America The Imperial

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Sep 9, 2009, 00:19
Courtesy Of The Online Journal

When was it that this nation decided enough was never enough? Was it with the very settlers themselves who first befriended the native populations then began to systematically eliminate them for their land and its resources?

Was it with the addition of slavery to add black muscle to raise the white man’s cotton, expanding the agrarian economy exponentially? Was it with that push to the western frontier that never stopped, that continued to push south into South and Central “American” nations, north to appropriate Alaska and stopped barely at Canada’s borders?

Was it in entering World War II to save Europe from itself and Asia from Japan, becoming the friendly military giant, saving the planet from Nazis totalitarianism? We consequently also saved ourselves from our worst depression with the war and exited an industrial and military superpower sina qua non.

Yet we also instituted Operation Gladio, with called for leave-behind fascist armies to stifle and destroy socialist or communist movements that might make a bid for aiding the less fortunate peasants in Europe, and to drive those movements into their graves, thereby securing Europe from the newly minted Soviet threat.

Was it positioning us against our former ally, a war-dazed Russia and its autocratic leader Joseph Stalin, terrorizing them even with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no European cities, including any of our former non-colored enemies? Was that the turning point, the opening of Pandora’s atomic box, from America the beautiful to America the Imperial, fully capitalized with war gains, and with a desire for power and unbounded expansionism as the world protector?

Was that the ironic if not pyrrhic victory of “saving the world” and somehow losing our national soul in this new Superpower role, even pushing us to the moon and back to plant our flag on the first man-touched island in space, and intimating all worlds beyond were ours to follow?

Was it the sum total of this history that interfered with small-town America’s future, building bigger and bigger cities, roadways, industrial complexes, the world’s leader to the future, assassinating a president (our own), his brother, civil rights leaders on our way, at home, and offing all shapes and forms of leaders and governments abroad to heal to our ever-increasing needs for resources for our consumption and interests in OPB (other people’s business)?

And for all that it increased our capitalism’s Imperial wealth and power, it brought a staggering cost to defend and remain in attack mode, a cost that like the former Soviet Union’s military budget sucked up its social and consumer budget/economy. And today, do we linger in that shadow, with the collected US armed forces, mercenary armies, plus special ops men and agents from the CIA, the Pentagon, the “United Nations,” NATO, and the like?

And has the American budget -- generated from taxpayer money both private and corporate -- been swiveled, swindled slowly but surely towards giving the lion’s share of those monies to the pursuit of wars, i.e., to the bankrupting of America, along with the excesses of various financial corporations that profited greatly from this historic expansionism? So that now we have ended up trillions of dollars in debt, and unable to fund a public option insurance plan, let alone a fully potent single-payer insurer plan, the kind that all those “lesser nations” like Canada, France, England, Sweden, etcetera, take for granted?

Is the problem really: we can’t afford both an Empire and a humane consumer economy, albeit capitalism especially if and when it were duly regulated? And therefore we carp compulsively over words like “socialism” engulfing our economy when a corporate fascism has beat it to the punch, crippling our banking and credit system, and leaving little, especially after bailouts, stimuli and the like, for a universal healthcare system?

Is the inability to just talk about it sanely, despite the fact that we have already insured 80 million Americans under three single-payer insurance plans (Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration) testament to the fact of the plans’ effectiveness and its opponents’ insanity? Is it the for-profit driven nature of insurance companies, Big Pharma, certain medical professions and certain hospitals that makes universal health care unaffordable? And has it not been the injection of for-profit’s Imperial need for more, the real and deadly flu in the economy?

And is it that given the vortex of funds that go to “defense,” which is more often “offense,” plus the sanctimonious sucking of defense corporations, like the insurance corporations, like the financial corporations illegal lending and behavior patterns, destroying not only the quality of American life, but the health of American life, the health of the American economy, transferring what wealth there is upwards to the top 5 or 10 percent earners, and sucking it from the middle and working classes, exacerbating the plight of the poor, the aged, the sick, the inform, the unlucky?

And should we ask finally, “What price Empire,” and where do we draw the line in the sand around this imperial “New World Order” to contain it, to temper its voracity that steals the food of life from the tables of America’s families, the same who supply the troops for the wars, the workers of the present and future, now suffering a huge wave of unemployment, a loss of union rights, pensions, healthcare, and the right to support those families with some dignity?

In becoming America the Imperial, the multi-national glutton that destroys its homegrown companies for cheap and/or slave labor abroad, what was happened to America the beautiful? It breaks my heart to say it is becoming America the ugly, the selfish, the self-centered, the dog-eat-dog, the Paradise of Bernie Madoff, Goldman Sachs, the multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses, the Cerberus’s dining on the guts and spare parts of American industry, the gluttonous for-profit destruction of the environment, the purposeful neglect of the very infrastructure that holds up and holds together our physical nation.

In America the Imperial where has the axiom “love thy neighbor” gone? And how has it been totally replaced by devour thy neighbor, plunder your economy, profit from a casino economy, become your own emperor in your own private imperial realm, foregoing your rightful taxes in off-shore accounts and bribing your legislators to keep taxes regressive, so as to reduce the funds your government needs to operate and be duly humane to one and all?

I am looking at those small nations whose business is not war, but interacting with their neighbors, where those with more don’t chaff at sharing it with those who have less. If being human, if enjoying life simply, if knowing when enough is enough all seem utopian, then welcome to a horrific future, something like the film Brazil, written and directed by Terry Gilliam, a combination of The Matrix and Orwell’s 1984. If you haven’t seen or read the latter at least look at the Wiki links to see the comparisons to America the Imperial.

America the beautiful, or at least the vision of it, has vanished in the dust of pollution, profit, and an orgy of ethical profligacy. And done so to engorge and expand America the Imperial, in which the brain of the New World Order resides, in close contact with its counterparts around the globe, who would merge into one mega-empire, NWO-Imperial. Tyranny, subversion of individual rights for corporate profit reign in these systems. And life is desirably expendable for profit.

So let us consider the ineffable desirability of the nation-state that lives according to its means, like Canada, though it is now coming under the Imperial pressures of its own worst leaders. Let us look to political systems that can provide healthcare, as well as education, as well as reasonable defense, infrastructure, liberty, equality and fraternity. It’s not utopian. It’s human. And curiously (for those who like references to higher powers) requires relying on those ancient commandments not to covet thy neighbor’s goods and such.

That is the America the beautiful I’m looking for. Will epitaphs arise from the rafters, “Communist,” “Socialist,” “crazy,” “impossible,” “not over our dead bodies” and so on? But I remand them to the wisdom of the great architect Mies Van Der Rose that “less is more.” Less expenditure for defense, more money for healthcare; less interference in every other nations’ business, more money for our business, as well as healthcare, uncompromised, like good public education, good infrastructure, the total picture of things necessary to have a good nation, a good life, and a good future. I rest my case in the face of 9/11’s eighth anniversary.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. His new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” is available at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.

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