Excerpt: "As the nightmare reality of Donald Trump sinks in, we need to put
our resistance in a larger perspective."
Donald Trump. (photo: Bill Clark/Roll Call)
<http://readersupportednews.org/>
Trump Is Our Imperial Vulture Come Home to Roost - We Must Repent
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
13 February 17
As the nightmare reality of Donald Trump sinks in, we need to put our
resistance in a larger perspective.
There's no need here to list what he is doing and is prepared to do to what
remains of our rights, freedoms, economy, ecology, human dignity, sense of
justice, the future of our children and much, much more. Donald Trump
appears at this point to be our worst national nightmare.
For many of us, it will be the challenge of a lifetime to solve this
problem. Millions of words will be written about it in the months to come.
But we might start by comparing him to the kinds of leaders our nation has
forced on other countries, and by making some kind of amends. Trump is, in
fact, our own imperial vulture come home to roost.
Indeed, he's actually (so far) a moderate compared to scores of murderous
dictators the US has installed in other countries throughout the world.
Especially since World War II, our imperial apparatus has constantly
subverted legitimate attempts by good people to elect decent leaders.
In all such cases, people no different from most of us have suffered
terrible, tangible consequences. No matter how much pain we may now feel in
America, it pales before the horrors we've imposed with Trump-style
dictators in other nations.
To get them installed, the Central Intelligence Agency and other imperial
organs have often merely subverted elections. As was done here in 2016 and
for countless elections before (and perhaps to come), substantial portions
of the population have been systematically stripped of their right to vote.
Where that's proven insufficient, vote counts have been flipped by
electronic and other means to guarantee a secure corporate outcome.
But where even that's not been enough, our imperial minions have simply
exiled, killed outright, invaded, employed mass violence, concocted civil
wars and done whatever else necessary to remove those popular leaders that
have not suited the American corporate interest.
One recent instance has been in Honduras, where the elected president,
Manuel Zelaya Rosales, was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup and the military
took over from 2009 to 2013. Honduras became the most violent non-war zone
on Earth in those years.
Here is a partial list of other duly elected leaders the United States has
had removed, disappeared and/or killed to make way for authoritarian
pro-corporate regimes. In each case, their demise resulted in death, denial
of democratic rights and massive suffering to individuals within those
countries who stood in the way of America's imperial agenda:
Lumumba, Congo; Allende, Chile; Aristide, Haiti; Mossadegh, Iran; Arbenz,
Guatemala; President Joao Goulart, Brazil; Prime Minister Georgios
Papandreou, Greece; Sukarno, Indonesia; Tecumseh, John Ross, Sitting Bull,
Chief Joseph, Sealth and countless other indigenous Americans; and too many
more.
Here is a very incomplete list of violent, torture-prone kleptocrats the US
has installed to serve its corporate interests:
Pinochet, Chile; Duvalier, Haiti; Somoza, Nicaragua; Marcos, Philippines;
Suharto, Indonesia; Diem, Ky, Thieu, Vietnam; Pol Pot, Cambodia; Batista,
Cuba; Saddam Hussein, Iraq; the Shah, Iran; the Regime of the Colonels,
Greece; and too many more.
Taken in sum, the horrors these coups have imposed on innocent people
throughout the planet comprise a terrible karmic debt our nation owes the
rest of humankind.
The idea that such retribution would come home to roost may have been best
stated by our 16th president. It is chiseled on the wall of the Lincoln
Memorial in our nation's capital, for all to see.
At the end of the Civil War, in his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham
Lincoln mourned that this "terrible war," which killed more than 620,000
Americans, had come "as the woe due to those by whom the offense came."
The offense, of course was slavery. To pay for it, Lincoln warned, we would
see the war "continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword."
Are we, as modern Americans, now being called to pay for the blood drawn and
the pain imposed by our imperial armies? And for all the wealth and comfort
and dignity unjustly stolen from innocent peoples around the world?
As we squirm and mourn and march and organize, we might keep in mind the
image of Donald Trump as imperial payback.
We might remember that as we work to overcome this homegrown vulture of our
own making we must make right what we've imposed on so many others.
And that the restoration of sanity, dignity, and democracy to this nation
can only come with a genuine sense of perspective . and with the resolve to
never again impose any such suffering anywhere else in this world.
_____
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION
OF 2016: FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT at www.freepress.org
<http://www.freepress.org/> , where Bob's FITRAKIS FILES are available.
Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org
<http://www.solartopia.org/> .
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
<http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize>
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Donald Trump. (photo: Bill Clark/Roll Call)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Trump Is Our Imperial Vulture Come Home to Roost - We Must Repent
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
13 February 17
s the nightmare reality of Donald Trump sinks in, we need to put our
resistance in a larger perspective.
There's no need here to list what he is doing and is prepared to do to what
remains of our rights, freedoms, economy, ecology, human dignity, sense of
justice, the future of our children and much, much more. Donald Trump
appears at this point to be our worst national nightmare.
For many of us, it will be the challenge of a lifetime to solve this
problem. Millions of words will be written about it in the months to come.
But we might start by comparing him to the kinds of leaders our nation has
forced on other countries, and by making some kind of amends. Trump is, in
fact, our own imperial vulture come home to roost.
Indeed, he's actually (so far) a moderate compared to scores of murderous
dictators the US has installed in other countries throughout the world.
Especially since World War II, our imperial apparatus has constantly
subverted legitimate attempts by good people to elect decent leaders.
In all such cases, people no different from most of us have suffered
terrible, tangible consequences. No matter how much pain we may now feel in
America, it pales before the horrors we've imposed with Trump-style
dictators in other nations.
To get them installed, the Central Intelligence Agency and other imperial
organs have often merely subverted elections. As was done here in 2016 and
for countless elections before (and perhaps to come), substantial portions
of the population have been systematically stripped of their right to vote.
Where that's proven insufficient, vote counts have been flipped by
electronic and other means to guarantee a secure corporate outcome.
But where even that's not been enough, our imperial minions have simply
exiled, killed outright, invaded, employed mass violence, concocted civil
wars and done whatever else necessary to remove those popular leaders that
have not suited the American corporate interest.
One recent instance has been in Honduras, where the elected president,
Manuel Zelaya Rosales, was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup and the military
took over from 2009 to 2013. Honduras became the most violent non-war zone
on Earth in those years.
Here is a partial list of other duly elected leaders the United States has
had removed, disappeared and/or killed to make way for authoritarian
pro-corporate regimes. In each case, their demise resulted in death, denial
of democratic rights and massive suffering to individuals within those
countries who stood in the way of America's imperial agenda:
Lumumba, Congo; Allende, Chile; Aristide, Haiti; Mossadegh, Iran; Arbenz,
Guatemala; President Joao Goulart, Brazil; Prime Minister Georgios
Papandreou, Greece; Sukarno, Indonesia; Tecumseh, John Ross, Sitting Bull,
Chief Joseph, Sealth and countless other indigenous Americans; and too many
more.
Here is a very incomplete list of violent, torture-prone kleptocrats the US
has installed to serve its corporate interests:
Pinochet, Chile; Duvalier, Haiti; Somoza, Nicaragua; Marcos, Philippines;
Suharto, Indonesia; Diem, Ky, Thieu, Vietnam; Pol Pot, Cambodia; Batista,
Cuba; Saddam Hussein, Iraq; the Shah, Iran; the Regime of the Colonels,
Greece; and too many more.
Taken in sum, the horrors these coups have imposed on innocent people
throughout the planet comprise a terrible karmic debt our nation owes the
rest of humankind.
The idea that such retribution would come home to roost may have been best
stated by our 16th president. It is chiseled on the wall of the Lincoln
Memorial in our nation's capital, for all to see.
At the end of the Civil War, in his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham
Lincoln mourned that this "terrible war," which killed more than 620,000
Americans, had come "as the woe due to those by whom the offense came."
The offense, of course was slavery. To pay for it, Lincoln warned, we would
see the war "continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every
drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the
sword."
Are we, as modern Americans, now being called to pay for the blood drawn and
the pain imposed by our imperial armies? And for all the wealth and comfort
and dignity unjustly stolen from innocent peoples around the world?
As we squirm and mourn and march and organize, we might keep in mind the
image of Donald Trump as imperial payback.
We might remember that as we work to overcome this homegrown vulture of our
own making we must make right what we've imposed on so many others.
And that the restoration of sanity, dignity, and democracy to this nation
can only come with a genuine sense of perspective . and with the resolve to
never again impose any such suffering anywhere else in this world.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of THE STRIP & FLIP SELECTION
OF 2016: FIVE JIM CROWS & ELECTRONIC ELECTION THEFT at www.freepress.org
<http://www.freepress.org/> , where Bob's FITRAKIS FILES are available.
Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org
<http://www.solartopia.org/> .
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socializehttp://e-max.it/posizioname
nto-siti-web/socialize
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