In short, we should come out of our luxurious bubble that has shielded us from the evils inflicted on billions of humans that have not been as privy to a life of safety and security. Let us traverse the road of reality, sojourning through history and through mirages of hidden truths. Let us dive into the making of the Evil Empire so that we may see what our government has and continues to do in our name. The road ahead will not be easy to swallow or comprehend, yet we must open our minds to the possibility that what has happened is real and what is occurring is not fiction. Only then will we understand why our hands are smeared in the blood of tens of millions of human cadavers and countless more whose lives and futures have been devastated at the hands of the United States of America. Only by knowing who and what we are can we correct ourselves.
Our society is ingrained with an appetite for violence. It is apparent in the over 11,000 murders by firearm per year. It is apparent in Hollywood's gratuitous assembly-line of blood and gore, violence, devastation and death. It is visible in the ever-growing number of video games sold to our children depicting egregious violence, killings and bloodletting. Our society celebrates violence, be it through football, hockey or boxing, television, cartoons and music. Even Disney cartoon movies have as a main theme battles of good versus evil and the plethora of violence, destruction and death associated with them. The US military industrial complex supplies the world with 50 percent of all weapons for sale on the market.
Yet without public demand for violence none of the above would exist. It is the citizenry - with complicit help from government and corporate media - that drives the engine that conditions us toward accepting and participating in our violent society.
Native peoples' lands were taken from them; lies, manipulations and betrayals erased their tribes from the homes they once knew and cherished. Replanted into hellholes called reservations, Indians were left to rot away their existence, given only the evil of Firewater to wash away their inner demons and scars in a land both alien and inhospitable. Hidden from the voracious Anglo onslaught, Indians of talent and ability were left to dwell on a future lost through the disappearance of opportunity. Disease, depression, lack of education and incessant poverty soon followed. Demons of a life wasted and opportunity lost consumed those who escaped the barrel of a gun and the virus of the white man.
Entire ethnicities, tribes, languages and cultures were eviscerated from the face of the Earth by those whose importance of property and ownership superceded the respect for human life. Beautiful peoples took with them to the grave lives living free, roaming pristine and untouched forests, deserts and prairies, being one with nature, respecting everything that breathed and a spirituality that has much to offer our capitalistic civilization. Advanced civilizations in wisdom and spirituality, yet seen as savages to the "more sophisticated" European people, native peoples' way of life was vanished, never to fully flourish again. Millions ethnically cleansed, millions whose lives were made barren, all making way for the destructive bulldozer ravaging land and man. The Evil Empire had sprung to life, a trail of victims visible everywhere the giant walked.
Not satisfied with the killing of millions of native peoples, the citizens of America next decided to unleash hell onto each other. As a result the American Civil War of the latter part of the 19th century killed more than 600,000 people, leaving the United States mourning for brothers and sons, fathers and grandfathers. Graveyards littered the landscape; battlefields were transformed into fields of death and devastation. Divided a prospering nation stood, soaked in blood and agony, splitting apart families, creating widows and orphans. In the end, hundreds of thousands lay dead, many more maimed and wounded, all to quench the voracious appetite for violence, death and destruction.
The Evil Empire's cannibalism was only the beginning of a much greater disease.
Lands and People of Asia
As the Empire grew stronger so too did its addiction for expansion. War with Spain commencing in 1898 brought forth new lands, colonies and treasure. Yet it also brought forth death and destruction. American violence had not dissipated; it had only evolved, with new forms of warfare and destruction arising with the passage of time. Tens of thousands died on both sides. In the end, the United States had conquered both man and land, thereby increasing its power and prestige. The Empire was growing, prospering and learning that force was the means by which to achieve its ends. Force was weapons, intimidation, violence and war. It was victory and imperialism. It was the means to becoming the most powerful nation on the planet. The Evil Empire had grown up, as the Philippines would soon learn.
In 1899 Filipino forces seeking independence from Spain confronted in armed struggle American forces intent on maintaining the colonization of the nation. A ruthless war of attrition between the two forces began. For the next three years tens of thousands of native resistance fighters died at the hands of the much more technologically sophisticated and economically powerful American military. Numerous war crimes were committed by American soldiers. Destruction and looting of property, shooting of captives, rapes of women, torture of prisoners and civilians, devastation of the environment and the forced social engineering of the people were thrust upon the nation in an orgy of occupier lawlessness.
In addition, over 200,000 civilians perished due to the brutal scorched earth policy implemented by the US military that destroyed agriculture, fertile land and villages. In addition, many thousands died from cholera arising out of economic devastation of infrastructure. The harsh subjugation of the Filipino people was a form of collective punishment that America used as a weapon of war in order to pacify the independently minded population. The American intervention in the Philippines indiscriminately erased from the face of the Earth hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This is called genocide, and the Evil Empire got exceedingly good at it.
The reality of what happened over 100 years ago is comfortably hidden away from us today. The American war in the Philippines is today but an asterisk in our history books, yet the gravity of the malevolence cannot be forgotten. It certainly is not included in the educational material of our children, or in those of our own childhood, however. Why is this? What the US government does in our name cannot be made known lest the population rage in anger at the wickedness that America exports abroad. Genocide, collective punishment, scorched earth policy and ethnic cleansing leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings is not something to be proud of. Not when Stalin, Hitler and the Nazis did the exact same thing.
In the Philippines the Evil Empire was only getting warmed up. For the next 100 years it controlled all aspects of the Philippine government. The US installed minions and puppets that kept the populace in dire poverty, robbing the nation blind and fostering an era of inept and corrupt leaders handpicked by America. Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled as dictator of the beleaguered nation from 1965 until his ouster in 1986, is the best example of American complicity in the utter devastation of both the people and economy of the Philippines.
Marcos ruled with extreme harshness, subverting democracy, robbing the nation blind (some estimates have him stealing anywhere from $3 to $30 billion dollars) and killing thousands of dissenters and opposition members who dared speak out against the injustices and inequalities. He brought onto the nation's masses untold suffering, indigence and slave labor, wages and conditions. Hundreds of thousands have died form malnourishment, disease, poverty and exploitation. The nation's debt amassed under Marcos is today responsible for the dire circumstances of the population, and is a reason for the growth of Muslim and Marxist revolutionary groups prospering and threatening the government.
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