Why Is America Using Violence To Achieve Its Goals? - Dick Rauscher
Why is America using violence to achieve its goals? Even more importantly, why are we not winning the wars we are waging around the world? We are at war with much of the world….and then we wonder why there is such growing anger and violence in our own Nation.
Since 9-11 we have spent an estimated $4.2 trillion dollars fighting an ideology called “terrorism”.Yet we have failed to achieve any of our stated objectives to reduce or eliminate the threat of “terrorism”.The sad reality is that “terrorism” is growing; not being defeated. We are not only destabilizing the world; we are destabilizing our own nation!
Our New “Shadow Government”
We have created a “shadow government” called the “national security state”. A de facto fourth branch of the federal government that is better funded and arguably more powerful than the Executive, Congress or the Supreme Court. This shadow government is dedicated to one primary objective….. keeping Americans fearful of “global terrorism”.It then uses that fear to increase our sense of powerlessness and increase its ability to control our behaviors, voluntarily give up our freedoms, our privacy, our ability to “think” logically, and most importantly, our ability to embrace the values and norms that define who we are as “Americans”.The values and norms that made us great as a nation.
So Why Do We Cower In Fear?
We are the most powerful nation that has ever existed on the planet, yet we are being brainwashed and conditioned to cower in fear. To passively submit to the propaganda that is being perpetrated by the “national security state” and its $4.2 trillion dollars, never-ending-war. A war that is obscenely profitable to the 1% and the global corporations that supply the weapons and bombs that are being used to destabilize the human cultures of the Middle East and other nations around the world.
The real tragedy…..we claim to be a nation that lives by higher values than the rest of the world. A nation that embraces human freedom. A nation that values human life. A nation that values diversity. We pretend to hold these “higher” values for ourselves, but we are becoming the “evil empire” for much of the rest of the world. We kill civilians and pretend that they are not humans…..just collateral damage. We profit from the destruction and destabilization of human cultures in the Middle East, we bomb their cities, we turn the citizens of those bombed-out cities into starving immigrants, but then, of course, we are told to fear them and build walls to keep them out of our country because they are dangerous. Really?
It’s Time For A New American Revolution
We are approaching the Fourth of July…..Independence Day. The day we became a free nation. The day we embraced our Constitution and became the greatest nation on the planet. The day we claimed independence and became a nation that celebrated human independence from those who would rule and control our lives. Those who would tell us who we are, what we could or couldn’t do; those that would limit our ability to embrace our own dreams and life goals. We became a nation that offered those values and freedoms to the poor and the weary of the world. To anyone that had the courage to reach our shores. We became a nation that went to war to fight against tyranny and those who would take those values and freedoms away from others.
Are we satisfied to be a nation that now cowers in fear? A nation that ignores the hunger and suffering of the very people we turned into immigrants…most of them children and young adults simply struggling to survive and believe in hope or a better tomorrow.
It’s The Fourth of July! We Are Americans!
I believe it’s time to take a hard and careful look at what’s happened to us. I believe we are better than what our “shadow government” would have us become. I believe that at our core we are still a nation that believes everyone should have the right and freedom to determine their own lives. A nation that still has the strength, the conviction, the compassion, and the empathy to fight for, and offer, that freedom to others.
I believe we area better people than we are becoming. I believe that we have been brainwashed into believing there is nothing we can do to change the isolation and fearful direction our Nation is heading toward. I believe that at our core, we are still a nation that cares for the downtrodden. A nation that still has compassion for the suffering of others. A nation that has the will to stand up and insist on being the light on the top of the hill. A nation that offers hope and compassion and care to all humans. We are that nation! We need to believe that simple truth and recommit to the values that rest at the core of who we are as a people.
I believe it’s time to begin using the trillions of dollars we are spending on bombs and military armament, and begin building schools and hospitals and homes for the people we have displaced and harmed. It’s time to become the light of hope for a world that is weary, suffering, and hungry. The world we have helped create.
Final Thoughts
We are not the Evil Empire. We are not helpless, frightened children that need walls to protect us. We are Americans. We are a nation that embraces compassion for all people. We are a nation that offers hope for the stranger; not a nation that is angry and fearful of others. I believe we can and need to begin acting like patriotic Americans.
I believe we can and must reclaim the values and norms that have always made us the light of hope for all people. It’s who we are. We simply have to reclaim our faith in who we are. Our children and grandchildren are watching us and learning what it means to be an American. We are teaching future generations the values they will need to carry the American torch of compassion and freedom into the future.
We have some choices that need to be made. If not you and I, then who? If not now, then when?
And more importantly, what will the future look like if we continue becoming the evil empire that ironically believes war and violence…..is actually the best path toward a “peaceful and compassionate” world? Really?
