Quote Originally Posted by psychocat
The west has an awful lot of skeletons rattling around in sooooo many closets.
no nation can exist for long without making enemies and stepping on a few toes and the larger, more powerful the nation, the more enemies it makes. people today don't speak much about the atrocities committed by spain, france and england in their heyday. those are faded powers and of little consequence. we even seem to have forgiven the millions massacred by stalin and his progeny for the sake of the great socialist state and the similar barbarity of china's perpetual "communist revolution". great nations have always attempted to impose their will on lesser nations and even small countries have interfered in the affairs of their neighbors. that is the nature of power and the men who wield it. it may not be right or fair, but it is reality.

now it is america's turn to be reviled for its part in the shaping of the world and i suppose it's only natural. what i do find rather odd is the lengths to which this country's detractors will go in their search for the evil that hides in the american heart. the various dictatorships that america has supported over the years are invariably brought up as evidence of our malicious nature. labeled "puppet regimes", their opposition is usually glorified as the popular resistance or freedom fighters and romanticized as altruistic men and women giving up their lives for the good of the people. the truth, before history is revised for the sake of agenda, is seldom so romantic. backed by another powerful nation, usually with an ideology contrary to that of the u.s., the revolution is almost always merely a power struggle between opposing domestic forces under the influence of outside powers. the people themselves are of little concern to the combatants, it is the power that rests in the people that is being fought over.

for decades the soviet union and the united states battled for the supremacy of their respective ideologies in such a manner, each assured that their way of life was good and the other evil. in what seemed to be some sort of conclusion, the u.s.s.r., having bankrupted itself in an arms race with the u.s., appeared to fold. ceding a majority of its satellites and reining in its massive defense spending, the cold war was at an end. but it had really just begun. the battle was never about the division of the world between those two superpowers. it was a conflict between two fundamental ideologies, the supremacy of either the liberty of the individual or the will of the collective as translated by a governing body. neither a perfect solution, but the only alternatives that seemed available.

the funny part is that the apparent dissolution of the most prominent proponent of socialism in the world did more to strengthen its cause than to weaken it. under the guise of "helping the people", this enforced collectivism has become the popular cause. it is seen as the underdog in some epic battle and, having been defeated by an overwhelming force, is embraced as the great answer by the struggling masses. the wealth of the victor in that battle is undeniable and the poverty in which a majority of the world exists is equally apparent, so the evil must reside in that victor. it is described by the ignorant masses and their handlers as the good of the many as opposed to the good of the few, but it might better be described as the greed of the mob scrabbling after the possessions of others that they feel their mere existence entitles them to.

so the skeletons are brought out and paraded around. these, along with various bits of anecdotal evidence, are used to stir the members of the mob into giving up their dreams of becoming one of the few and handing their governments the last vestiges of individual power they have left to them. in more civilized climes the lie of the ballot box is used to coerce the citizens into believing they are enforcing their rights to the belongings of others, while in savage lands warlords use more blatant means to wring what wealth and power they can out of the inhabitants. this small experiment in tempering the anger of the mob with justice is soon to come to an abrupt halt, degenerating into just another mindless herd led by the unscrupulous to no particular end.

human beings can be so intelligent on an individual level, but en masse they are among the most ignorant of creatures.






please excuse the rant. i know i've gotten a bit off course, but i'm feeling particularly disgusted with the ignorance of the mob.
delusionsofNORMALity Reviewed by delusionsofNORMALity on . Top 2 examples of U.S. foreign depravity/hypocrisy This is really a top 10, but I have an early morning and time isn't abundant right now...I'll post the next part tomorrow. There are an infinite number, but I've decided on 10, and these 2 aren't necessarily the top-top 2, but up there. 1. NSC-68: in April of 1950 this document outlined plans to "foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system." The means? Reinhard Gehlen, head of Nazi military intelligence on the Eastern front, was put in charge of the espionage service in West Rating: 5