Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Rudyard Kipling
The White Man's Burden, 1899

Emma Goldman, in her classic 1917 critique of patriotism, Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty, used words that could just as easily been applied to what Kipling called the “white man’s burden, “ and others called Manifest Destiny or American Exceptionalism. Goldman wrote that patriotism was based on the assumption that “our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, and more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.”

Americans saw their expansion into the West, and to foreign lands, as part of a divinely ordained destiny. Howard Zinn, in his 2003 book The Power and the Glory: Myths of American Exceptionalism, described American exceptionalism as the belief that the United States “alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary.” Coupled with xenophobia, the projecting of our least desirable traits onto “the East,” or to anyone that did not look like us, exceptionalism is what gave impetus to the popularly-held belief that western or American values were unique, superior, and desirable by all.

American Exceptionalism has been part of our culture since the beginning of the Republic. Exceptionalism themes were quite prevalent in American westerns. Films such as Stagecoach and The Searchers are illustrative of how people like Sarah Palin and her fellow exceptionalists see themselves and their role in the world. In Stagecoah, Geronimo’s name is used in the film as the stereotypical bogeyman, the one we must all fear. Geronimo’s name is used to elicit a response in the audience that this is a very bad guy, that we don’t need to know anything more about him other that he is some savage hell-bent in the destruction of "our noble heroes." Geronimo is the western genre version of Emmanuel Goldstein, the bogeyman used by Big Brother to keep the masses fearful and in line in George Orwell’s 1984.

We know even less about Geronimo’s warriors. We don’t know anything about what led to their waging war. Was it an unprovoked war of aggression? Was it retaliation for some atrocity committed on them by white settlers or the US military? In typical western stereotypical fashion, the film shows the Apache warriors from the distance, we never get to see their faces up close. We are only shown only the destruction they leave behind after a raid. The only time we get to see them is when they attack the stagecoach. Actually, we only see white stunt men riding their ponies with saddles and wearing dark makeup.

The American exceptionalism themes are thus exposed in Stagecoach. The white people are noble and heroic. Even the most flawed white character portrayed in the film is intellectually and morally superior to the non-whites. The whites are bringing technology and civilization to an unconquered land in order to fulfill a divinely ordained destiny. The local non-white population is both uncultured and backwards, like the Mexicans, or they are bloodthirsty savages that show no mercy to their victims. They are what Kipling called the “new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child.”

This is the American Exceptionalism that Sarah Palin has become the champion of, an America of endless wars waged to maintain a crumbling empire.

The reality is quite harsh, not the rosy colored 7,000 year-old universe of Sarah Palin. Let's consider the views of Vera Brittain and Wilfred Owen.

Vera Brittain wrote about the men and women of her generation, an idealistic generation, damaged and torn asunder by the horrors of World War I. She lost her fiancée, her brother, and many of her friends to what was then called ‘The Great War.’ In her poignant 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, she described the human carnage she witnessed during the 1917 Battle of Cambrai while serving as a nurse at a military hospital near the front:



One of the most powerful poems to come out of World War I was Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est. Owen, an infantryman in the British army, bitterly noted how the carnage he had witnessed ran counter to the “old lie,” that dying for one’s country was sweet and proper.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen died in a gas attack two weeks before WWI ended.

It is no accident that the Venezuelan elites, that pride themselves in how white they are, and their American allies are all bent out of shape by the wave of progressive Latin American leaders such as Venzuela's President Hugo Chaves, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, Nicaragua's President Danny Ortega, and Honduran President Manuel Zelaya; a majority of which coming from a mixed ethnic or indigenous background.

Viva Chavez! Viva Venezuela! Down with the Venezuelan elites and their American allies!

Religion is the cruelest joke perpetrated on humankind. The ruling class uses religion as a control mechanism to keep the masses fearful, fragmented, and ignorant, and to exploit their prejudices.

While religion remains a private matter, we socialists reject any role for religion outside of a person's private conscience.

Marx on religion:



Engels on religion:



Lenin on religion:

The choice we face this November could not be starker. McCain will not only pack SCOTUS with Roe-repealing judges, but he will also endorse the right-to-lifers assertion that birth control is a form of abortion. Add to that McCain's well-documented tendency to resort to military action as the solution to a complex world, and I wouldn't be surprised that McCain's election as President would result in the deaths of millions, if not billions of people across this planet.

The intra-party political discourse seems to have been reduced to an issue of "disrespect" toward a losing Democratic candidate, despite that candidate strong endorsement of Obama/Biden ticket. The trauma centers in our cities are filled with gunshot victims having the misfortune of getting in the path of a bullet aimed at someone that was seen as "disrespecting" the shooter.

The Constitution has been torn to shreds. Our republic is in grave peril. Our liberties have been compromised. Millions have died or been displaced by neocon wars. Abortion rights are under threat. My happiness and rights as a LGBT American are at stake. There is no way in Hell that I would vent whatever disappointments I may have in the outcome of the primaries by staying home on Election Day or by casting a vote for John McCain.

I wasn't happy when Kerry won the nomination in 2004. I had fun taking pot shots at every of his stumbles, including the idiotic claim that he "voted for it, before he voted against it." I laughed at the video of Kerry wind surfing back and forth as a voice over spoke gravely about Kerry's flip flopping. Despite all that, I was appalled at Kerry's slow response to the swiftboat attacks, particularly after it became clear that they were nothing but a smear. When election day came, I voted for Kerry and I didn't even held my nose! In my book, Bush was the greatest threat to peace and freedom the world has seen since the rise of the Third Reich.

Kerry won the nomination fair and square. Kerry played by the rules. Kerry ran an honorable campaign. Furthermore, I believe that Kerry won Ohio, and the 2004 election!

Unlike Kerry, Hillary cannot win the nomination fair and square. Hillary played by her own rules, not the rules the DNC and all the candidates (including herself) had agreed to abide by. Hillary has run a shameful and dishonorable campaign, one that shares more in common with the 2000 Bush primary campaign against McCain than with that of any Democratic candidate that I have witnessed in my life.

The only way Hillary can win the nomination is by stealing it, just as Bush stole the 2000 election from Al Gore.

For Hillary to win, she will have to convince a significant majority of superdelegates to vote against the candidate that won the most pledged delegates, the most states, and has the lead in the overall popular vote (including the popular vote that picked the delegates in the caucus states). Obama will have earned the nomination by all measures (pledged delegates, most states, popular vote), to deny him the nomination and selecting Hillary will irreparably split the party, alienate millions of new voters, and guarantee another 4 years of the same Bush/Cheney policies that have nearly destroyed our nation.

A Clintonian theft of the nomination will make the Denver convention make Chicago 1968 look like a Rotary Club meeting. I firmly believe that the grown ups in the Democratic Party will not allow a kamikaze candidate to tear the party asunder, and that includes many of the superdelegates that are currently supporting Clinton. Rep. Barney Frank, a Hillary supporter, said today that the candidate trailing at the end of the primaries in June should step down, even if that candidate is Hillary (source: Keith Olbermann Show).

Obama is our Democratic nominee for all practical purposes. The only reason Hillary is still making a pest out of herself is because she is incapable of setting aside her political ambitions for the sake of the party and the country.

Hillary chose the crypto-nazi Rev. Doug Coe.

Hillary's Nasty Pastorate

The Nation: When It Comes To Unsavory Religious Affiliations, Clinton Is A Lot More Vulnerable Than Obama

March 21, 2008

There's a reason Hillary Clinton has remained relatively silent during the flap over intemperate remarks by Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. When it comes to unsavory religious affiliations, she's a lot more vulnerable than Obama.

You can find all about it in a widely under-read article in the September 2007 issue of Mother Jones, in which Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet reported that "through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as "The "Fellowship," also known as The Family. But it won't be a secret much longer. Jeff Sharlet's shocking exposé The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power will be published in May.

<snip>

During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand "Communists" killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise.

At the heart of The Family's American branch is a collection of powerful right-wing politicos, who include, or have included, Sam Brownback, Ed Meese, John Ashcroft, James Inhofe and Rick Santorum. They get to use The Family's spacious estate on the Potomac, The Cedars, which is maintained by young men in Family group homes and where meals are served by The Family's young women's group. And, at The Family's frequent prayer gatherings, they get powerful jolts of spiritual refreshment, tailored to the already powerful.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/20/...

McCain has Hagee, who has said Catholicism is a satanic abomination. Hillary has that fundie prayer group she belongs too, which includes some of the biggest homophobes in Congress, and Obama has the Wright and McCurdle (sic) problems.

Perhaps the problem is Christianity itself and some of the bullshit that spews from the pulpits every Sunday across our nation.

We supported Bill during his self-inflicted impeachment problems. Bill and his wife repaid us with NAFTA, DOMA, DADT, 1996 Telecom Act which gave us the media concentration mess we got today. In addition, Hillary has been a rubber stamp for everything the Left hates, from support for Israel's apartheid of Palestinians, to Israel's criminal bombing of Lebanon's cities and towns, to support for wars in Iraq and Iran, to support for dictatorial powers to Bush. To top it all off, Hillary joined the GOP in sliming John Kerry on his failed joke to a college audience, and she opposed Kerry's Alito filibuster and troop withdrawal resolution.

Your side is reduced to brownshirt tactics because you can't defend your evil queen on the merits of the argument.

She won't close School of the Americas.

She won't restore habeas corpus, close down Guantanamo, and dismantle the police state apparatus that Bush established.

She won't restore the Constitution and the Republic we had before 9-11.

She will bomb Iran if Bush doesn't beat her to the punch.

She will continue the war in Iraq, but spin it as a drawdown of forces.

She will attempt to reestablish American hegemony in Latin America, by force if necessary.

She will continue the failed War on Drugs, Cuban embargo, and the phony Global War on Terror.

She will continue the failed and disastrous American policy of enabling the permanent occupation of Arab lands by Israel, while ignoring the plight of the Palestinian people.

She will use the extraordinary powers that Bush amassed for the Presidency to attack and marginalize those opposed to globalism and imperialism.

The United States’ security would be undermined if parts of Iraq turned into a failed state that serves as a petri dish for insurgents and Al Qaeda. It is right in the heart of the oil region. It is directly in opposition to our interests, to the interests of regimes, to Israel’s interests.

-- Hillary Clinton



Democratic chicken hawk Hillary Clinton's Kyl-Lieberman vote to give Bush the authority to exercise "all options on the table" on Iran is the latest example of her support of a neocon/neolib imperialist foreign policy. Like all chicken hawks, Hillary confuses "strength" with the use of brute military force, rather with the strength shown by great peacemakers like the late Archbishop Romero or Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu.

It is highly unlikely that as President Hillary would deviate one iota from the corporatist and imperialist agenda she followed in the US Senate. Hillary will never raise the issue of justice for Palestinians, much less pursue a Middle East settlement that would require Israel to give up Arab land taken in the 1967 War. Hillary will continue the disastrous US policy of enabling Israel's imperialism in the region, including maintaining an occupation force in Iraq as a counter to Iran.

In Latin America, the wife of the man that kept the School of the Americas open, will pursue the Bush policies with renewed vigor. Hillary will unleash the CIA and the military to reestablish American hegemony in the region.

In light of the reactionary policies of the second Clinton Administration, what will progressives be doing during Hillary's presidency? Here are some of the highlights:

March 2009 - National antiwar marches on the 6th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

October 2009 - National antiwar marches on the 7th anniversary of Iraq War Resolution.

March 2010 - National antiwar marches on the 7th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

October 2010 - National antiwar marches on the 8th anniversary of Iraq War Resolution.

March 2011 - National antiwar marches on the 8th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

October 2011 - National antiwar marches on the 9th anniversary of Iraq War Resolution.

March 2012 - National antiwar marches on the 9th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War.

October 2012 - National antiwar marches on the 10th anniversary of Iraq War Resolution.

but that like all mortals, they are subject to that law and to the people.

Cynthia's biggest crime was to say that Bush had been forewarned about 9-11. She was accused of being insane for making such a charge, by Republicans and their allies in the Democratic Party establishment.

As it turned out, Cynthia was right! When the MSM published the astonishing news that Bush had been fully briefed in early 2001 about bin Laden's plans to attack the US, including crashing hijacked passenger jets into national landmarks, the Democratic establishment resisted the calls for a full investigation.

Had Al Gore been President on 9-11, and he had done nothing on the same information Bush was given that May. he would have been impeached on 9-13.

Both major political parties are agents of the powerful economic interests that control this country. Both have failed to protect the American people from our enemies, at home and abroad. Both have been complicit in the dismantling of our beloved Constitution and the Republic for which so many have shed their blood to defend and protect. Both are in cahoots in pursuing an imperialist policy to protect Wall Street. None care about the working class!

Let's assume that we find ourselves with the Clintons back in the White House, and it is November 2010, two years after the Presidential Elections.

The Hillary Administration would have had two years of uninterrupted war in Iraq under its belt, and two years of antiwar marches against its war policies (assuming that we are not at war with Iran). The Hillary Administration would also be facing opposition from the Left on its corporate-friendly health care proposal and neoliberal trade policies, as well as mass resistance to its unwillingness to rollback the abuses of power of the Bush regime by restoring the Constitution to its pre-9/11 eminence, and dismantling the police state apparatus established by PATRIOT and subsequent repressive legislation and executive orders.

"How dare you oppose our Democratic President?" will become a rallying cry for the partisan defenders of President Hillary's unchanged policy goals in the Middle East, her pro-Big Pharma health care proposals, her use of PATRIOT to stifle dissent at home, and her use of the military to reestablish American hegemony in Latin America.

How fractured will the Democratic Party become when it finds itself as the war party?

Obama fucked up big time with his cavorting with known homophobes. He is going to need major sensitivity sessions to become palatable again.

Edwards needs to work out his inability to accept LGBTs on an emotional level. It is one thing to say that gays shouldn't be discriminated against, but it is one another to put the caveat that gays cannot marry one another. Discrimination is discrimination, John!

Hillary. As another DUer pointed out to me on a previous thread, deep in my heart I fear that Hillary will throw the LGBT community under the bus, just as her philandering predatory husband did. We will have to pray hard and watch Hillary like a hawk, making sure she is not standing behind us as we wait for the subway.

Will I vote for Obama, or Edwards, or even the evil Queen of Diamonds herself? You bet! The harsh reality is that the GOP hates LGBTs. If they could cleanse society from all LGBTs, they would do so in a jiffy.

Our Democrats may be flawed to one extent or another, but there is no doubt that the GOP wants to harm all of us, and harm us with extreme prejudice!

No more of this Iowa and New Hampshire first nonsense!

Retail politics in those two states only serves two purposes:

1. It inflates the egos of the residents.

2. I fills the pockets of the local merchants.

The Presidential elections do not have retail politics. A candidate that does well in Iowa and New Hampshire may well turn out to be a LOSER and a total DUD when having to sell himself/herself at the wholesale level, as it is done in the Presidential elections. Just look at the winning gems we got from Iowa and New Hampshire!

In 1992, Governor Bill Clinton did not win Iowa or New Hampshire, which should tell you a lot about why we shouldn't put so much emphasis on the judgment of the voters in those two small states.

Sure, Iowan DUers will tell you that people still get a chance to vote for their candidate of their choice, and that they are not responsible for the MSM salivating over the winner of their caucus. This misses the point! Having anyone go first, particularly small states which are so unrepresentative of the US as a whole, skews the results and produces a stampede whose end result has been having DUers complain about how an election was stolen, rather than how the primary process produced such a fatally flawed nominee.