February 18, 2008

[…] What is it, this American morality? This righteousness? Is it our religious roots in the fable of the Puritan settlers, those super religious people who in their hardships were bigots, perhaps also practitioners of incest and racists soon morphing into dogmatic chauvinists who early-on labeled their dissidents and different-thinkers witches and demons.

Pre-Americanism! The same Americanism initiated then which today fosters the rights of the rich to become richer, the strong to trample the weak and the contempt for and the crushing of anything smacking of the social in our land, real trade unions and, heaven forbid, universal health care.

Meanwhile, out in the empire, as long as it is distant, the Puritan legacy instills blindness to the use of cluster bombs from the stratosphere and hidden torture in places with foreign names like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib … and while our neighbors in Haiti eat dirt, literally?

When I asked a friend and writer colleague in heartland America what he understands by Americanism, he stunned me and overwhelmed me with the following:

“From birth I have been immersed, enculterated, inculcated, and surrounded by the myriad toxic components of the ‘American Dream’ or ‘Americanism.’ There are some admirable aspects to ‘America’ but by and large we live in a spiritual/psychological sewer.” He then listed two dozen aspects of Americanism, which I repeat here: narcissism, greed, hyper-individualism, consumerism, capitalism, corporatism, faux democracy, media whoredom, asphyxiation of the Left, Christian fundamentalism, Mammon worship, moral retardation, militarism, imperialism, celebrity worship, wars on drugs and terrorism, prison industrial complex, mean-spiritedness, self-absorption, American exceptionalism, bullying, anti-intellectualism and the abandonment of many uninsured and homeless in the wealthiest nation on earth.

…read full article@http://www.countercurrents.org/stewart210208.htm

What is patriotism?
that fist sentence is very poor and foolish assumption. common sense and a little knowlege of the constitution should have warned you about thet. with that said i need not go any further in my disagreement on your explanation of the ward.

What is a elitist?
you better take a good look within yourself. this whole page is filled with “shall nots”

and we do not have three “levels” of government. we have four types(actually 4) of the same type of governments. each consisting off a duly elected legislative body and ececutive. the terms used too define these positions may differ but they purpose and intent remaine the same.

now, whether or not you take my criticizm seriously, that is up to your. it is you glossary and web site not mine. but if you do not like being misssled than dont mislead.

As far as the definition of elitist is concerned, where were my “shall nots” and where or where did I imply that I am better than another person? Hmm… And if you can’t get meanings through examples, then that is pretty sad. Could it just be that you filter what you read to align with your own person agenda? And why does my SUBJECTIVE glossary offend you so? If you don’t like my politics, just say so rather than get all into playing semantics.

Maybe you should find out what my site is about because all of these words are in context to what I talk about in my blog.

Please, if you’re going to lambaste me on my command of the English language, hun, how about learning how to write coherently yourself?

Thanks for playing, little guy.

In the end perhaps after a war we have to choose between a caliphate or a tightend Western rule based on a new international monetary system with real rates of exchange. The nations are indebted by careless, self-obsessed, power-seeking, arrogant but empty politicians, and of this follows the present hegemony of Arabia.

What I would choose is not difficult guess.

Sonia
http://Danmark.WordPress.com