Historical amnesia

When we don't allow our history teachers to teach the true and complete history of our nation, then we guarantee that things will never change.
The public mind won't change, the media and press won't change, and our leadership won't change.
In a self satisfied, self absorbed, self righteous dreamworld created by Madison Avenue, we wake up like groggy doormice when 19 hijackers invade our sanctified space and ask each other, so innocently, and oh so offended..."Why do they hate us?"

Yesterday Michael Kinsley wrote about the history of U.S. meddling in Iran, too. (Coincidence rules.) Kinsley got a key point wrong though, which makes his tale just another apologia for more meddling.
He portrays us in white hats: nobly spreading our values and opening the world to free exchange. And the rulers of the nations we have screwed with are all, mysteriously, crazy repressive fundamentalist thugs.
Right, Michael.
That's the Made-For-TV version.

I challenge you to walk in the shoes of the people who have lived under attack by the American Leviathan for the past almost 90 years... subject to state terrorism by covert attack and overt attack, led by leaders who are given the Hobbes choice of bribery or assasination, "a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs." And meanwhile the common men, who just want to live small lives and be left alone- live with the consequences. I challenge you to live as a target in "the post 9-11 world" for 90 years and you might be a tad whacked-out too.

The tiny factoid that Michael Kinsley got wrong wrong wrong was the number of dead.

His hundreds of thousands truly are in the millions. And you can extrapolate the wounded, the driven insane, the mentally wounded, the ruined lives. The ruined infrastructure, the environmentally polluted war torn, wasted places.
If they did that to us, we'd be a tad pissed, too.

So what does this mean? Expect more backlash. Live behind gates and security cameras.
Become a fascist nation. Build more gulags than Stalin could ever dream about. Tear up the Bill of Rights. Be data-mined. Feed the corporations who protect you. Feed them your young, you couldn't afford to educate them or keep them healthy anyways. Wrap yourself in the flag, use it for a blindfold and a gag. Hire your own historians to write fairy tales, fire the professors unless they work for Monsanto, and go on faith alone. Privatize everything. War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery.

I woke up late.

I prefer Freedonia to Oceania.

I want to live in a pre-9-11 world, not having to reeducate myself on all the history I missed learning.
I want my country to live the values it preaches.
I want to be Bilbo Baggins at Bag End, tending my vegetable garden.
I want forgiveness for the sins of my leaders.