If The US Really Was What It Pretends To Be

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

It’s wild to consider how many of the world’s problems would not exist if the US really was the thing it advertises itself as.

Ukraine would not be at war right now, because the US empire would not have provoked that war, since the US really would be an upholder of peace and international order.

The world would not be staring down the barrel of nuclear armageddon, because the US really would be a normal country that respects the sovereignty of other nations instead of the hub of a globe-spanning undeclared empire which keeps ramping up aggression against nuclear-armed states who refuse to consent to its planetary rule.

China would not be preparing for war, because the US military really would be used for the defense of the United States instead of rapidly encircling the US empire’s top geopolitical rival with massive amounts of war machinery.

The middle east would not have spent the 21st century being ripped to pieces by western aggression, because the US really would care about the lives of the people who live there and not just pretend to in order to promote regime change interventionism.

Mountains of human corpses would not have been amassed in Yemen by violence, starvation and disease, because the US really would oppose tyrannical dictatorships like Saudi Arabia instead of enthusiastically facilitating their war crimes.

The information ecosystem of the western world would not be strangled by empire propaganda, internet censorship and Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, because the US really would value free speech and free thought instead of churning out a continual barrage of mass-scale psychological operations designed to dominate the way people think, speak, work, act and vote.

Julian Assange would not be languishing in prison, because the US really would support press freedoms instead of working to set a legal precedent normalizing the persecution of journalists for reporting inconvenient facts.

The people of the United States would not be floundering in poverty and broken infrastructure, because they really would live in a democracy that allows them to influence government policy instead of an oligarchy rigged to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of normal human beings.

The US would not be a tyrannical police state with the largest incarceration rate on the planet, because the US government really would care about civil rights and liberty instead of only caring about the profits that can be harvested via prison slavery and private prisons from those citizens who don’t make good cogs in the capitalist machine.

Developing nations would be thriving a lot more, because the US really would support their national sovereignty and independence instead of doing whatever’s necessary to facilitate the imperialist extraction of their wealth.

Human civilization would be far more just and equitable than it currently is, because the US really would value every nation’s right to forge its own path, and therefore would not have spent generations aggressively stomping out every attempt to move toward socialism everywhere in the world.

The planet would not be circled by hundreds of foreign US military bases and continually terrorized by US wars of aggression, proxy conflicts, CIA coups and starvation sanctions, because all the US government secrecy which makes this malfeasance possible wouldn’t exist, since the US really would value truth and transparency instead of power and domination.

The world would be a much more healthy and harmonious place if the US really was the peace-loving, tyranny-opposing democracy that it and all its propaganda systems frame it as. But because the US government is actually the most tyrannical regime on earth and values nothing apart from its own ability to dominate as many members of the human species as possible, we live in a world of far greater peril and abuse than we otherwise would. 

I write so much about the US empire because that’s just what you find yourself doing when you set out to describe the problems of our world with an open mind; trace those problems back to their origins, and many of them revolve around this strange and profoundly abusive power structure which manages to evade much criticism and scrutiny because it has the most sophisticated soft power narrative control systems ever devised. 

The US empire depends on keeping the world asleep to its abusiveness. And the world depends on everyone waking up to it.

_______________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Featured image via Adobe Stock.