Cultural Defect

Introduction
While writing GSQ, some people complained I was too hard on Americans. They aren't as racist as I claim. They aren't the Imperialists of my imagination. Then, Lo! Here was May 1, 2006 and the months preceding it. Any sampling of the TV channels - network or local, satellite or cable or broadcast - revealed angry White Anglo-Saxon Christians denouncing the millions of Hispanic protestors. The local ABC station ran a special from a reporter "imbedded" with Minutemen on the U.S. border. Those vigilantes kept pointing out "them," the vermin scurrying across the border. The veneer is even thinner than I thought ...

Introduction

While writing GSQ, some people complained I was too hard on Americans. They aren't as racist as I claim. They aren't the Imperialists of my imagination.

Then, Lo! Here was May 1, 2006 and the months preceding it. Any sampling of the TV channels - network or local, satellite or cable or broadcast - revealed angry White Anglo-Saxon Christians denouncing the millions of Hispanic protestors. The local ABC station ran a special from a reporter "imbedded" with Minutemen on the U.S. border. Those vigilantes kept pointing out "them," the vermin scurrying across the border.

The veneer is even thinner than I thought ...

The most incredible, racist remarks are being passed off as fact and news. One of the worst offenders is Lou Dobbs, CNN's non-stop anti-Hispanic rabble rouser. He's been going on and on for months, getting bolder and bolder. It is amazing and revealing that CNN does not take him off the air. I don't watch CNN enough anymore to know whether there is any counterweight to Lou Dobbs on CNN, but I doubt it.

Yesterday's protest demonstrations are the first on-the-street show of force in opposition to this Bandit Administration. The Conquest of Iraq has not been a sufficient irritant to bring out huge numbers of Americans in protest. Americans have not been enraged by the illegal and incompetent processes of Bandit government, some of them worse crimes than Watergate. There haven't been massive protests against reductions and dilutions of the so-called saftey net. There are no general strikes against lost jobs and increasing oppression of the working class. In short, during 5 years of Bandit government, Americans have been a passive bunch, accepting whatever happens with barely a grumble. (So much for informed participation in democracy.)

CNN's Lou Dobbs and other white citizens, mostly conservatives, are making a hubbub about immigrants. Why now? The correlation has to be white people's white collar jobs being transplanted to China, India and elsewhere. When jobs done by the underclass were stolen by robots or Thailand's sweat shops, that was not important; we heard little about it. In fact, the same white loudmouths railing against immigrants had been telling us the globalization of the lower classes was a Good Thing. But lately it is different: white collared rednecks are being hung out to dry.

So, what does all this come to? Imperialism.

You may think that a strange answer. I would have you think otherwise. Imperialism, racism, tribalism, sexism, prejudice, bigotry and hatred are all part and parcel of the same thing. The fundamental common principle is 'I am better than you.' All those different, ugly behaviors are expressions of that same central feeling. It is the glue of difference that binds relatives into a tribe. It is what makes bosses feel justified in commanding workers, or whipping slaves. It is what many men believe about themselves when they abuse the women and children about them. It is why people who feel that way explode when challenged, because to reject their feelings is to deny their existence.

It is, in its most organized form, to abuse whole populations and nations for one's own purposes. Very little separates the Nazis and most Victorian Englishmen. At the height of Empire, the British assured themselves they were superior to all others. The fact that they ruled almost all the world proved the point. How does one justify imposing the Raj on Hindus, except by saying the British know better than the natives? The British colonials took exactly the same attitude toward the Indians who happened to occupy North America before the Brits got there. That attitude was taken up by later generations who became Americans and proceeded to exterminate the Red Man. Here, in California, just a century ago, hunters were paid bounties for the Indian scalps they turned in. In that way, almost all the Indians in Northern California and Nevada were ruthlessly murdered, as attested in the famous story of "Ishi, Last of His Kind." It is not a far step from slaughtering Indians to Crusade in Iraq, Iran and Syria.

Why do people feel they are better than others? I don't know. It is a severe character defect. I think it is cultural; i.e., passed on to each generation by the teachings and example of the elders. If the culture did not support notions of inequality, of superiority and inferiority, probably very few people would adopt those attitudes. As it is, people with weak character or defective development can rely on their culture to make it up for them (which is why culture is an important contributor to the problem). I think a strong person, secure in his or her own personality, does not need the comparison with others for sustenance.

It follows from the foregoing that racism, Imperialism, etc have the same cultural roots, and are compensations for weakness, not strength. And that is the Achilles heel of the Minutemen and all the those egging on the vigilantes: they are weak, not strong. And that is the central insight of Osama Bin Laden's strategy in his war against America.