The U.S. public has become immune to its government killing millions of Koreans, Vietnamese, Afghans, and Arabs, as long as it does not interrupt with the public's busy daily lives. The opportunity costs to the American people is costing them universal healthcare, affordable higher education, modern mass transportation, and economic security in old age, but the public does not seem to notice, and cannot connect the dots. They still think that the U.S. has the highest standard of living in the world. The reality is that the U.S. comes in at about 19thon everything from the infant mortality rate to high speed internet; except military spending and political prisoners at which the U.S. is number one.
How did the U.S. fall so low when it started with such high hopes on July 4th 1776 with the Declaration of Independence that proclaimed:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"?
Those words never really meant what most Americans think they mean. They were written by the elites, for the elites and the wannabe elites in the lottery of capitalism American-style. By "Life" is meant for those that can afford the necessities and luxuries of life. "Liberty" is the liberty to close off the commons from the natives and those that do not own property. "Happiness" is the happiness that comes with owning slaves, and finding foreign sources of cheap labor.
As the greed for more and more land, more slaves and more wealth grew, the elites declared that it was Manifest Destiny for them to spread capitalism and the American way of life across all of North America. It was then that Asia's destiny became America's destiny. When the U.S. boundary met the Pacific Ocean the U.S. did not stop its Westward expansion. It kept on going to Hawaii, Japan, China and Korea. The U.S. joined the European scramble for overseas colonies and empire.
Capitalism must expand to survive. Adam Smith's quaint form of capitalism was based on bartering. The butcher, baker and candlestick maker traded their products with each other providing all with meat, bread and light. Modern capitalism American-style is based on money, and money is based on debt. Debt requires that interest be paid by the borrower to the lender, thus syphoning off capital from the capitalist to the financier. The capitalist must expand production and find sources of cheap labor to pay the interest and to skim a profit too. Expanding production means that more and more natural resources are needed. To produce more requires even cheaper labor and automation. To sell an ever increasing amount of finished products of capitalism requires advertising and expanding to foreign markets. If any link in the chain is broken then the Ponzi scheme of capitalism collapses into an economic depression.
Economic depressions cause social unrest, civil disturbances and class conflict. When the social hierarchy of capitalism is shaken by economic depression, then capitalism must restore order either with violent repression or appeasement by redistributing some of the wealth to reduce tension. The first instinct of the capitalists is to resort to violence and repression to preserve their wealth. That is why capitalism and true democracy cannot coexist. One or the other has to give or the system is in danger of breaking down entirely.
The natural political order for capitalism is right-wing dictatorship, martial law and fascism. Only by continuous expansion, imperialism and the exploitation of others can there be a compromise between capitalism and democracy domestically. When U.S. presidents say that the "American Way of Life" is being threatened by enemies what they mean is that small countries resist being subjugated and exploited by the U.S. Empire.
When the U.S. first began to expand beyond the shores of the Pacific Ocean they were met with rejection. Ancient societies such as in Japan, Korea and China had civilizations with thousands of years of history. They had their own social order, their way of life and they were self-sufficient. They told the U.S. capitalists to go away. Such behavior by Asians was intolerable to the U.S. capitalist and merchant classes who wanted to sell their excess production and make trading profits. The U.S. was outraged that Asians, whom the white supremacists Euro-Americans saw as being non-Christian barbarians and inferior humans, would act so superior as to refuse to buy and sell with U.S. traders. How was the U.S. to expand trade when it was met with such 'insolence'? The answer that came naturally was to send in the navy with gunboats and the marines with bayonets to subjugate the 'insolent barbarians' to either open up to trade or have their cities bombarded with cannon balls and burnt to the ground.
The "West was won" with genocide of the Native Americans, and if genocide was needed to subjugate Asia, then the U.S. would use it, and it did. The U.S. continued its killing spree in the Philippians, Korea, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia. The U.S. considers the Pacific Ocean a U.S. lake.
The U.S. is still trying to control the world with cannon balls. The cannon balls keep getting bigger, more technologically complex and more genocidal. The U.S. cannot accept the reality that it cannot control the world. The more it tries to, the more destruction, death and chaos it causes. Instead of creating world order the U.S. keeps creating world disorder. World disorder threatens domestic order as more and more of the U.S. wealth is drained off by military expenditures and maintaining a foreign empire.
Vladimir
Lenin explained how today's U.S. foreign policy works in his 1917 thesis on the
causes of World War One: " Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism ". Capitalism leads to monopoly, monopoly leads
to imperialism and imperialism leads to war.
Capitalism also leads to inequality.
Inequality and democracy cannot coexist forever because there are limits
to expansion and growth. To preserve
inequality requires fascism and a police state.
Democracy can only thrive if there is more equality. Eventually, choices will be made between fascism
or democracy, and between capitalism or something else?
(Article changed on May 12, 2018 at 22:46)
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