The Global Empire that does not wear 'Red Coats' (nor funny looking helmets)
The issue is not anti-Americanism, but rather an undiagnosed but roiling anti-Global-Empire issue throughout the Middle East (and much of the rest of the world).
There should not be any surprise at the level of resistance, and even street rebellion, in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and the rest of the region --- which is being misdiagnosed (or simply distorted by the media) as anti-Americanism.
What's the big surprise in these attacks in Libya and the Middle East?
What's the big surprise in violence against all troops, from all Western NATO countries?
When indigenous people view, even partially, the entire array of forces in their lands as representing an "Occupying Global Empire", which talks of modernizing and changing their culture, but effectively uses vastly superior military power to control the direction of any changes, it should not be surprising that there is a uprising against what they perceive as Global Empire interference, or even exploitation of their relative weakness. The same could be said of colonial Americans facing what the "Occupying" British Empire described as merely "influence", or governing assistance in the colonies --- or what the "Occupying" German forces of the 1940's merely described as co-ordination with the 'Vichy' government (which that Empire had conveniently put in place to suppress resistance).
When you are running a global Empire the Viceroy (as the
British Empire called the 'vice royal' representative of the Empire)
is bound to be a target for the territorial subjects who despise the
Empire, just as many 'Vichy' officials were targeted by the French
resistance --- like forces of the perceived Global Empire in the
Middle-East are targeted in "Green on Blue" resistance.
The
only surprise, as I see it, is that most Americans have no idea that
their former country has been 'captured' and now fully "Occupied"
by a DGE (disguised global Empire), by a
corporate/financial/militarist Empire, which hides behind the facade
of its 'bought and owned' modernized two-party 'Vichy' sham of
faux-democratic and totally illegitimate government --- just as the
Nazi Empire earlier tried to disguise itself with the crude and
single-party 'Vichy' facade regime in 'captured' and "Occupied"
France c. 1940.
A critical issue that the domestic Occupy movement has to
correctly 'frame' (as George Lakoff would say) is the key issue of
the unjustness of military and money-power, and such framing must
'change the mindset' or analogy of what has now been very guilefully
framed by the ruling elite 1% as a founding freedom issue of
America.
The distorted framing of the 1% is that America was
founded on an individualistic 'freedom' to succeed by hard work, and
that this constitutes the 'American Dream', and furthermore that this
system should be impressed on a global level. This perverted
vision of such an 'American Dream' is absolutely wrong, but supported
with powerful propaganda all the way back to the Heratio Alger
fable.
The real and counter-version of the American
Dream was of a commonwealth of individual people to achieve freedom
from the entrenched, elitist, un-fair, and most importantly
un-democratic hierarchy of the British EMPIRE. To achieve a
'new world' where a group of people could throw off the bonds and
power-based 'might makes right' fearful and unsustainable political
philosophy of hierarchical rule that had ruled since the age of the
Roman Empire in the 'old world'.
[As an aside the perversion
and corruption of the original 'American Dream' of a new world
devolved into our current corrupt, shabby, and hustling grifter
vision of a death-spiraling unsustainable world is beautifully
critiqued in fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald in "Gatsby",
and in non-fiction by Morris Berman in "Why America Failed; The
Roots of Imperial Decline"].
The Occupy movement needs to
"expose", and then confront this sophisticated and
money-powered distortion of what America and Americans originally
envisioned and worked toward as a 'new world' can only be
accomplished by clearly, compellingly and honestly pointing out that
what the ruling elite 1% is currently enforcing through their
money-power is exactly the inverse of the real 'American Dream' and
showing the vast multitude of Americans that the 1% 'framing' and
propagandistic dystopia is precisely the same as a continuation of
the wealthy, entrenched, and unsustainable British Empire's vision of
keeping the American colonies 'captured' and "Occupied" for
the unjust, un-democratic, entrenched, greedy, and violent control of
King George and the 1% who already controlled the wealth of England
and half the world.
The only difference between the British
Empire's 1% capture and "Occupation" of our colonial lands
and the current 1% 'empire-thinkers' capture, control, and violent
oppression of what we think of as 'our country's commonwealth and
freedom' is that neither the existing Occupy Movement, NOR ANY OTHER
MOVEMENT, has yet exposed, educated, and confronted the far more
sophisticated propaganda of this 21st century DGE (disguised global
Empire) only posing as our fading country.
Best luck and love to the fast expanding "Occupy Empire" educational and revolutionary movement against this well disguised Global 1% Empire that doesn't wear Red Coats.
Liberty, democracy, justice, and equality.
Over
Violent/Vichy
II
Empire,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
