and affluent. (5) [What's more it was never even remotely the real and strong dmeocracy its apologists would like the public to believe. ]
But this deranged and deluded view of the world by the average American has seen the US be an unstoppable force of violence and death since 1945 yet with every step of the way it has been paved in ideological trappings reminiscent of European white supremacy by “spreading civilisation”.
As the ideologically driven austerity punishes the UK (my country) forcing so many people into poverty and rough sleeping that even arch Tory and BBC propagandist, Andrew Marr, has had to finally comment on it. (6)
The UN just released a damning report on poverty in the UK — driven by brainwashed Thatcherite ideologues that still persist in their failed economic programs of “tides lifting all boats”—an old conservative/capitalist meme. The UN called it “mean and callous to the poorest in society”.(7)
It looks certainly more like rising tides are drowning people.
But we do need true freedom, we need a liberating ideology and a concerted effort to build a new future not based on profit.
Where a tiny, ruling clique of racist, warmongering bastards don’t own all the key points of industry and journalism and use their vast wealth to brainwash our populations into supporting war and death via Foxnews/Daily Mail/Sun/YouTube/Google algorithms that can’t stop serving up white-nationalist far right content for some bizarre reason. (8)
In which exploitation of man by man is relegated to the dustbin of history.
References
(1)https://www.lakotalaw.org/news/2016-05-12/native-americans-facing-highest-suicide-rates
(3)https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/world/gi-s-tell-of-a-us-massacre-in-korean-war.html
(6)https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/andrew-marr-homelessness_uk_5c041391e4b04fb2116917aa
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Revolutionary wisdom
Words from an Irish patriot—
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