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I finally finished reading Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, which prompted me to think about the differences between the United States that our founding fathers envisioned, and wrote into the Constitution, and the United States we are living in today. Here are some thoughts.

• The Constitution set up a system of government with a separation of powers into three branches (legislative, executive, and judicial), specifying a system of checks (each branch has the ability to hold the other two branches accountable and reign in their power) and balances (each branch holds some of the power). However, today’s executive branch has upset the balance of power, and the legislative and judicial branches are not exercising their checks on its power. For instance, the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to declare war, but instead the President declared war and gave Congress misleading “intelligence” so they would approve his declaration. Also the President is currently asserting that he is above the law, and can detain people without charges and use domestic electronic surveillance without a warrant; although the Constitution requires the President to uphold all the laws of the land, Congress and the judicial system have allowed these actions to continue. Finally, as I discussed in an earlier article, several presidents’ use of the CIA has also gone well beyond the bounds of the Constitution.
• The Constitution also specified that the US was supposed to be a democracy. However, there is no true democracy without an informed citizenry, and (as I wrote about briefly in a previous article), we have a situation today where the executive branch regularly feeds misinformation to the media, and the media reports it as fact instead of investigating. So, the public has no basis for understanding what its elected officials are really doing, and what is really going on in our government, and we don’t really have the ability to make informed decisions on whether to retain or get rid of our elected officials.
• The Constitution also specified that the US was supposed to have a representative government, where the elected officials would represent the public interest. However, with all the money it takes to get elected and then stay in office, our “representatives” are currently representing the interests mainly of their large donors and lobbyists, not the public. I believe that if the public was really informed about the effects of our policies, they would demand better representation, but since the news media are mostly owned by large corporations, the same ones who can afford to buy representation, they don’t have much incentive to provide us with this type of information.
• Finally, in direct conflict with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence, stating that all people in the world have a fundamental right to self-government, the United States has become an empire whose aim is the domination of the entire planet through both economic and military means. I’ve written about these ideas in several previous articles and I believe that the evidence is clear; if you are unconvinced, read Chalmers Johnson’s book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, which documents the world-domination strategy of the military-industrial complex and the CIA, and John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which documents the methods of economic domination.

I am not certain what can be done about these issues… I think the first step would be to make sure the public is aware of what is really happening in the world, but I don’t think this will happen any time soon. For instance, the public is increasingly aware of what is going on in Iraq, but that doesn’t seem to translate into skepticism about other actions of our government. I think this is in part because the news media (as discussed above) is controlled by corporate interests that do not want the present situation to change. Also, the people in the United States who would have the means (time and ability) to seek out good information, if they wanted to, are living pretty comfortably and probably don’t have much incentive to make changes.

Probably it will take a major crisis to bring the situation to the attention of the public. Chalmers Johnson thinks that this crisis will come soon, and he may be right: the current level of military spending is not sustainable, the overseas military presence we have now is not sustainable, and clearly some people in the world are rebelling against our domination strategies. Eventually we’ll also have an acute energy crisis to deal with. The question is whether either crisis will lead to further erosion of the Constitution, or whether the public will insist that those responsible be held accountable, and demand restoration of the system of government our founding fathers envisioned. We’ll see.

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I have been thinking lately about terminology in use by the news media and politicians, as related to the basic concepts of peace, human rights, and social justice. Here are some thoughts:

• It bothers me when instead of talking about people by using the terms “person”, “people”, or “human being”, they use the word “troops” to refer to our soldiers (as in “5 troops died today and one was injured”), and the terms “terrorist”, “insurgent”, or “the enemy” to refer to those people whom we are fighting. These terms dehumanize people on both sides, in an attempt to minimize the impact of their suffering and/or death.
• It bothers me to hear the term “the objective” used to mean “the extremely violent actions of war”. (There’s an example in this official military press release: “They define the wingman concept; meeting the objective under the worst of circumstances”.) Use of terms like this is an attempt to keep people from thinking about what is actually happening (in this case, presumably bombing Iraqi buildings, infrastructure, and people from airplanes).
• The use of the word “justice” by the Bush administration bothers me. Throughout the current crisis in Iraq, they have been talking about “bringing people to justice” via bombing and shooting them. (There’s an example in this White House press release from 2003: “…we’ve brought to justice about half of the al Qaeda network…. And so the other half still lives.”) I thought that Justice was one of the foundations of the United States, and meant things like a fair trial, being presented with the evidence against you, appeals court, and the other protections we have in our Constitution. Shooting first and asking questions later is not really the same thing, and it is still continuing (as in the recent “kill or capture” order from Bush for some Iranians in Iraq).
• The common use of the word “war” for things other than wars also bothers me. Two examples of this are the “war on drugs”, and a term I saw in the news recently, the “war on poverty”. Do the people who coin such phrases think about what the word “war” really means? War is an extreme, violent means of trying to resolve a disagreement by coercing another group to succumb to your point of view (or by killing them so they can no longer disagree with any strength). War causes many casualties in the armies of both sides, as well as in innocent bystanders. Is this the right imagery for thinking about how to solve problems like drugs and poverty?

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In a previous post, I wrote about some of the reasons why I do not think that world peace is possible. But some days I have more hope about it.

For instance, I recently heard Amy Goodman speak on the KUOW radio program “Speaker’s Forum”. One of the things she said (which I think is correct) is that if people in the US really knew what was happening in Iraq, the war would soon be over. She also said that rather than being a silent minority, pacifists are actually a “silenced majority”. Basically, she was implying that the news media are largely to blame for the non-peaceful situation we are in, by keeping the US public ignorant of what is really happening and making us feel isolated by not telling us what other people really think about it. So maybe the first step on the path to world peace lies in a media revolution, which actually seems a lot easier than changing US foreign policy and world religious teachings. Once the people understand what is happening, they will demand peace, and the leaders will have to deliver it.

Another ray of hope is the Non-Violent Communication movement. The basic premise is that by understanding that everyone has the same basic human needs and desires, and that everyone is subject to the same basic human emotions, we can learn to state ours and listen to others’ in a simple and direct way, without violence or coercion. The movement teaches a method for such communication, which can be used for everything from talking with your friends and family to negotiating between governments. Learning about non-violent communication helps me believe that there is a viable alternative to war, which, after all, is just a very violent (and unproductive) way of communicating disagreement. So once we have all decided that we don’t want war any more, there is a good tool out there to help us sit down at the table with our former enemies, and work out the terms of peace.

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