RadioRaheem84
6th August 2010, 20:58
I am trying my hardest to not impose judgment on people I know have been affected by years of massive propaganda, misinformation and material conditions beyond their control, but the apparent evidence to the contrary of everything Americans hold dear still doesn't stop people from reveling in ignorance in the United States.
This is apparent anywhere but I have yet to see a nation so sure of it's ignorance than the United States, primarily due to the nationalism the bourgeoisie instill in them. For many white people, it's racial supremacy and their faux connection to the upper crust.
But how do obvious errors like the basic understanding of socialism, racial issues, and economics gain so much legitimacy?
A.) How is it that the entirety of American critique against socialism stems from a faulty understanding of it and a lack of interest to understand it? How did it mutate into some tax scheme to bleed the productive economy dry and enslave workers into poverty? Actions clearly imposed by capitalist nations abroad. In essence, how can Americans wrongly claim that third world nations are socialist?
B.) Racial Issues are a hot topic in the States. Race is a crazy construct here. For instance, the Hispanic issue. It's seen as a racial category in the States, yet no Latin American nation sees it as such. This confuses a lot of American to think of Hispanics as this homogeneous group that all look the same; hence the silly racial laws in Arizona. Even when Americans mean well with multiculturalism they're being quite racist.
I am also astounded as to how some sectors of the American community view race. White is a category that is mostly reserved for Anglo-Saxon middle class people. Olive skinned folk are brown? As are ethnic looking people.
I remember in high school a Russian friend told me, that he wasn't white, he was Russian! He saw himself as non-white due to the use of the word to mean 'normal quaint suburban whiteys'.
Not even South African Apartheid proponents were this racist in their outlook!
C.) American supremacy carries with it an absurd view of history. All criticism is diverted away from a systemic critique and prone to descend into selective personal error, i.e. "it was the Dems fault", "it was the Republicans", "we were at war", "war is hell", "our enemies did worse", etc.
I can see why many groups outside of the US do not even trust us to engage with them in activism unless they feel us out first, hoping we haven't fallen into the trappings of the American system. I even see it in here with the insistence to not critique Americans in our society for their participation in the excess of ignorance.
But how am I supposed to feel when nearly all that was mentioned above is almost automatically presumed in the States? Even the intellectuals harbor some of these trappings. How do you expect anyone to automatically trust an American on certain things unless they come in Red as a Bolshevik? I wouldn't and I understand why others do not.
The reason why I gave the examples above is that anyone with a computer or a library card can easily exhume themselves of such ignorance.These are not matter in which a highly skilled level of education is needed to understand such concepts.
So that is why I think that the American experience is a process of the heart, not the mind. The logic and reason to expose these fallacies are out there, many just ignore it. They want the ignorance to be true because it has brought them supposed comfort. This is one of the reasons why I lack hope in the American cause to win them over to socialism; because it's not a matter of reason anymore. And this is why I think that it will continue (even in it's future collapse) to be an enemy of socialism, rather than a proponent.
This is apparent anywhere but I have yet to see a nation so sure of it's ignorance than the United States, primarily due to the nationalism the bourgeoisie instill in them. For many white people, it's racial supremacy and their faux connection to the upper crust.
But how do obvious errors like the basic understanding of socialism, racial issues, and economics gain so much legitimacy?
A.) How is it that the entirety of American critique against socialism stems from a faulty understanding of it and a lack of interest to understand it? How did it mutate into some tax scheme to bleed the productive economy dry and enslave workers into poverty? Actions clearly imposed by capitalist nations abroad. In essence, how can Americans wrongly claim that third world nations are socialist?
B.) Racial Issues are a hot topic in the States. Race is a crazy construct here. For instance, the Hispanic issue. It's seen as a racial category in the States, yet no Latin American nation sees it as such. This confuses a lot of American to think of Hispanics as this homogeneous group that all look the same; hence the silly racial laws in Arizona. Even when Americans mean well with multiculturalism they're being quite racist.
I am also astounded as to how some sectors of the American community view race. White is a category that is mostly reserved for Anglo-Saxon middle class people. Olive skinned folk are brown? As are ethnic looking people.
I remember in high school a Russian friend told me, that he wasn't white, he was Russian! He saw himself as non-white due to the use of the word to mean 'normal quaint suburban whiteys'.
Not even South African Apartheid proponents were this racist in their outlook!
C.) American supremacy carries with it an absurd view of history. All criticism is diverted away from a systemic critique and prone to descend into selective personal error, i.e. "it was the Dems fault", "it was the Republicans", "we were at war", "war is hell", "our enemies did worse", etc.
I can see why many groups outside of the US do not even trust us to engage with them in activism unless they feel us out first, hoping we haven't fallen into the trappings of the American system. I even see it in here with the insistence to not critique Americans in our society for their participation in the excess of ignorance.
But how am I supposed to feel when nearly all that was mentioned above is almost automatically presumed in the States? Even the intellectuals harbor some of these trappings. How do you expect anyone to automatically trust an American on certain things unless they come in Red as a Bolshevik? I wouldn't and I understand why others do not.
The reason why I gave the examples above is that anyone with a computer or a library card can easily exhume themselves of such ignorance.These are not matter in which a highly skilled level of education is needed to understand such concepts.
So that is why I think that the American experience is a process of the heart, not the mind. The logic and reason to expose these fallacies are out there, many just ignore it. They want the ignorance to be true because it has brought them supposed comfort. This is one of the reasons why I lack hope in the American cause to win them over to socialism; because it's not a matter of reason anymore. And this is why I think that it will continue (even in it's future collapse) to be an enemy of socialism, rather than a proponent.