American Exceptionalism: The Rhetoric and the Reality
the US American culture has proven to become an
extraordinarily dangerous imperial threat in the world. And our
behavior is consistently and exceptionally brutal and pathologically
violent at home as well as abroad, since our oligarchic ruling structure
is exceptionally fearful of genuine people power wherever it manifests
Eurocentric values of systematic violence and arrogance were introduced into the New World in 1492 when Italian Cristoforo Columbo, sailing under the Spanish flag, invaded the West Indies. Columbus’ log stated, “with fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want.” Eyewitness Bartolome de las Casas described unspeakable behavior that “no age can parallel….cruelty never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of.” The Indigenous possessed no vocabulary to describe the bestiality inflicted upon them. The Arawak Indians were virtually wiped out in 40 years.Our original English Puritan settlers established the tone of sacred superiority. “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us….For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” Since the early 1600s, prior to creation in 1789 of the formal US government, groups of armed adventurers and frontiersmen (operating as paramilitary death squads) alongside various European militaries, engaged in almost constant bloodshed with the “beastly” Indians, carrying out one of the greatest genocides in human history.
Eurocentric values of systematic violence and arrogance were introduced into the New World in 1492 when Italian Cristoforo Columbo, sailing under the Spanish flag, invaded the West Indies. Columbus’ log stated, “with fifty men we could subjugate them and make them do whatever we want.” Eyewitness Bartolome de las Casas described unspeakable behavior that “no age can parallel….cruelty never before seen, nor heard of, nor read of.” The Indigenous possessed no vocabulary to describe the bestiality inflicted upon them. The Arawak Indians were virtually wiped out in 40 years.Our original English Puritan settlers established the tone of sacred superiority. “We shall find that the God of Israel is among us….For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” Since the early 1600s, prior to creation in 1789 of the formal US government, groups of armed adventurers and frontiersmen (operating as paramilitary death squads) alongside various European militaries, engaged in almost constant bloodshed with the “beastly” Indians, carrying out one of the greatest genocides in human history.
The Colonies Began As Private Commercial Enterprises
The corporate control of our government that we decry today has been with us more or less since our nation’s founding. The early “settlers” did not come seeking business or trade with “savages”, but were in effect employees or indentured servants of private commercial, corporate enterprises of stock-holding London investor-based companies who magically received grants from the Crown to develop lands inhabited by Indigenous in what are today Virginia and Massachusetts. The settlers were charged with the grunt work of planting and harvesting crops which were then sent to England to satisfy investor needs for quick profits in the New World. Many of the men we call our “Founding Fathers” – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin – were early speculators who claimed hundreds of thousands of acres of Indian land. The Founding Fathers vision was an “empire of liberty” [Jefferson], “imperial republicanism” [Madison] and a mercantile, imperially expansive nation – a new “American system.” Theirs was not a vision of democracy. In George Washington’s second term as President he declared that emergence of “democratic societies” threatened the new republic.
http://www.brianwillson.com/americn-exceptionalism-the-rhetoric-and-the-reality/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/challenging-american-exceptionalism/5
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html
The corporate control of our government that we decry today has been with us more or less since our nation’s founding. The early “settlers” did not come seeking business or trade with “savages”, but were in effect employees or indentured servants of private commercial, corporate enterprises of stock-holding London investor-based companies who magically received grants from the Crown to develop lands inhabited by Indigenous in what are today Virginia and Massachusetts. The settlers were charged with the grunt work of planting and harvesting crops which were then sent to England to satisfy investor needs for quick profits in the New World. Many of the men we call our “Founding Fathers” – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin – were early speculators who claimed hundreds of thousands of acres of Indian land. The Founding Fathers vision was an “empire of liberty” [Jefferson], “imperial republicanism” [Madison] and a mercantile, imperially expansive nation – a new “American system.” Theirs was not a vision of democracy. In George Washington’s second term as President he declared that emergence of “democratic societies” threatened the new republic.
http://www.brianwillson.com/americn-exceptionalism-the-rhetoric-and-the-reality/ http://www.globalresearch.ca/challenging-american-exceptionalism/5
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Propaganda/Republican_Noise_Machine.html
