The Democratic Underground Post Of The Day: American Arrogance

11 Mar, 2004 by John Hawkins

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There’s a thread at the Democratic Underground called “American Arrogance” and as you’d expect, it’s loaded with America bashing. No big surprise there given how much left-wingers seem to enjoy obsessively rant about what’s wrong with America.

Here are a few select quotes from the thread……

Resistance: I think Mike Ruppert said …(of From the Wilderness, an excellent newsletter)

America is like a dysfunctional family, where the Dad is molesting the daughter and everyone knows it but doesn’t say anything for fear of disrupting the image of ‘family’.

I didn’t say it as well as Mike did but you get the idea.

maveric: American superiority = Hate and Intolerance. Flame me all to hell if you wish but that seems to be what it equates to. The arrogant WASP culture is waging war against all those who are not from their nest. People are hated for their color, creed and ethnic backgrounds. They wave the flag and pound the bible and tell everyone who doesn’t that they are unamerican and will burn in hell. That is more than arrogance. That is hateful grandiose at its worst and it will eventually be the downfall of all “american culture”. Our nation and culture will perish like nazi germany and imperial rome unless we as americans modify our attitudes and come down from our ivory towers.

Solon: I think the better analogy would be…

Think of America in the house, he just turned 17 and just found his dad’s (UK) Machine gun. Exalted in the power of the weapon, he looks at all of his various cousins, and grandparents, even his parents, with suspicion. He’s holding them all (the world) hostage, and if any step out of line, he shoots them without remorse. I believe that is a better analogy.

sweetheart: The arrogance is a bit more militarist. Chances are that a non-american flag-citizen will be occupied by the american military, and have their rights impinged by the american empire, either by companies not restricted by justice, or by dictatorship supported by american lies.

America is 90% a massive army of empire occupying the globe with the bullets aimed at most of the human race. Americans inside the US see the police state part of the empire, the gestapo presence and undermining of civil institutions. Outside, people realize that their democratic freedom is not real, and rather they are “ruled” peoples by the country of the big bases……

Then along comes joe american citizen who’s a CNN view of america walking down the street. If he supports the flag state, then he himself is bearing arms towards those people, to injure them and their livelihoods.

If he disavvows the actions of the flag state, he will be safer whilst amongst people whom his state persecutes.

The arrogance of americans could be tied to this gross ignorance of the realpolitik meaning of a Roman Citizen in a meetup with foreign people, and that ones government represents his goodwill towards those people as a empire-protection racket with satellite state status. This conundrum of a land of the free build on the repression of all peoples and democracies.

The planet is occupied by an empire american people are generally unaware of (and could care less about), and voila! Arrogance.

It is not a question of superiority. It is the FACT of the military occupation and that all the body politic of the US stands behind empire building and empire expansion on this ill-advised neoliberal adgenda. The democratic version of clinton was no better, the miltiary has taken over the nation, that the executive is just a barnacle on the side of the machine that answers to no citizen.

JohnOneillsMemory: I see Americans as zombies who have been drugged by corporations and their own government. Our 400 years of racial holocaust and entitlement mentality has been inflamed and exploited to Nazi proportions with a comparable body count. We are living in the birth of the Fourth Reich.

I sense you are trying to write in a gentle and politic voice. I agree with you generally but am much more alarmed and think the problem is much much much worse than you portray it.