Anti-American Anger Roils Through The Middle East–What Does It Really Mean?
I want to make a few comments about the headlines we see in western press regarding protests across the Middle East. These protests really have little to do with the film that supposedly is their fundamental driver. The film was nothing more than a trigger for much deeper issues. The greater reality is that these protests have more to do with collapsing American hegemony.
The United States’ worldview for so long has been to tell everyone else how they were going to live and what they were going to do. ie, Control. Our foreign policy has never been about seeding democracy at any time in my life. It hasn’t been about truth, discovery and empowerment. Just control. And, they have manipulated, bribed, intimidated, threatened and bombed their way to this control. But, control is an illusion and now that illusion is being shattered.
The conspirators who write that the U.S. created the Arab Spring/destabilization through actions of the CIA are ludicrous. There is no evidence of this perspective. The U.S. had the best gig going in the Middle East up until two years ago. The Soviet Union’s influence had collapsed and the U.S. was left as the lone power in the region. Its hegemony was completely unchallenged. Every one of the Middle East ruling thugs was on the CIA payroll. Many of its tyrannical puppets were under complete U.S. control.
The U.S. and the CIA may be working covertly to impact outcomes now that the lid has popped off of that control but they surely didn’t create the Arab Spring. Well, they did, but not in the way conspirators want us to believe. They did by supporting terrorists and thugs who brutalized, preyed upon and exploited the masses of innocent people in the Middle East. This blowback is the same dynamic that happened when the CIA’s dethroned Iranian democracy and installed a puppet U.S. stooge, the Shah of Iran, who then brutalized his nation with U.S. backing. The Iranian uprising against the brutal Shah and America’s toppling of democracy led to the fundamentalist Iranian theocracy with vehement anti-American political viewpoints. -->> Western neoliberalism and capitalism’s attempted economic colonialism creates radical fundamentalism.
When the world was as calm as it had ever been back before the 2008 crash, I wrote that as U.S. hegemony faded, power vacuums would arise around the world. Some would be filled by democracy and some not. As noted numerous times on here, American empire is following the Soviet empire into oblivion. We might wake up and it is gone tomorrow or it may take years but I would feel very confident in saying all vestiges of American empire will be gone by 2020. That is very good news for the American economy. Neoliberals like Mitt Romney and their belligerent saber rattling about the projection of American power isn’t going to help anything. I think the American people have had just about enough of fighting wars for politicians, military-industrial complex profits, dictators, Exxon Mobil and Wall Street. And I think people around the world, who have been the targets of this violence are even more sick of it.
These types of protests are what happens when people have had the jack boot of tyranny on their neck forever. When hundreds and hundreds of millions of people are forced to live for $2 a day while looters and thugs murder their families, prey upon the fruits of their labor and live in palaces of greed and unimaginable excess. These people who are protesting in the Middle East have something to say and for the first time in their lives, there is no one stopping them from saying it. It’s called freedom.
None of this means Arabs or Muslims are going to start a holy war with the U.S. Although there are most certainly plenty of power-mad loonies in this country who would like to stir that pot for their own control-based, selfish, power-mad reasons.
Instead, people have to be allowed to learn how to constructively express their emotions after decades and decades of tyranny and repression. Decades and decades of not being able to express their rage at the machine. That expression is democracy. It is freedom. Now that doesn’t mean giving cover to a small number of murderers and thugs who will use these protests to harm others but there will most certainly be more of that too (Reports of extremists infiltrating protestors as the source of the violence). That happens whenever there are protests against illegitimate power and authority. Even in this nation. Thugs and murderers use this as cover to harm other people. But most of the protests are not of people with any intent of jihad or murdering anyone else. They may be burning flags and they may be chanting anti-American slogans but, you know what? Get over it. You cannot control the behavior of people you don’t agree with unless they have broken international or domestic law. And, the more you try to control their behavior, the more they will resist when that control is broken.
The United States government needs to learn to let people around the world express their democratic rights rather than being a tyrannical, autocratic parent doling out verbal or physical punishment. Tyrannical, autocratic parents always have rebellious kids, and our tyrannical, autocratic foreign policy has created rebellious peoples. But if we let people and nations start to learn how to constructively express their emotions and to eventually channel their emotions into positive outcomes, we will all have a better world. If the United States does this, and quits trying to control every outcome, both domestically and internationally, eventually the anger against the U.S. government’s meddling and attempted control will dissipate. The U.S. government can’t and shouldn’t try to control the behavior of everyone within and outside of its borders even though it is spending trillions of dollars both domestically and internationally right now with that very intent.
Most people can learn to self-regulate their emotions and they’ll eventually realize that you can’t be angry forever. It is very self-destructive. And, that those who want you to be angry forever are simply manipulating you for self-interested reasons of control. You know, like politicians and religious leaders who want you to hate people of different races, immigrants, people receiving government assistance, people of different religious beliefs, people of differing sexual orientation or whatever; an incredibly common practice of exploitation in the United States. At some point, as people learn about themselves and their emotions, they will start focusing their energy on constructive solutions that improves their journey in this world. You know, like replacing selfish, control-driven Democrats and Republicans with selfless public servants.
By the way, you would probably be protesting in the Middle East right now if you and your family had been beaten into a life of some baseless form of subhuman humiliation or witnessed your family members murdered or imprisoned by an endless stream of dictators, colonialism and imperialism. Having your religious beliefs trampled on would be just another reminder of how inhumane your life had become at the hands of illegitimate authority over your freedoms and human dignity.
What we are witnessing in the Middle East is no different than the U.S. riots in the 1960s or the protests waged by workers in this nation at times when corporate exploitation became obscene, brutal and violent. As long as no one is hurt, human emotional expression should always be encouraged. Everywhere. If we aren’t able to constructively process and express our emotions, how will we ever become who we were meant to become?
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