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It seems only appropriate that on this day I make some sort of comment about the United States. Two-hundred-and-twenty-nine years ago today a small band of idealists and dreamers started something that, after it was all said and done, made the world a better place. It cost a lot of lives, blood and hardship. A lot of lessons were learnt the hard way. Two-hundred-and-twenty-nine years later most of those lessons seem to have been forgotten.
Pity.
2 comments:
Idealists & dreamers? If one can get beyond the Walt Disney Star Wars good guys vs bad guys hype of American propaganda, one realizes George Washington was technically a terrorist. Then, after diefying the likes of Washington and Jefferson, Americans comitted genocide on their own native population. Did America make the world a better place to live? Well, I suppose the answer is "yes" if one likes global warming. Facts such as these make me skeptical whenever I hear Americans lip synching lip service to this country. We are no better than anybody else - and not all that much worse, either....
No, if we are to judge Washington by today's standards - a ludicrous proposal but you seem to insist - then he is merely an enemy soldier not a terrorist. He wore a recognisable uniform. Read the Geneva conventions some time.
Yes, the yanks did commit genocide. Just like we did. In fact it wasn't until 1966 that we gave our indigenous population the same rights that we gave everyone else. Go figure.
It's easy to sit back 229 years later and say "US = evil'. It's easy because of all the bad shit they've done, particularly over the last 50 years. But the fact is, 229 years ago a small group of yanks gave the finger to the largest empire the planet has ever known. They not only took them on, they won. And instead of following in the footsteps of nearly every other historical precedent they then turned around and gave the power they had won to their fellow citizens - rather than kept it for themselves. That scores big points in my book. Don't judge what happened then by what has happened since. The parent's great deeds don't guarantee great deeds from the child.
As for the rest of your diatribe, try reading the rest of the blog before you accuse me of 'lip syncing'. Just because you've lost faith doesn't mean the ideal was a bad one. Try living up to it for a change.
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