The Impostures of Pretended Patriotism

Happy Independence Day. Right?

But what are we independent from? Are we independent from Big Oil and Big Money control? No. Are we independent from a fascist state that cares little for personal freedoms and liberties? No. Are we independent from the fear the neocons have used against an unsuspecting and gullible public? No. Are we independent from the very kind of power structure that we decided to rebel from? No.

We live in a false grandeur… a self-assigned and brainwashed thought that we are morally better than the rest of the world and just because we have been lied to to convince us otherwise (it was easy to do) we forget that and do not want to hold those liars accountable, for we don’t hold our representatives accountable for anything they do, unless it is have a gay person suck them off.

We pretend that we are flag-waving, true patriots, yet we allow our government to attack and ruin other’s lives in search for oil and its control.

How soon we forget what our first true hero and president said about this. How quickly we turn our back on what is important and honorable. How quickly we allow these assholes to lie to us and us believe them. Mr Washington said in his farewell address:

“In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”

I read an article by Robert Scheer at Alternet called The U.S. Is Drowning in Pretend Patriotism and it caused me to think about this day in a different way.

We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the board of directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors. That’s what the U.S. invasion of Iraq accomplished; for the first time in more than three decades after Iraq joined a worldwide trend of formerly colonized nations gaining control of their own resources, Big Oil is getting its black gold back. It was always about the oil — that’s why “we” invaded Iraq — only “we” aren’t getting any, at least not at a reasonable price. The oil companies are.

“Yeah, but now that we are there, what are we to do?” Or the even harder idiocy, “We went there to give them freedom, they owe us the oil and we should take it.”

Is there any question in a redneck’s mind that this illegal invasion was anything except a way to get control of the Iraqi oil? How stupid does an American have to be to still believe these THUGS like Cheney and Rice (not to mention Bush and the rest of the thieves and liars) when every issue points to their neocon, oil-driven, world-control agenda? I mean, REALLY.

Are you people still so ignorant and stupid that you still believe them? No matter what the evidence is? To me, that is down-right treasonous. If you still support these maniacs, then you are also a traitor, in my opinion… at the very least, the stupidest of the stupid and should get mental help.

Sorry, but that is the way it is. There is no longer any excuse for you people… you Bushie Fools.

As Robert says, it may be impossible for the oil money soaked congress to get the point, but the Oil Companies and the American public are not the same. When Haliburton can screw Americans by moving off shore, they are no longer American. Period.

As they get richer and richer, we are suffering by paying for their ultra-profits. Now, they have “negotiated” some sort of contract to pull the oil from under the sand for the Iraqi government and will reap 75% of the money, leaving 25% for the Iraqis.

Now think about that for a second. Our “war” was to be paid for by their oil money, but the Oil companies get 75% and we are to be repaid or they will finance the rest of our 100 year war with 25% of the oil proceeds. Does any other redneck think the math is screwed? How many other countries do you think would allow this? Saudi Arabia?

What we have done is certainly a humongous rip-off of other people’s resources. Period. And we (all of us Americans) have allowed it and actually chide it along because of our “imposture” of pretended patriotism. “Imposture” is the act or practice of deceiving by means of an assumed character or name. We assume a false patriotism, we pretend that this patriotism is honorable and warranted, but it is simply the catalyst that our leaders have used to brainwash us into believing our superiority to the rest of the world, especially a bunch of sand dwelling rag heads.

We have become precisely what our greatest hero warned us of.

So, today, as I gather signatures for Ralph Nader, don’t put your flag pin up in my face, unless you are ready to sign this thing and get rid of these lying SOB’s who are ruining our country.

Robert finishes with this:

So, take that American flag off your lapel and replace it with a button bearing the Exxon or Chevron logo. C’mon, Dick Cheney and Condi Rice, be straight about what it is you are really pushing here. ‘Fess up — it’s not the good old USA as represented by the sucker taxpayers conned by your patriotic blather. No sirree, what you would have Americans paying homage to is the majesty of the big multinational corporations that exploit American military power to rule the world.

But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”

If Barack Obama or John McCain was to offer such words of wisdom this Fourth of July, he would be vilified as “weak,” and that is a fit measure of just how far we have descended from the high hopes of our first president.