The Amerikan dream

I see two major problems entrapping people of this country: 1) we don’t know the truths about our history; 2) we know as surely as we know the color of our eyes, the lies, propaganda, myths that are so dominant, so pervasive they permeate the water we drink, the air we breathe, the food we eat; so powerful that we rarely even consider questioning those lies birthed long before we are even conceived.

From conception, we are completely sunk plunged into this legacy of lies and justifications that grows with us, carefully taught, thoroughly pounded into our cells, as our past, our history, our glory, the truths of our nation.

We want to think of ourselves as “good people”, industrious, smarter then most, enterprising. We want to believe we really DESERVE the riches, the life styles, the access to walmart, walgreens, 24/7 cheap stuff, the land, roads, food, street lights; we want to know that we have what we have (and other people don’t) because we’ve worked hard, pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, paid our dues.

We want to think we go around the world truly helping people – not helping ourselves to their resources: their land, their oil, sugar, rubber – whatever we need during whichever decade – even their bodies, their labor, their babies.

We want to believe the people we are ‘helping’ are suffering because of their own ignorance, deprived because of their own lack of diligent productivity, dying because of their own incompetence – not because we have invaded, stolen their resources, and polluted & destroyed their lives.

We don’t want to know that everything – EVERYTHING – we have from our homes on this soil, our education, our jobs – has been gained thru genocide, rape, enslaving people – wars, invasions, occupations.

Who had to die in order for us to be able to pursue the “Amerikan Dream”?

We know the First Nation people had to die, and millions of Africans as well.

Do we know our military was first sent off this land in 1801 to protect U.S. business interests? And the country now known as Libya is where our soldiers fired their guns into.

Do we know that we have overtly invaded, occupied, and/or bombed over 120 countries in our world? Which has enabled us to maintain over 1000 U.S. military bases – that we know about – in the world?

And who has to keep dying for us to pursue the Amerikan Dream?

Most recently we know that over a million Iraqis had to die, and the bloody dust hasn’t settled yet over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Libya – not that we count deaths of collaterally damaged civilians of color – so who knows how many are dying/have died.

Over 300 mostly women in Bangladesh had to burn up in flames in order to keep the steady stream of cheap clothes to wal-mart flowing.

Do we know we have over 80 U.S. military “installations” in a country the size of Indiana? A country we first sent our troops to in 1871; a country our military has been occupying since 1945; a country where we permanently and collaterally ‘damaged’ over 2 million civilians in the name of stopping communism in the early 1950’s?

Do we know that today we are working on building yet another base on one of the islands of that country so it can accommodate U.S. nuclear missiles lugged around on naval submarines and ships, 300 miles from China?

Do you think I am telling you this so you can be depressed? Overwhelmed? Hopeless? So you can glibly justify going back to our lives pursuing the Amerikan dreams as usual because we can’t do anything anyway, it’s tooooo awful, toooooo much.

NO – I’m telling you this so that we can be empowered: with the truth! With the ability to see thru the lies; with freedom; to gain the tools we need to examine our history, lies, myths and tear them down so we can rebuild.

REBUILDING! RECREATING! REDIRECTING! Knowing this legacy on our backs, adjusting its weight, and working to unburden especially the world – but also ourselves – from our u.s. nitemare!