Psychopathology of a Failed State
(How Americans Learned to Hate Everyone... Even Fellow Citizens)
“[Failed states] share some primary characteristics. They are unable or unwilling to protect their citizens from violence and perhaps even destruction. They regard themselves as beyond the reach of domestic or international law, hence free to carry out aggression and violence. And if they have democratic forms, they suffer from a serious ‘democratic deficit’ that deprives their formal democratic institutions of real substance.” -Professor Noam Chomsky (2006)
If the reader finds it beyond the scope of possibility that the United States of America fits the above description, any further time invested in what follows would be wasted.
For hundreds of years, the dominant social group in our nation has been that of the White Protestant Male. This is a simple factual statement. As such, it would never be misconstrued as incendiary by a well-educated American. Yet, current attempts to teach details of direct connections between this group and historical public policies that resulted in racial subjugation, legally-protected discrimination, and borderline genocide, have resulted in a growing wave of racially-motivated political backlash.
The enormous power of the current governments of North America, was originally established through a process of religiously demonizing the resistance to the expropriation of land and resources from their historical owners: the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. This conflict began long before the Revolutionary War and extends to the present day. Ongoing legal battles to defend tribal lands continue within the courts of multiple countries, most currently focused on the threat that corporate oil pipelines pose to the valuable natural resources of native communities.
The free labor of enslaved African-Americans was exploited prior to the Civil War, to construct such hallowed symbols of “freedom and liberty,” as the White House and U.S. Capitol. Some freed slaves even joined the U.S. Cavalry, aiding in the removal of indigenous Americans from their homes, in order to satisfy the expansionist hunger of U.S. corporations, and the surging number of new immigrants from Europe.
Sandwiched between both of these, was the rise and fall of the Republic of Texas- a nation founded by radical racist subversives, who emigrated to the area to wrest it from government control and establish a country sworn to defend and protect the institution of slavery. Reverberations of this philosophy resonate there to this very day!
As the continent yielded to the control of White Protestant Males (WPM), it became necessary to pursue external expansion through international conflict with Spain. In that process, false promises were made to indigenous allies fighting in Puerto Rico, The Philippines, and Cuba. The guarantee of self-rule so readily offered beforehand, was withdrawn just as quickly following the conflict. In fact, the U.S. Army hunted down and killed males over the age of ten, during a military campaign to suppress popular resistance to late 19th century colonization efforts in the South Pacific.
With the integration of combat forces during WWII, certain minorities found greater acceptance within some institutions of government. Tribes such as the Navajo (under attack by the U.S. Army just two generations earlier), supplied eager young volunteers such as Ira Hayes, and even donated their own native language to the Allied war effort.
It is arguable, that allowing the participation of minorities (including women) within the industrial workforce during WWII, created fissures in a previously indestructible wall of misogyny and racism. The solidarity displayed in defense of the “free world” by such men and women, provided evidence to many of their loyalty to our nation.
These advances did not come without roadblocks, such as the unjustified and unlawful imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent. With each step towards meaningful social integration beginning with the return of African-American veterans from integrated Europe, there have been corresponding waves of violence initiated by insecure WPM comfortable in their insulation from all forms of justice.
By creating and maintaining a constant existential threat to the U.S., the two-party system managed to successfully distract the growing number of Americans who had proven they were capable of working together. In doing so, a paradigm of national security was invoked that trumps all other consideration, and conveniently allows the substitution of one enemy for another: Soviet Union = Iraq = al Qaeda = Iran = China.
Throughout the following 70 years, mass media and our political class have worked unceasingly to convince Americans that it is not the citizen who is to blame for the state of our nation (and the planet). During that same period, the U.S. Government has achieved the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the entire industrialized world, while abetting a process by which 200,000 American families now control 90% of the country’s collective wealth. As average wealth declines, so must the common good.
No longer is the animus of resentment being shepherded against foreign nations in service to imperialism. At this point, we are actually being encouraged to hate each other through online algorithms and news reports, most financed by the very same wealthy interests that have presided over the collapse of representative democracy.
No longer does a majority work towards the creation of a republic dedicated to the recognition of all as being equal under the law. Our system of representation has become so corrupted, as to allow the sacrifice of social cohesion in service to partisan attempts to sow seeds of distrust and incite civil conflict within the general populace.
So here we are… with the Supreme Court of the United States poised to remove a civil right previously established by their own judicial precedent, and inside the very same room where a sitting Justice recently provided proof of his utter disrespect for others.
You can always count on the indignant White Protestant Male to make us Proud Boys.