Global
Research, January 22, 2020
Region: USA
Theme: History
Some
years ago, David Ignatius wrote an article in the Washington Post
titled, ‘Replant the American Dream’ (1), in which he told of travelling the
world as a foreign correspondent some 35 years ago, and how he believed that as
an American he carried a kind of white flag, presumably of purity and moral
superiority, signifying that he – being an American – was ‘different’, and that
“the world knew it”.
He
then noted dejectedly that the US was slowly “shredding the fabric that defines
what it means to be an American”, that Americans are now seen as “hypocrites
who boast of our democratic values but who behave lawlessly and with contempt
for others”. His basic premise was that the US, and Americans generally, had
“used up all their seed corn” and needed now to reach out to the world and
‘share America’s values’ once again.
He
then ended with a statement of hope about the celebration of American
Thanksgiving Day. Reading from his mythological American history book, he
recounted the Pilgrims’ desolate fears as they departed the Old World for
America, and “the measureless bounty they found in the new land”, which they
shared with the local natives. You have already read an accurate account of the
first Thanksgiving, which was a bit short on sharing measureless bounty.
Ignatius ended with the words: “We need to put America’s riches back on the
table and share them with the world, humbly and gratefully.” I wrote a reply to
Mr. Ignatius that said in part:
You
said that when you travelled the world as a correspondent carrying your
American flag, you believed and felt you were different from all the others, a
perception all foreigners shared. But that isn’t exactly how it was. What you
really meant to say was “I was better than them, and they knew it”. Your
despair is not from having shredded your fabric, but a nostalgic regret
that those people have finally realised you are not better than them, but
are worse, and that they no longer respect you but despise you. You don’t
want to reach out and ‘share America’s riches’. What you want is to replant the
false utopian values of American superiority in the minds of all those people
so you can once again travel the world and tell yourself you are better than
everyone else – and to once again see that delusion in their eyes.
You
said you must stop behaving as if you were in a permanent state of war, but
your America has always been in a permanent state of war. That’s what you
do. Wars of aggression are what define you as a nation.
The Collective American
Consciousness: America is to be Judged by its Citizens, not its Politicians…
You
don’t want the world to think badly of you about your culture of torture,
massacres and war, but you have no intention of ceasing them.
You
continue to destroy nations, topple governments, foster regional wars and
revolutions, reduce small countries to poverty and misery, but you want to be
judged only by the utopian values you preach but never follow.
You
say that Americans “travelling and sharing” will make everything okay again,
that you would no longer be misunderstood.
But
why do you think your US today is the world’s most hated nation? It isn’t
because the world doesn’t understand you, but because it does understand you.
You are reviled as a nation and as a people, for your values that produce only
instability, terror, misery, poverty and death.
You
say you want to “give something back to the world”. Well, maybe you could begin
by giving back the country you live in, to those from whom you stole it. Maybe
you could give Panama back to Columbia and Hawaii back to the Hawaiian people.
And maybe Puerto Rico back to the Puerto Ricans. Maybe you could give Korea
back to the Koreans and stop preventing the unification they have wanted for the
past 60 years. Maybe you could get out of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Maybe you would
like to give back the wealth you forcibly plundered from about 100 nations with
the strength of your military.
Perhaps
you would like to give back to Chile the hundreds of billions worth of copper
you stole. Maybe you would like to return all the gold you plundered from all
of Central and South America and the Caribbean, when you repeatedly invaded
those countries, forced open – and then emptied – the vaults in their central banks.
Maybe you would like to convince Citibank to give back the billions in gold it
stole from the Chinese citizens who trusted it. Maybe you would like to give
back to the Philippines and Nicaragua and Haiti the peace and happiness they
had before you colonised and destroyed them.
Maybe
you would like to give back to mothers in Iraq the 500,000 babies that Madeline
Albright killed.
You
said you wanted to share America’s riches with the world, but the time for that
is long past. You no longer have any riches to share with anyone, and you never
shared them even when you did have. Instead, you shared your depleted uranium
artillery with the people of Iraq and Libya, who today have fetuses born that
are described as ‘unidentifiable lumps of flesh’. For a decade, you shared
napalm and Agent Orange with the people of Vietnam who today, fifty years
later, still have tens of thousands of hideously-deformed babies being born.
Your
CIA shared its 1,000-page torture manual and its Death Squad training with
dozens of your dictators in Latin America. You shared your brand of democracy
with Yugoslavia, converting it from a peaceful federation to a broken and
pathetic mess of despair, and you then shared that same template with a dozen
other nations, priding yourself on your “color revolutions”, leaving nothing
but death and misery in each of them.
If
you don’t mind, we don’t want you to share anything more with us.
We
have had enough exposure to American-style freedom, democracy and human rights,
to last us for generations.
And,
to tell you the truth, we in the world have lost our stomach for your worldwide
carpet of atrocities, brutality, death and misery, as well as our tolerance for
your hypocrisy.
All
we want is for you to just go home, mind your own goddamned business, and get
your dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of most of the world’s nations
you are exploiting. The seed corn that you refer to, is gone, but it was not
eaten. It just rotted.
*
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Larry
Romanoff is a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held
senior executive positions in international consulting firms, and owned an
international import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at
Shanghai’s Fudan University, presenting case studies in international affairs
to senior EMBA classes. Mr. Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing
a series of ten books generally related to China and the West. He can be
contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com. He is a frequent contributor to
Global Research.
Notes
(1)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016196830
The
original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright
© Larry
Romanoff, Global Research, 2020
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