All opinions posted. None too pathetic or contrived. Everyone gets their say.

"...even the wicked get worse than they deserve." - Willa Cather, One of Ours

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

The US as the World's Policeman


D. Bishop asked a valid question:
"Today, most of Africa is enslaved by tyrannical tin horn dictators...

In 1994, the US looked away as a half million Rwandans were hacked to death. We didn't feel the overriding need to "liberate" those people. Did we?

I don't understand why we have decided that Iraq must be "liberated" when there are millions of people in other countries who certainly deserve our attention. Shouldn't we be invading all those countries, as well?...
This is a valid question, but the truthful answer is not pretty.

Why Iraq and not the others?

The Bush administration has proposed a myriad of reasons, some of them even have partial validity. But the real reason is: because we can.

One the most important reasons that the US is so distrusted, even hated by many people in the world, is becuase they recognize exactly the point you make: it is the US government, a government over which they have no control, that makes decisions that are fundamental to how they must live their lives. Their sense of weakness is based on an accurate perception on the world's power relationships. The power dispartity is so great, that no matter the good intentions of the US, the policies of the American government will decide issues that involve the well-being, life and death of most non-American peoples.

Power is real. It can not be wished away.

When you have a vastly superior power; even if you choose not to use it, your choice will effect the lives of others who have no control over us. Refusing to choose to act is still a choice; one that will fundamentally effect the lives of others.

They hate this about the US becuase their sense of powerlessness is rational.

Posted by: Zayphar / 6/02/2004 09:48:00 AM 0 comments

Let America Be America Again

A Poem By Langston Huges

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

"Let America Be America Again" is now the new Kerry campaign slogan.

It was written during the Jim Crow era as a protest against the gross injustices against African-Americans that were the norm at that time. Like many other black intellectuals, Hughes took to communism in the 1930's when he actually left the United States to live in the Soviet Union. The same year "Let America Be America" was published, Hughes signed a letter supporting the Stalinist purges; he had witnessed, with approval, one of the show trials.
Posted by: Zayphar / 6/02/2004 12:40:00 AM 0 comments

Let every nation know...


"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961

Posted by: Zayphar / 6/02/2004 12:15:00 AM 0 comments