i have more letter to my local electronic fishwrap than they will print, which is some of the reason i began this blog adventure. here is one i won't be sending there the end of this month because i have another to send them i feel more necessary to feature locally, so here's this one;

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Krishnamurti

American foreign policy makers focus on the word primacy. It was once called “full-spectrum dominance”. It’s the idea that the Empire rules and all must accept our control. Nothing about the idea is new. The drive for global primacy is what took us to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and our other overseas disasters. This evil dogma has ruined America and hurt the world though it’s widely accepted by America’s powerful rulers and the ‘consumers’ that accept the lies their TV tells them. That guarantees future failures like those that have already cost us dearly in blood and treasure.

Primacy, we get to do whatever we choose, because America is exceptional, the only force standing between civilization and barbarism. Wherever there’s trouble, and even where there’s none, the pursuit of primacy requires that the Empire intervene. This policy says that no problem can be solved without American supervision. It ignores overwhelming realities. The solutions we plan are unrealistic because they’re based on what’s good for the Empire without considering the realities of the latest ‘problem’.

Affected nations and peoples reject our ‘visionary’ projects. We’ll liberate millions, show them the benefits of free enterprise, and bring them under our benevolent wing. This all collapses in the middle of incredible human suffering, undermines our security, turns entire regions against us, and corrupts our national lives by robbing resources we need for schools, infrastructure, and other projects that, unlike wars of choice, truly contribute to our national strength.

Primacy tells everyone that there’s only one excellent way to live and Americans have found it. It tells you that countries willing to submit are friends, and the others are enemies. It means that ‘enemy’ countries can’t be tolerated or allowed to continue unmolested. They must be crushed, or at least made to realize that rejecting American control brings trouble.

This would be a dangerous policy in a world the Empire dominated. It’s even more risky in today’s multipolar world. Promoters of the primacy idea believe that we know what the world needs better than anyone else. President McKinley said invading the Philippines was necessary even though Filipinos opposed it. “Did we need their consent to perform a great act for humanity” he asked. This same concept guides our foreign actions today. It tells ‘consumers’ that although ignorant foreigners may believe they don’t want our intervention, it’s really good for them. We’re puzzled when they don’t agree and interpret their disagreement as further proof of their backwardness and need for our control.

America tells Asian countries that they shouldn’t look for compromise with China. We’re irritated that Germany, France, Italy, and other countries want peace with Russia; we want them to adopt our policy of confrontation. Meanwhile, in the Empire, every day’s news brings the same question: How should America ‘manage’ these ‘crises’?

Secret reports by American, Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Assad was a practical course to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. According to Wikileaks, soon after Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria. The conflict in Syria isn’t a conventional war. It’s a regime change operation, just like Libya, Iraq and many others were regime change operations.

Washington is the regime change champion; no one else even comes close. You might assume that ‘consumers’ would notice the patterns, see through the propaganda and assign blame accurately. No matter how compelling the evidence may be, brainwashed ‘consumers’ always believe ‘our’ government is doing the right thing.

The Empire is trying to overthrow Syria’s elected government that refuses to bow to the Empire’s demands to provide access to pipeline corridors that will further strengthen American/Israeli dominance in the region.  That’s what’s really going on behind the ISIS distraction and the ‘Assad is a brutal dictator’ distraction and the ‘war-weary civilians in Aleppo’ diversion. The Empire doesn’t care about any of those things. It cares about oil, power and money. How can anyone be confused about that by now? 

People in other countries are different from us. They’re formed by their own histories and traditions. They solve problems differently. Most prefer a ‘bad’ solution of their own to a ‘good’ one imposed from outside. We can offer to help, but when we insist on telling them what to do; we push them away and create new enemies. You’d feel the same if your neighbor showed up on your doorstep telling you what you had to do.

Exaggerating threats to America and downplaying the high cost of reckless intervention have become the paycheck of lobbyists, pundits, and politicians. Many would be out of work if we accepted the reality that our country is safe. In the Empire, there’s no penalty for failure. We forget the lies of those who assured us that bombs would bring stable prosperity to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. They remain at the heart of our foreign policy and are still taken seriously when they insist that the Empire must pursue primacy everywhere in the world.

The pursuit of primacy is the pursuit of our own slow and increasingly violent decline: America becomes stronger when we meet our challenges at home and respect the independence of others, not when we try to rule the world. These days Robin Hood would be deemed a terrorist and ‘consumers’ would accept that because the TV news would tell them it was so.

Wars of aggression are called humanitarian interventions when the Empire does it. Universal healthcare is, regrettably, ‘unrealistic’ but billions of dollars for Israel, so it can operate its Apartheid system, and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, so they can bomb farmers in Yemen, and cut off people’s heads for blasphemy, is somehow in ‘our’ vital interest. Translate some of these code words, like the ones I put in scare quotes, or other such code words, like ‘enemy combatant’, ‘free trade agreement’, ‘security barrier’, ‘indefinite detention’, ‘targeted killing’, or ‘troubled asset relief program’ and tell us what you find.

I could go on, and frequently do. Odds are I’m already on the list of Putin-worshiping, anti-Semitic, racist, misogynist, conspiracy theorizing America-haters. The last thing I need to do is babble about how America is an authoritarian, corporatist mess ruled by a global capitalist elite that doesn’t care about you, or any other actual people living in actual countries, where the corporate media can whip up mass fanatical support for wars of aggression, or corporate puppets, by pointing their fingers at yet another bogeyman and shouting ‘Hitler’. Next thing you know I’d be writing about banks, and global corporations, and national sovereignty, and you know what that’s about, don’t you?

How are Russian troops deploying inside Russia “provocative,” while the Empire’s troops on Russia's front porch are not?

If America is the leader of the free world, what do we make of its abandoning the reasons it was once called that especially after the imposition of the ‘patriot act’.