The US might not be in a Great Depression, but economic insecurity has nevertheless returned to America.
John N. Gray, a distinguished intellect and retired professor of intellectual history at the London School of Economics, disagrees with the view that “the end of history” has placed humanity on a course of ethical and economic progress. History, Gray believes, is not progressing to a higher stage. Instead, humanity is repeating the same follies and is destined to endure the same disasters. It is the Enclosures, the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Poor Law Act of 1834 all over again.
The problem is humans themselves. They are not questioning beings. “Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have.” Instead of ethics and politics having advanced with the growth of knowledge, we are experiencing today state terror and murder on unprecedented scale as Washington kills people with drones and invasions in seven countries and threatens others. The US claims to be the democratic “light unto the world,” the “indispensable nation,” but it has resurrected in violation of its own law and international law the torture dungeons of the unaccountable governments of medieval Europe.
Few people see the disconnect between the propaganda about the goodness of America and the evil that its government practices. Torture was banned. Its practice was made the act of a war criminal government. But the Bush and Obama regimes have resurrected torture as a defense of the state against citizens who reveal its crimes and against those who resist its aggression.
The CIA official who revealed that the US government was torturing detainees in violation of US and international law, John Kiriakou, was subjected to wrongful prosecution and sentenced to prison. The elected officials who approved the torture and those who conducted the torture remain free of all charges to torture again.
Bradley Manning, the US soldier who did his duty under the military code and revealed US war crimes that were ignored by his superiors had all of his constitutional rights violated and is now being tried on trumped-up and false charges. The US government claims that by telling the truth Manning aided the “enemies of the United States.”
The US government is so corrupt that it doesn’t realize the self-damnation of declaring the truth to be against it. Some “light unto the world” Washington is…
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