The Great American Hypnosis

"The US claims to champion freedom. In fact, its long record of brutality has imperilled peace, says Harold Pinter."

"Politicians are interested not in truth but in power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed."

"The justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with al-Qaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11, 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true."

This is a highly critical piece by a British writer, on how the U.S. manages to claim leadership of the free world, while at the same time, committing crimes abroad they claim to be against. And that it's double-standard actions are down-played, covered up, and denied. He also says those cover ups are generally believed by the American people because of manipulations of the truth.

Well, because I've always managed to think for myself, rather than allow others to pull my strings to bring me to conform to whatever popular opinions I'm supposed to go along with, I know what he says is true.

Reading that article, I couldn't help think of the reactions of those who are still convinced we're always in the right, always doing what's best for America and the world. Whether criticism comes from an American or not, they are accused of being anti-American, among other things. But let's get things straight here, most all the criticisms of our actions throughout the world, and throughout our history, is and has been directed at our governments' actions. The criticisms, even the ones by Americans, are not, and have not, been directed at the American public, but the true-believers will insist that any ill spoken words about our governments actions, means the speaker of those words hates America itself. They refuse to allow a distinction between being against government actions, and the people governed. If we dare question anything our government does, we're labeled as being against the whole country, it's people, way of life, etc, etc. It's really pathetic, considering the fact that questioning government is at the very heart of what it means to be an American. Being a Patriot is one who protects and defends their country, not their government. Our very existence as a sovereign nation is due to our questioning and eventual rejection of a government that refused to look out for the best interests of it's people. And when we formed our own new government, we set it up in such a way that We the People had a lot to say about who would run it and how it's run. We set it up in such a way that the government couldn't arbitrarily do as it wanted, without the peoples permission. We did not want a copy of the major powers of the day. We wanted a government that didn't try to colonize and exploit the world for it's own sake.

Only by being aware of what our government doesn't want us to be aware of, can we have a country that lives up to the ideals expressed in our Constitution, you know, that document that's the basis for our great nation. That document that our President says is "just a goddamn piece of paper".

[Update]

A little while after I made the above post, I found another site where Harold Pinter goes into even more detail than the article above: "The Crimes of the United States Have Been Systematic, Constant"