Self-Loathing Citizenry and Morally-Bankrupt Diplomacy: America's Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost

I used to become intoxicated by the Conspicuous Consumerism delievered into my mailbox each month in the form of the fashion magazines to which I subscribed. By the time I had perused articles, dissected celebrity gossip, and silently reminded myself of the new exercise regime I would start in the morning, my mind was turned so inward that I became consumed by self-loathing and envy and would fall into a paralysis of bitter melancholy.

Circe Robbins, a friend of my mother's and the leader of the Apologetics group at church once lectured me on the evils of the media. I ran into her at Starbucks while I was waiting for my coffee and skimming the newest issue of Vogue. She commented on the stack of magazines I was carrying and I casually mentioned that I was addicted to fashion magazines. I remember politely listening as she distolled the dangers of media manipulation, but disregard her words just as soon as she left the shop.

And then one day it happened. After a marathon session of studying the Beautiful People in Vogue, W, Elle, and Harper's Bazaar I closed the last magazine, rested my eyes and lay silently on the bed. Then I got up and swallowed a Xanax dry. I cancelled my subscriptions online the next day.

Several weeks have passed since that incident and my self-loathing has been masked by a new interest: U.S. and international world affairs.

I have been researching about the crisis in Darfur for the last month or so to prepare draft legislation to bar Californian investments in the Sudan. My exposure to the level of suffering of the refugees and the concurrent echoing silence of the world's powers in response saddens me. To gain additional information about U.S. international policy, I picked up the book Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky. Venezeula's colorful president Hugo Chavez, who memorably invoked the image of Satan, sulfur and all, following Dubya's presentation at the UN is a fan of the book.

Mr. Chomsky outlines how the US has, since its birth and more agressively following its ascension as the sole world power, sought, promoted and defended its policies, often in opposition of democratic, poor, or neutral opponents. The following quotes offer just a taste of the morally bankrupt policies of our government:

"Haitians were 'little more than primitive savages,' according to FDR, who claimed to have rewritten the Haitian Constitution during [President] Wilson's military occupation-so as to permit US corporations to take over Haiti's land and resources after its recalcitrant Parliament had been sent packing by the marines."
Hegemony or Survival, Page 65

"Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country." Chomsky explains that the US planned and implemented policies to support the belief that the first beneficiaries must be US investors, with Latin American fulfilling a service function.
Hegemony or Survival, Page 66

"a provacative case can be made that US drug policy contributes effectively to the control of an ethnically distinct and economically deprived underclass at home and serves US economic and security interests abroad."
Hegemony or Survival, Page 59



I fear our chickens will come home to roost soon.