Winter Patriot Community Blog

Welcome back, WP. I wish you a full recovery from your ailments.

However, I am bothered by your recent post, and Mr. Floyd's similar remarks on the cravenness of the American "general public." I agree that the so-called "greatness" of the American people is mythological, a self-congratulatory tool to keep us in our places. However, I resist the opposite conclusion as well.

I don't know where you live -- although it seems like you have not been getting out much as of late -- and I know Mr. Floyd lives as an ex-pat, so I have to assume that much of what you both know about "the American people" is based on personal recollections, television, and mass media, if that. I have to question how much you know about or interact with working people in this country or, as the case now, non-working people struggling to survive. So many of us like to think "everyone" agrees with us, that "we" can know and understand what the "mass of people" believe, even when we know this cannot be true. So you and Mr. Floyd can pronounce the American populace to be a bloodthirsty lot, or deliberately indifferent to the slaughter( and torture( committed in our names, based on your perceptions of people in your neighborhood or newspaper or on the street, or based on the crimes to which we have acquiesced for all these years.

I think reality is a bit more complicated. Yes, among (what I would call) the petit bourgeois groupings (mainline Democrat politicos, NY Times readers, professionals of all races, etc.), there is a sickening adherence to the Democratic Party line, etc., etc. They say war is "sadly" unavoidable or somehow "human." They blame "right wingers" for all evils, point to non-existent "progress" on race issues, the promise of Obama-ism, and other nonsense. Yet dig a bit deeper into the broader populace and actually talk to real people about the world and their lives, and you find something else. You find widespread opposition to the wars, to banker bailouts, to torture, to murdering innocents around the world. I work with prisoners and ex-prisoners. They have no illusions about the nature of the US government, nor do their families and friends. Nor do most of the African-Americans I have ever met, or most working class whites. Or retirees. Or the unemployed. Or (documented and undocumented) immigrants. Or countless others who don't read/buy/listen to the mass media outlets, to media pundit blowhards that liberals take so seriously. I don't have some unique window on the American mind, but I get out a bit, I engage people and, in many cases, I actually like people. The more people I meet, the less I know about what "everybody" thinks.

As smarter folks than I have characterized other periods, the working class in America is in an assessment period, a period of figuring things out -- how to get out of the current morass, and how to do it soon. We are struggling at the local level to save our neighbors' homes, keeping our sons and daughters other students from joining the military if we can, fighting banks and insurance companies and oil companies with every form of protest, and resisting the police/army/social workers who invade our homes. We are learning about the non-existence of American democracy, about how hard it is to create change, about the treason and fealty of our masters. But we know that there are more of us than them, and we can and will resist.

May Day was an American creation. The IWW and the Teamsters, Dr. King and Malcolm, Suffragettes, gay liberation -- these were American inventions for the most part. It seems odd to think so when we encounter the throngs of Ipod-ers, cellular dialers, and mass media emoticons, but people are not always what they seem. Americans have within our history and our psyches the capacity for rebellion, and victory. We are not "exceptional," but we are not the passive worms many leftie pundits like to pretend we are. Don't place your bets against us just yet. The war has not even started.

I have re-read Winter's article, pjerome, and frankly, I can't find one sentence I disagree with. Though you raise some good and valid points, you are complicating something that is quite simple by raising the (almost obvious) point that not everybody living in the United States ascribes to the American Exceptionalism dogma. You quite rightly say, "I think reality is a bit more complicated." And so it is. But this argument that WP is making isn't complicated at all. It is very simple and straight forward, and what's more true. Where isn't it?

You haven't to my reading countered any of Winter's points except to say they are not universally applicable to the entire US population. It is undeniable that the lower down the ladder you are socially, the more readily you are able to see what's hidden under the skirts of those above; to readily see the actual agenda in play. And these sectors are suffering, too, from this same exceptionalism. But then, everybody does, some more than others, and some sooner than later, of course. I would welcome your further expounding it on this and what may be done to alleviate the problems you mention, but it is not the issue at hand here. Though, of course, it is connected as I said and agree.

You are citing the "Not Everybody" argument that Jewish people trot out at every opportunity, and yes, I'm looking at you, Grimblebee. This argument, as it applies to Jews, has been beautifully unpacked for us by A Peasant here and here on this blog. This rebuttal of the "Not Everybody" argument applies equally to Catholics, Christians in general, the so-called 'White" nations and the United States in particular.
If you haven't read AP's rebuttal, I commend it to you.

You finish with, "Don't place your bets against us just yet. The war has not even started." But that's the point, the trouble and the telltale, isn't it? "The war has not even started" and yet there seems to have been plenty of time for it to do so!

The questions then are; "when will it start?", and, "How will it start?"

Enjoyed this article - I wish it was not so. Again, reality bites but that's where we need to live.
Thanks to you Canadians, Brits and Aussies who try to sober U.S. up.

I think many of you would find Jerry Fresia's ( an ex-pat living in Italy) Towards an American Revolution worth the read
and it's free at the link below:
cyberjournal.org/authors/fresia/

Dave

Another thought provoker, Winter - kudos! As I was reading, it struck me that this American attitude traces directly back to Raskolnikov, the murderous protagonist in Crime and Punishment. He had what Dostoyevsky called a "Napoleon complex" - whereby he imagined himself so exceptional, and his survival therefore so critical, that it was OK for him to murder and steal to ensure his continued existence. Of course had it not been for Porfiry Petrovich, he would have gotten away scot-free.

So where is our Porfiry Petrovich? Turns out he was the direct ancestor of Columbo, so perhaps we should just appoint Peter Falk Special Prosecutor to unravel this unholy mess that America has become. Then we can live happily ever after. Just a thought...

I agree that the assault on our liberties, not to mention the American assault on the rest of the world, started a century or more ago, and continues. The war that has not yet started in earnest is the fightback. There is plenty of room for defeatism, and I engage in it myself quite frequently. Hell, I litigate on behalf of people brutalized by the most massive and hideous prison system the world has ever seen, here in the US of A. I know despair.

But I also agree with Truth Excavator that a country that produced Malcolm and Martin can produce their successors. We have to start organizing independent of the twin parties of capital, which many of us are doing. For obvious reasons, the mass media ignores or tries to kill these efforts, but they exist. What we must do is avoid at all costs the kind of defeatism and self-loathing that reinforces the image of all Americans as dumb, fat, ignorant slobs, too alienated to understand their oppression. Change will be led by small numbers of committed people who win the support and loyalty of masses of people. Without hope -- not delusion, but hope -- we truly are defeated.

How are you going, WP? The former "Bukko in Australia" here. I got the answer to what I checked your blog for, seeing that "Gandhi" is still alive. Get back to blogging, you bastard! (Not you, WP, just G. He dropped out, the lazy bugger.) How else am I going to keep up with what's happening down there without HowardOut, Gandhi?

As for me, the Mrs. and I immigrated to Canada. Not by MY choice, mate. I bloody loved it Down Under. But I would have had to get divorced to stay. It was still a close choice, let me tell you. Nice to be a bum-wiper, so that I can move legally from country to country.

The Canucks are slightly more sensible than Americans, but they're so close to the U.S. Empire that they do not see the fatal flaws as well as Aussies do. I had much better political conversations with people in Oz than I do with those in Canuckrainia.

Good luck and good health to you.