[Marxism] re:About Germany and America

["M. Junaid Alam" <mjunaidalam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

[First, apologies to all for so frequently posting recently. It's just
that I've been put on some steroids medication that has for once albeit
temporarily placed my head above the depressing waters of a medical
condition that often saps my energy, in a transitory step to another
medicine that may work better for the long haul].


"I don't think there's ever *been* anything quite like the United States
(except maybe apartheid South Africa or a couple of other places, like
Rhodesia), but even there the analogies all break down."

Actually I think the most fitting analogy imaginable is Israel, on so
many levels that it's truly remarkable, and I would not hesitate to call
the present period the Israel-ization of America. But that's another
issue for another time.

"How does one begin to describe something like that? This was not the
most extreme expression of a social regime in crisis that lasted a few
years. This was centuries. This was not the action of well-organized
repressive forces of a regime that is historically anomalous. This is
the development and expression of a culture."

And that right there is the crux of the matter. It is a most
uncomfortable and unpleasant truth from the socialist standpoint, but it
is immovable. The main thing is, the United States is a winner. It is
victorious. It wiped out the Indians. It crushed the Blacks. It
destroyed Latin American revolutions. It smashed Vietnam. The enemies
and challengers were not just defeated, they were totally annihilated.
Anytime I get through the first 75 pages of any Chomsky book, I get this
soul-sinking feeling, like so many possibilities were crippled or
snuffed out by American-directed violence. But nothing was more
depressing than reading Pilger's old eye-witness account of the '75
withdrawal from Saigon. It was like reading the description of exit from
a mass rape scene.

And the problem with all this rape is that the rapist has never been
held accountable. Hitlerism was at least defeated. Germany had to reckon
with defeat. Americanism just goes on and on and on...there was no real
national reckoning for Vietnam, for instance. Not even an official
apology. We are 30 years later involved in another war led by
Vietnam-era officers who obviously have learned nothing in moral terms
from that conflict, and is supported by a base of white fundamentalist
reactionaries who couldn't give a damn how many people are murdered -
the more the merrier, really. But oh, save the vegetable woman on
permanent life support.

Baran again, and the quote that presently guides all my thinking: "The
limits cure to the cure of man's soul are set by the illness of the
society in which he lives."


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