Is Truth and Justice the American Way?

   Americans want their fascism soft-boiled.
Americans want gradualism.
They don't want a coup in the middle of the night.
They want to watch the leaves fall off
the tree of freedom one branch at a time 
--Media Fascism, Jon Rappoport

Even though the sewer pipelines
reach far into our houses with their tentacles,
they are carefully hidden from view
and we are happily ignorant of the invisible
Venice of shit underlying our
bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments 
--The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 
Milan Kundera 

Are people bad code? 
--Person of Interest
____________________

Coming up behind a vehicle sporting Florida's "Operation Iraqi Freedom" license plate made Ranger queasy.  Florida's Governor Rick Scott has refused Medicaid funds for our state, so reviling is he of the poor urchins who have the bad luck to be poor in America ... but we have plates benefiting our foreign excursions. 

Apparently a license plate saying, "We support all citizens because we are a democracy" with vanity plate funds going into some general social coffers wouldn't be too cool.

Americans must be insane to accept and correlate aggressive, elective military invasions with the concept of freedom.  Wouldn't the more correct description of the escapade be, "Operation Iraqi Humiliation", or perhaps "Operation Iraqi Castration", or perhaps, "Domination?  Perhaps, "Operation 'He Tried to Kill My Dad!'"

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan had nothing to do with freedom, and yet we swallowed the lie hook, line and sinker.  The path to un-democracy is marked with religious impositions befitting an Augustinian City on the Hill: We may attack evil, because we are chaste.  Myth is more ennobling than reality; As Capt. Jean-Luc Picard says, "Make it so".

When did the United States begin replacing reality with myth?  Surely the original Revolution was an act of suspension of disbelief: "Taxation without representation" was false, and the rebels would surely have been hung as the brigands they were if not successful.  But victors write the history.

Have we ever told the truth? Perhaps, but the litany of untruth is long: The Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, The Banana Wars, The Dominican Republic or Cuba (1960)?  Was Grenada a practice run for Panama?  Was Panama a practice run for Iraq and Afghanistan?  Will those two wars be practice runs for Iran?

What about our domestic actions?  The government's violent response to violations at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, shares similarities with the Iraqi operation.  The Branch Davidians may have been breaking the law by manufacturing firearms without a federal license. They may have been producing automatic versions of the M-16. But were their violations commensurate with the Waco Massacre, destroying their compound and killing 76 men, women and children?

An example of our extreme hypocrisy occurred recently when the U.S. blithely condemned Israel for its "disproportionate response" in its recent "Pillar of Defense" offense which killed 105 people, including many targeted terrorists, in an incursion to address years of bombings on their country; severe disproportionality is the name of our game.  We know that heavy-duty disproportional is the only way to fight and win, and we smugly engage in it because we have deemed ourselves "good", and the bombees "evil".

Bring out the big guns is the American way, and we do not even seem disturbed when the guns are turned against our own citizens, forgetting in those moments that we are supposed to be a democracy, which accords all citizens equal rights, regardless of how loony or destructive they may seem.

Because OUR destructiveness (murder) is in the name of good, and destruction behind the aegis of the U.S. government may not be questioned, lest one become a target themselves of suspicion.  You are with us, or agin' us.  Again, the American Way -- my country, right or wrong.  Only, in a converging world, such isolationism does not serve us well.

The Davidian comparison holds, because collateral damage is necessary when people are being held captive by bad guys.  You must break a few eggs to make an omelet. Only ... the Branch Davidians and the Iraqis did not choose to be "saved" by outside forces.  The deaths in Waco and Iraq were not  justifiable or proportional; they benefited no one and nothing.

The point here is, our aggression and will to destroy starts here at home; it starts in the heart and mind of every one of us.  When our government kills our citizens in violation of well-established rules of conduct, illegal invasions are a stone's throw.

And we wonder how we can say "Iraqi Freedom" without a hiccup.