7. Given our love affair, no scratch that, our obsession, with shopping, acquiring, owning, and consuming, we keep the Once-ler’s fat, happy, and running at full throttle. As the Truffula trees, Humming-fish, Bar-ba-loots, and Swomee- Swans disappear at an alarming rate, we’re too busy “lovin’ it” at McDonald’s and cashing in on Wal-Mart’s “always low prices” to notice or care. Global temperatures rise, ice shelves plunge into the sea, glaciers recede at alarming rates, violent storms rage, species become extinct, and bees disappear en masse as we intrepidly continue filling our two lives per gallon Hummers with inane consumer goods that we don’t need. “Keeping the economy strong” is indeed a noble calling.
8. As crafty as we are, we are not solely reliant upon military means to impose our cultural imperialism. As Milton Friedman and “the Chicago Boys” demonstrated with their experiment in Chile, neoliberalism is a powerful economic tool with which we can integrate weaker nations into our empire. Astoundingly, nation after developing nation accepted our Trojan horse of “generous” loan packages which in turn forced them to crush organized labor, privatize, deregulate, and cut or eliminate humanitarian expenditures. For many years, Fidel Castro was one of the few hold-outs in the face of our economic tyranny. With the recent emergence of leaders like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, hope looms on the horizon. Yet predictably, we continue to rain misery upon the people of Cuba and are desperately attempting to sell the world on the idea of pouring our food supply into our gas tanks so we can eliminate our dependence on Chavez’s oil and give him the “Fidel treatment.”
To spare ourselves the guilt of our undeniable abetment in crimes against the Earth and nearly all its sentient inhabitants, we desperately cling to the Disneyesque illusion that the United States is a benevolent “policeman to the world” that preserves and advances noble ideals like human rights and freedom.
Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but the analyses of Hannah Arendt and Ward Churchill define our reality much more accurately. No matter how closely an individual US American might adhere to humane principles, we are all “Little Eichmanns.” We can minimize our roles, but there is no escaping participation in our nation’s virtuoso performance of “The Banality of Evil.”
God bless America?
How about God bless humanity by cursing the American Empire?
We desperately need the heavy doses of reality, constraint, and humility that the loss of our military and economic supremacy would bring….
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