The American Character (Or Lack Thereof): Torture Edition
When history judges early 21st century USA, the verdict will be harsh. The first decade of this century will likely be known as the decade in which the notion of "American exceptionalism" (a delusionary notion to begin with) died. What killed off the exceptionalist myth? Was it the initiation of multiple wars leading to carnage comparable to that of the Dresden air raids or Guernica? Was it the flagrant nose-thumbing of the rest of the international community as such carnage was carried out? Was it the relative apathy of US citizens and those representatives of the so-called opposition party in the face of ever-worsening human rights violations committed by a White House that can only be described as fascist? Those elements will certainly be among those considered in the court of historical analysis. The true death knell to the exceptionalist myth will be said to have occurred in the early fall of 2006 when a Republican-led congress (with the meek enabling of a Democrat minority party) made torture the law of the land and simultaneously trashed the standard of habeas corpus - a move that no doubt puts the might USA in the company of world powers past: Stalin's USSR, Hitler's Germany, ad nauseum.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."