The first time my son’s American family visited us on Vancouver Island, from Houston, Texas,  they asked if they might open the windows of our house. I asked if there was a bad smell, ‘No’, was the reply, ‘it is simply a pleasure to breathe fresh air that doesn’t taste of chemicals.’ Their own house has a large garden, swimming pool, many of the accoutrements of modern living and is situated in a leafy suburb. I could write about my grandson’s amazement at many things but suffice to say that discovering it was safe to swim in the unpolluted lakes and from the beaches here delighted him. He told me, with all the wisdom of a twelve year,old, that some things in Texas, like Clear Lake, are wrongly named.

 

One of my stepsons is to marry a young Californian woman who drove north along the west coast with her  ten year old daughter. In desperation she had obtained permission to educate this child herself because of the poor quality of schooling in ‘Arnie’s Paradise‘. Mother and child were relieved to get off the roads of California to those of Oregon where the paving is less likely to damage a car’s suspension. The mother is still distressed about leaving a brother she helped to support. A man who lost his job, is unable to find work and unable to pay household bills. Now, without power or water, he is in danger of becoming homeless. He also suffers considerable pain for want of expensive dental work.

 

When our future daughter in law stopped at a service station for gas in Washington State a man tapped the driver’s side window. Her reflex was to restart the engine and get the Hell out of there. In California gas stations are self service and if a man taps the window of a woman’s car the safest plan is to drive away. She got the message when the attendant moved to another car and began pumping gas.

 

I read and admire many of the well informed, well considered, academic essays in Truthdig,  Z Net, The Progressive Magazine and downloaded Democracy Now on television each weekday. I am grateful to and informed by all of them but the question of who rules America and indeed the world does not seem to me to be truly addressed. The kind of ‘democracy’ America requires to inflict on rest of us is never examined for its own worth. Does President Obama really want other countries to follow the American example of supplying food stamps to the unemployed because they are not to be trusted with money?  This is a massive disrespect to decent families. Has he no shame for treating the 50% of all American children of families relying on those food stamps in such a manner? Think of it, half of the children in the supposedly richest country in the world depend on food stamps for their meals. As the president shovels trillions of dollars into Wall Street does he either know or care that many of those tax dollars are used to support the Industrial Military Complex of which we were so direly warned by President Eisenhower? Is he not aware that the one percent controlling ninety percent of the money supply are the main beneficiaries of his largesse or is he just doing as instructed and, if so, who is doing the instructing? Behind the industrial military complex are bankers who like their customers the multi-nationals have insatiable appetites for ever more money and power. So may we take a look at the identities of those whose actions determine that Americans – and so many more – will be thrown from their homes, loose their jobs, have little or no health care, lose their pensions, be deprived of education, suffer usury to bankruptcy by credit card companies, control the ‘news’ supply and are generally convinced that violence provides satisfactory solutions to problems. Richard Holbrooke is proclaiming this spurious message, repeating the president’s words, to the world this very day with truth in no way related to his message. Truth was replaced many years ago by the American Dream, now the world’s nightmare in which might is right and devil take the hindmost. Not just an eye for an eye to make the whole world blind but a mind for a mind to make killing right, torture humane and go for it no matter the cost.

 

Many years ago a man often mooted as an icon of American manhood, John Wayne, used to sail his converted World War Two minesweeper ‘yacht’ full speed ahead into Nanaimo Harbor and smaller boats got swept aside. Mr. Wayne would stroke the air with a bottle while declaiming to a world which could not hear what he said nor had desire to. Like President Bush who, on the evidence of lies, had over a million human beings killed in Iraq, John Wayne  was a draft dodger. A man with faith in the gun as long as somebody else risked his life doing the killing. But then, successive American governments have shown faith in Atomic Bombs, Agent Orange and Uranium tipped ammunition, all of which have caused deformed babies to be born and will do for many years to come.

 

America claims to lead the world but to where? What is the example it sets? What is the message? Where is the honesty? What are the ethics? What are the values and who really rules America? Wherever Midas rules he rules absolutely and we know what happened to him…or would we rather not remember? It was Woodrow Wilson and Lloyd George who set the rates of reparation for Germany at the Palace of Versailles after the First World War and set the stage for the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. What are you setting the stage for in your present adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Palestine? How will you ever repay China and Japan for the treasury notes they hold? Do you need another world war to recover from the impossible debts already incurred without those to come from another 30,000 young American lives put on the line to kill those who never harmed them? Victory in such a war would be an inedible desert to a holocaust dinner.

 Jim Dodds

 

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