Like so much else in our "Alice in Wonderland" culture, "U.S. interests" don't really have anything to do with the U.S. as a country or as a people. The "United States" in the phrase "U.S. interests" means:
1. Transglobal corporations which are like floating countries unto themselves with loyalty to no one;
2. Extremely powerful, transglobal criminal gangs operating as, or within, #1.
3. Extremely powerful war profiteers operating as, or within, #1. (The "military-industrial complex" writ large--which, among other things, will sell arms to anyone, and freely murders anyone they wish, anywhere in the world; and the "prison-industrial complex," which is also, now, transglobal, imprisons millions unjustly and aids in the creation of police states in former democracies, including this one.)
4. Powerful investors (Chinese, Saudi Arabian, et al--by no means limited to billionaire "Americans"
.
5. The political/bureaucratic class which serves the above interests in the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, state governorships, etc., in a "revolving door" exchange with all of the above (leave Congress, sit on a corporate board, etc.), their counterparts in U.S. client countries and allied countries and their counterparts in "U.S."-controlled transglobal entities such as the IMF/World Bank and NATO.
6. ALL of the corporate media.
The above entities comprise a very limited number of people, all in all, who exploit and oppress billions of people (not to mention the millions they bomb, murder, torture, imprison or displace--in the thousands in Honduras and Colombia (in the millions as to displacement in Colombia), in the tens of thousands in Iraq, etc.). Up to about the Reagan regime, these entities felt obliged to broadly profit the large U.S. middle class but that "honeymoon" is over, and the U.S. middle class, and of course our increasingly poor working class and their dependents, are now in the same category as the long ago jettisoned poor subclass (the homeless, the "cannon fodder" returnees, the mentally ill, the unskilled, the poorly educated, etc.), to be mercilessly robbed, disempowered and stripped of their human and civil rights.
Drummond Coal, for instance--to take just one example--is not alone. It operates (from Alabama) in Colombia with the collusion of the "political/bureaucratic class" here, and thus, when Drummond Coal execs hire rightwing death squads to murder the labor leaders in their operations in Colombia, the U.S. (not us, not our people) SUPPORTS them--covers up for them, influences judges on their behalf, writes up U.S. "free trade for the rich" deals and implements them to smoothe their way, and, in every way possible, makes it easy for them to oppress their Colombian workers (including murdering them) and to steal Colombia's rich natural resources.
They do not operate alone as transglobal entities. They operate within a network of transglobal powers, for whom the leaders, here, whom we wistfully believe that "we" are "electing," are the servant class. Our political leaders and the bureaucracies they run serve these transglobal powers, not us. That is why everything is so topsy-turvy--for instance (the most telling example, in my book): the privatization of the very counting of our votes, now controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that we, the American people, are forbidden to review--in almost ALL the voting machines in the U.S., with virtually no audit/recount controls.
THAT is topsy-turvy!
To understand it, you have to understand what "U.S. interests" really means. It does NOT mean OUR interests--the interests of most people in the U.S. It means the interests of this transglobal corporate power network.
I gather that you think that all nation states have always acted in their own "interest"--and I certainly would agree with that--but I think that, in absorbing that reality about nation states and history, we need to beware of minimizing, and even fundamentally misunderstanding, current transglobal corporate power and our situation here and now.
The precedent that springs to mind is the British East India Company--the first transglobal corporate power that spread its influence so far and wide--literally circling the planet--that it, in fact, defined many nation states and installed their governments. They did this tacitly in the interest of the Crown and with (eventually) the powerful British Navy to back them up, but it was basically a phenomenon of merchantmen seeking vast PROFIT. (It was really against this entity--the East India Company--that Americans rebelled.)
But that imperial, corporate, profit-seeking phenomenon--the British East India Company--was nothing--NOTHING!--compared to the current transglobal corporate masters who have hijacked our government and our military, and operate essentially outside the power of any government or people, in the interests of the transglobal few.
The brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands in Colombia, for instance, to make way for Monsanto, et al, to monopolize the marketing of marijuana and cocaine, is not going to benefit us. For one thing, they will mess with marijuana and the coca leaf (highly complex, beneficial, traditional medicine plants--mess with the genetics, patent the DNA, make growing your own illegal). For another, they are already shutting down the smaller operations here--the medical marijuana dispensaries in California, for instance--to monopolize the PROFITS. (Yes, the Feds are serving Big Pharma--in my opinion--helping to eliminate the competition, beforehand.)
Virtually nothing that our government does benefits us.. That is over. Our interests--the interests of the vast majority here--don't matter any more.
We can cynically sit back and say, "'Nations' always do this," and not bother our pretty little heads about it, or we can face up to it--try to understand, for instance, that the very concept of "nation" has essentially been overthrown (and, with it, democratic government)--and look for (and work for) ways to get our power back-- our rightful power as a democratic people. My recommendation: We need to start with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.
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