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Debunking the myth of America
| | "Everything I ever believed in has been completely trashed and the traitors who did this
to America are laughing as they get away with it all. But on the bright side pretty soon I'll
be dead, and make my way out of here. I'll get to escape the ugliness they've built where |
| | the United States of America used to be. You poor suckers are stuck here." |
Grandpa's essay is deep in metaphysical issues. What is the nature of Reality? Is there life after Death? Did the "shining City upon a Hill" of America ever really exist, except in our imaginations? And can it die as long as even one person still truly believes in the myth?
I too have seen many years, enough to be convinced of my ultimate discorporation. The cumulative evidence of age has become personally undeniable. Each additional day heaped upon all that have come before is not more precious to me than the others. I have not achieved that degree of enlightenment, yet. For I am, simply, addicted to living. I am an oxygen junkie. Gimme a long-necked Oxygen and a water back, barkeep!
I have also seen enough of America, especially during the past eight years, to know that the myth of America which I was taught in school was a beautiful pack of lies. Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Rove, and Brownie and Chertoff, and the rest of the Texan gang -- they are not responsible for killing the American myth. The people who convinced me, finally and fully, are the Americans. Me, you and them. Us.
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Americans are just people.
We are not "special".
We are not more courageous, more virtuous, more right, more honorable, or even better fighters than people in the rest of the world.
And we sure aren't any smarter.
We are just a gang of people who overran the last-discovered continent on Planet Earth and stripped it bare as quickly as we possibly could.
Our mighty endowment of untapped natural resources convinced us of the truth of the myths we created about ourselves.
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Americans are just people. We are not "special". We are not more courageous, more virtuous, more right, more honorable, or even better fighters than people in the rest of the world. And we sure aren't any smarter. We are just a gang of people who overran the last-discovered continent on Planet Earth and stripped it bare as quickly as we possibly could. Our mighty endowment of untapped natural resources convinced us of the truth of the myths we created about ourselves.
The destruction of the Myth of America achieved a certain degree of believability during the Bush-Cheney years, but it did not begin with them. Some would point back to 1971 when Nixon took America off of the gold standard. For example,
It's not a dollar crisis: it's a gold crisis
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Excerpt: The title is a bow to Peter Schiff for his admirable article It's Not an Oil Crisis: It's a Dollar Crisis.
Thirty-five years ago gold, symbol of permanence, was chased out from the Monetary Garden of Eden, replaced by the floating irredeemable dollar as the pillar of the international monetary system. That's right: a floating pillar. The gold demonetization exercise was a farce. It was designed as a fig leaf to cover up the ugly default of the U.S. government on its gold- redeemable sight obligations to foreigners. The word 'default' itself was put under taboo even though it punctured big holes in the balance sheet of every central bank of the world, as its dollar-denominated assets sank in value in terms of anything but the dollar itself. These banks were not even allowed to say 'ouch' as they were looking at the damage to their balance sheets caused by the default. They just had to swallow the loss, obediently and dutifully join the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus of sycophants in Washington praising the irredeemable dollar and the Nirvana of synthetic credit.
For a time it looked like a clever coup as America has benefited at the expense of the rest of the world. It could now buy all the goods and services it wanted from foreign countries in exchange for "little scraps of paper on which some ink has been sprinkled". More importantly, America could establish military bases and start wars on foreign soil paying for them with dollars created out of thin air. Foreigners had to put up and shut up. What used to be "deficits without tears" before, has now become "deficits with laughter".
Few people realized at the time that America, far from giving itself a gift at the expense of foreigners, has fatally shot itself in the foot. At first the wound from this self-inflicted gunshot did not hurt and was quite invisible. Festering and pain came later. The long time-lag makes the causal relationship between the two events fade. Yet the connection exists creating ever more mischief, misdiagnosis, monetary quackery and, ultimately, the greatest credit collapse in history. ... |
And others point back in time to the establishment of the Federal Reserve.
To a few, Washington's crushing of the "Whiskey Rebellion" marked the beginning of the end. Too bad about the way that turned out. Everything could have been so different if Washington had been ventilated as he deserved!
To me though, the point is moot. What is, is. (Whatever "is" means...)
In my mind Professor Fakete's analysis is the most useful explanation going forward now. You may have read last week that Congress just passed their omnibus budget bill laying out spending for the next fiscal year. Three trillion dollars! Which is ten thousand dollars for every man, woman and child in America. I don't know about you, but ten thousand dollars is quite a bit more than the average amount due on my annual 1040. Congress is spending America to death -- and we're talking about a Democratic controlled Congress, not the Bush-Cheney spendocracy.
It is time for a Big Change in America. The problems we face NOW cannot be solved by the politicians we have in office NOW. It is their legacy of achievement over the past few decades that brought us to the point of national bankruptcy. Perhaps some people still believe that our Senators-for-life in the Democratic and Republican parties are competent architects of our future going forward. Not me. I look at people like Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, supposedly "liberal", and I feel sick to my stomach -- and I feel an ever stronger urge to purge when I think about the rest of those bloated egos and bungling swine in Washington D.C.
I don't even believe that any new set of politicians could straighten out America's mess. That is up to individual Americans.
The old myth is dead, but a new story is ready to be told, and we are all in it! This is going to be great people! Let's go out there and Do It To It!
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Pavel C.
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