A pathological aspect of America’s political machinery - in both parties - is the unwillingness to look backwards, to take stock, to apologize, to atone, much less to learn from one’s mistakes. There’s a corporate credo, “Don’t complain. Don’t explain,” that conveniently covers all manner of misdeeds. Just move on. Or as they say often and so nauseatingly, “Americans want to turn the page.”
Really? Because I don’t, and no one else I know really wants to either. Most of us know that if you don’t learn from your mistakes then you are bound to repeat them. And you can’t learn from what you refuse to look at. It’s developmentally stunted to just cover up what you don’t want to look at in yourself, then let it fester subconsciously until it takes new form and manifests again.
Psychological truths apply to both individual and group mentality. Conscious thoughts are like the tip of an iceberg; underneath is where the power lies. So we should beware the danger of our unrecognized beliefs, as they run us subconsciously and can do great damage.
So it is with America’s forever war mentality. We don’t recognize it as the mental affliction that it is. This makes us tragically vulnerable to charlatans and thieves who lead us time and time again to sacrifice blood, treasure, and moral conscience at the idolatrous altar of blood-thirst and greed. On that altar lie promises of security yet certainty of danger. This is a collective pathology, both among those who perpetrate the madness as well as those of us who acquiesce to it so easily. Looking at our American affliction - the subconscious attraction to violence and brute force -produces cognitive dissonance that’s uncomfortable to handle. That’s why we project so much judgement and blame onto those who suggest we do.
None of this is to say we need a deep dive into America’s psychological history over the last 250 years, though it would be a good idea and someone should do it. At the moment we needn’t look back at previous examples of dysfunction, however, so much as we need to recognize where we’re acting them out right now. We’ll always be met with resistance to realization - that’s simply how the fear-based addictive mind works. One of its major weapons is the thought that “No, this time it’s different!” This time we can manage it! The first step in getting over any addiction is recognizing that actually, you can’t.
This affliction will continue to plague us until we face it. Imperialistic wars - coupled with an unwillingness to even consider unintended consequences before they’ve spun out of our control - are the reflection of a group pathology. Brute force does not fix everything, and when misused it makes things far, far worse. The Big Daddies telling us now that this time it will work, that this time they’ve got it under control, are toxic masculines and emperors who have no clothes.
They don’t even pretend to know what’s going to happen in Venezuela going forward, beyond “We’re going to run things.” Oh great. That’s a plan all right. Part of our affliction is to be so dazzled by our capacity to destroy, we forget how bad we are at creating what should come next. The current surrogates for America’s war machine do not deserve our uncritical allegiance, particularly when it’s based on little more than their bizarre sense of certainty. I’ll tell you what happened when we “ran” Iraq; we led to the creation of ISIS. I’ll tell you what happened when we “ran” Afghanistan; we empowered the Taliban. My God, Americans, smell the coffee. Most every war we’ve fought for the last 60 years has been, in the final analysis, an unmitigated disaster.
They talk about Venezuela now as though the hard part’s over. They figure we’ll just ship a bunch of oil companies over there, protect them with armed forces if need be, and everything will be great. Trump will oversee that “just, proper and judicious transition” and we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about what that actually means. Hell, I don’t even think they know. They’re just giddy with the adrenaline of colonial victory, not to mention relief at replacing the Epstein files from the news cycle at least for now. They’ll figure things out as they go along - and whatever might go wrong, “boots on the ground” would surely be able to fix it. Like others before them who have stoked America’s war machine, these are dangerously unconscious people.
In the end, we will realize the only solution to international conflict/tensions and the degradation of our natural environment is mutual cooperation. When nations share the food and raw materials of Earth...which belong to all of her inhabitants...a miraculous series of events will unfold. Sharing is the key, not coercion but voluntarily pooling together of excess resources.
I don't have anything to say. I just want to support your saying by posting a comment, thank you.