I talk to average people about the situation in Gaza as often as possible, in a variety of contexts. For people who are new to examining US foreign policy with a critical eye, I have to remember that in order to do, they must first be made aware of the fact that they live in the heart of an empire.
This is ignored far too often by subject matter experts used to talking to audiences that already know this. If we want to build the broadest support possible, we cannot forget that building a movement requires meeting people where they are at so that they can gradually understand more deeply. As they learn how much they are being lied to, they will seek out those who know the score so they can learn more on their own.
Fortunately, I live in a community with a newspaper that still provides access to community members who want to share information and opinions. When someone says "no one reads newspapers anymore," I ask them how long it would take them to have 15,000 people read the signs they hold at weekly demonstrations in the area, because that's the approximate circulation. I tell them that studies have shown that letters to the editor and guest opinion columns are among the most-read parts of the paper. Then I remind them that these readers are mostly older folks, who vote disproportionately and many of whom are influencers in the community.
I hope that more people who are fortunate enough to still have a paper that values their opinions will write, and support these valuable but fast-disappearing avenues avenues to public education by subscribing.
Here's my latest column in our local paper, explaining why the US supports genocide.
Increasingly, citizens are asking why the U.S. continues to support the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The answer is simple: To our foreign policy establishment, Israel is a critical outpost of the American empire. As President Biden has often said, "If Israel didn't exist, we'd have to invent it."
When Biden told ABC interviewer George Stephanopoulos, "I'm running the world," he was acknowledging the fact that America is a global empire. While some will scoff at the idea, it is too late to deny it. The Empire has no clothes.
It explains why we have over 800 military installations around the world and why the Pentagon budget is more than that of the world's next 10 largest militaries combined. No nation is such a threat that it justifies spending over $1 trillion dollars per year on "defense"-related costs.
It's understandable that most Americans don't realize they live in the heart of an empire. Media figures and politicians carefully avoid the term. We don't learn this fact in school. Even most history teachers don't realize it. But we must recognize it. It is the reason our government is complicit in genocide.
We cannot be afraid to say this. Endless war is incompatible with self-rule. A democratic government would not defy the will of the overwhelming majority of its citizens who oppose the genocide. When the U.S. supports violence around the world, it does so in our name. In claiming to be a democracy, we take responsibility. Ask any German citizen.
Martin Luther King, Jr said in 1967, "America is the world's greatest purveyor of violence in the world." It's still true, but we no longer seriously question politicians and pundits who tell us we must support such violence. It's not for freedom, democracy or self-defense. The actions of the Empire only reflect the wishes of Wall Street investors. What we are told are "American interests" are never those of average citizens.
Let's hope that U.S. complicity in genocide awakens Americans to the costs
of Empire. After all, average Americans are not spared its depredations. As the financial crisis of 2008 proved, we're not the first priority of the Empire's managers. Nothing takes priority over the unfettered pursuit of profit. Not Palestinian children. Not American workers. Not even Israelis, who will eventually realize that they, too, are victims of an empire they depend on to continue subjugating the victims of their 100-year project of dispossession.
Though we're at the highest risk of nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, you'd never know it from the lack of public opposition to policies seemingly designed to lead to war with Iran, Russia, North Korea and China at the same time. Those policies only make sense when you realize that the US is trying to forestall the premature end of what neocons call their "Project for a New American Century."
In 2000, a group of neocons (including Dick Cheney) published a plan for global dominance by imposing what the authors called "Pax Americana," which called for peace through war. Those plans led to disaster in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and beyond. Their ideological disciples have now set their sights on war with Iran. These are the empire managers.
In the face of the growing climate crisis devastating the US and the world, America cannot afford to send National Guard troops into foreign wars when they are needed to help address disasters at home.
Dismantling the global US Empire is the first step back from the nuclear and ecological brink. Americans must unite now to stop this mad rush to WWIII.
Time is running out.
This article was first published in the Albany (Oregon) Democrat-Herald. I hereby give my permission to reprint this, unedited, with attribution to me and to the Democrat-Herald.
(Article changed on Oct 27, 2024 at 8:57 PM EDT)
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