Has the penny dropped yet? The world’s most powerful state is an Evil Empire, by any number of measures the most lawless, dangerous and life negatingly tyrannical regime in all of history.
Which is saying something.
I know that takes some swallowing. Chances are that you, like me, were raised from infancy on the notion – seeping into every nook and cranny of consciousness through propaganda (CNN hard/Hollywood soft) and because your country’s leaders, like mine, hang onto its coat tails – of the US as a force for good in this troubled world of ours.
But bear with me a moment.
Ever see the line-length study by Solomon Asch? You should. Here it is, introduced by another social psychologist of relevance here, Philip Zimbardo of Stanford Prison fame. Asch’s elegant experiment shows that most humans prioritise consensuality over the evidence of our senses.
That’s neither surprising nor wholly deplorable. For better and for worse, we’re social animals.
The Goodness of America has been mother’s milk as long as we can remember and in the West no great harm has come our way – personally – as a result. If you’re reading this, i.e. are among the planet’s most privileged few percent, you’ll have blossomed and flourished on it.
That helps, as does the blithe ignorance of out-of-sight/out-of-mind, when the consensus of the extreme centre needs us to dismiss the wealth of evidence for the Empire of Evil thesis. Now it is the thesis, not the actuality of US-led aggression, that is to be deplored as ‘extremist’.
So what if the USA is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons? So what if even its senior politicians and generals said privately that it was militarily unnecessary? So what if the USA has spent the past seventy years in non stop war on the global south? So what if it does subvert all and any government not to its liking, most recently in Honduras and Ukraine?
Somebody’s gotta police the planet, for christ’s sake. Lotta bad guys out there.
And who better to do the policing than good ol’ US of A? We know they’re the good guys cos, heck, they gave us John Wayne, bro. That’s gotta count for something!
But let me hand you over to Caity on what’s been going down in that patch of Uncle Sam’s back yard known as Bolivia. Full text is here, but this is how she begins.
Bolivia’s New Puppet Regime Wastes No Time Aligning With US Foreign Policy
The Washington-recognized interim government which just ascended to power via US-backed military coup in Bolivia is already shifting the nation’s foreign policy into alignment with the US-centralized empire, severing important ties with two governments which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob.
“Bolivia’s caretaker government isn’t wasting any time overhauling its foreign policy, announcing Friday that it will expel hundreds of Cuban officials and break ties with longtime ally Venezuela,” Miami Herald reports. “In a series of statements, Bolivia’s new foreign minister, Karen Longaric, told local media that about 725 Cubans — including doctors and medical staff — would begin leaving Bolivia on Friday …
“… In that same interview she also said she’d be recalling Bolivia’s diplomatic staff from Venezuela. Asked if she would maintain ties with Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, she said, ‘Of course we’ll break diplomatic relations with the Maduro government.'”
Of course they will.
This news comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention. US foreign policy is essentially an endless war on disobedience, in which governments that refuse to bow to US interests are toppled by any means necessary and replaced by governments who will.
International affairs are much easier to understand once you stop thinking in terms of separate, sovereign nations and start thinking in terms of alliances and empire. What we are witnessing can best be described as a slow-motion third world war between what amounts to an unofficial globe-spanning empire centralized around the United States and its military on one side, and all the nations which have refused to be absorbed into this empire on the other.
Quite. And, the egregious injustices aside, that slow-motion third world war might speed up at any time. I don’t hold Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to be saints. What use would that be? I do judge them smarter, saner and less reckless than the puppets leading the West.
But how long can our luck hold?
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