As a vassal state of the Empire, NZ has to understand what is happening in the US because what happens there has implications everywhere. So their current madness about Obama's birth certificate and the violence around getting a better health care system is important. It just makes no sense until you read Dana Blankenhorn: The 1969 Game: Days of Rage
When a political thesis is overthrown, when a generation's assumptions about political right or wrong cease to be the majority view, the inevitable result is rage.That's what is happening at the "town hall" meetings over health care. It's not just that activists are feeding their people lies. It's that people are acting on those lies, with a virulence and potential for violence that threatens our democracy.
The shoe was on the other foot, in my lifetime.
The year was 1969. The subject was Vietnam.The 1968 election had settled this question. The war was a "Cold War activity," as Robert McNamara said, and surrender was not an option. But those who opposed the war (and it was a stupid war) could not accept the peoples' verdict, resulting in a series of protests climaxing in the notorious "days of rage" protests organized by the Weathermen.
The Weathermen failed, the question is whether the birthers and the anti health reform people will succeed, they have behind them the full power of corporate America.
God help us all if they do.
I'm incensed over this myself, makes me ashamed to be a U.S. citizen, Fascism is what my father and my Uncles had to fight in WWII. I didn't expect the GOP to bring it back. I'm glad that I'm also an Irish Citizen as well now. Even thought the Irish sometimes believe themselves the 51st state :-)
Posted by: Branedy | August 10, 2009 at 08:57 PM
Interested you quote Robert McNamara. His change of mind, as seen in The Fog of War, taught me more on how & why the US struggles to understand the world beyond their borders.
Posted by: RobiNZ | August 11, 2009 at 12:53 AM
Robin. No question about the failure of the US to understand the rest of the world.
I think most empires have, except perhaps the Romans who succeeded in the short term by co-opting and intermarrying and failed in the long term, in part, because the representatives of the empire found their allegiances in their new homes.
But that's a factor of the Imperial mind, perfectly exemplified by this arrogant bastard quoted by Ron Suskind in 2004.
Blankenhorn did a piece a while back on the empire (any empire) as a ponzi scheme. As long as the flow of wealtrh from the vassal states kept flowing in to the centre it worked. And if it worked long enough, those at the centre took that flow as their baseline for all decisions; it blinded them to the reality that, at some point, the flow would stop.
The Imperial mind is the outcome of that blindness.
Nevertheless, we outsiders need to understand THEM because when they succeed their arbitrary actions affect us all and we have to be ready for them, and when they fail, as they will, they create huge damage everywhere and being able to anticipate that gives us a small, very small, edge.
Posted by: Earl Mardle | August 11, 2009 at 08:03 AM