Okay, so I subscribe to a news digest from Information Clearing House which comes into my inbox pretty much whenever the guy who compiles it can put it together and send it out. Yesterday it came in and one of the articles in the digest was a posting on The Progressive's website about Independence Day. Rather than listening to me tell you what it says, Zinn's article is here:
http://progressive.org/media_mpzinn070106
Basically he says that instead of waving flags and singing songs on July 4th the American people would be better served by thinking about giving up the concept of nationalism altogether. Rather, they should perceive themselves as global citizens and dispense with the idea that an American life is worth more than a foreign one (Zinn cites Pearl Harbour vs. Hiroshima as one example of this, September 11th vs. Iraq and Afghanistan as another).
What blew me away was the vitriol of the responses to the guy. I mean, fair enough, he's a bit of an old fart and he likes his high horse a little too much (see also Chomsky and Pilger) but, like Chomsky and Pilger, in with the half-blind uber-morality guff there is an undercurrent of fairly sensible social thinking. The majority of the responses to Zinn's article, however, were in the vein of "If you don't like it, why don't you fuck off to Iran?" which, frankly, strikes me as being a little harsh.
So, enough preamble. Time for me to take to the soapbox. My first entry into the lexicon of 2 + 2 is the fundamental paradox of people expounding the glory of American freedom while telling anyone who asks them to think twice about it to get out of the country. This is clearly a bunch of hooey, or, to be less cute about it, a cunting pile of wank. How can you love your so-called freedom while simultaneously shouting down anyone who questions the manner in which it is provided? People who do this don't love freedom, they love themselves. They watch their televisions, go to their places of worship, fly their flags outside their suburban homes and generally float along on the prevailing stream without a second thought. When someone suggests that maybe a second thought is warranted, they respond like a child who is told he has to stop watching cartoons and go take a shower, namely "I DON'T WANNA!".
If people engaged their rational minds, they would see very quickly that all of this noise about flags and patriotism and love of country is just that, noise, and contributes nothing to the actual debate about the behaviour and responsibility of nations, governments and most of all, citizens. Many are the people who have marched and sung their way to an early grave on the crest of a wave of patriotism and nationalism. Even worse, many are the people who those others took with them. Of course, the majority of Americans who scream bloody murder whenever someone suggests that their way isn't necessarily the best usually hold this opinion because the people being killed in their name and with their taxes are far away and darker hued.
There's a lot more I could say, but if you scroll through the comments left at the end of Zinn's article you'll find far more eloquent proof of their idiocy and in their own words.
Until next time, just remember, if it doesn't add up to 4 then somebody's bullshitting you.
