Emails From The Fourth Reich

Post Information
Print & pdf

by Anwaar Hussain

Are current American elites mere pygmies who, even when they stand on the shoulders of their past giants, still cannot see any further?

I received hundreds of emails from readers the world over as a response to my article I am Become Death - The Destroyer of the Worlds. Most of these were from American citizens who were appalled at what their administration is doing in their name. These emails, moving as they were, put me in a conflicted state of mind. Here is the greatest of all countries. The glories that it has achieved can only be marveled at. And here is what it has come to, brutally pulverizing peoples and nations abroad like a giant gone berserk. Why?While we the world stood by and watched agog, the unmatchable American spirit catapulted itself from strength to strength with vision, vigor, perseverance and courage. From the smallest of silicon chips embedded with the tiniest of details to the sinking of giant steel shafts piercing the hardest of earth’s crusts in the building of its massive skyscrapers and wondrous bridges, America has made the finest.

A hitherto noble country, America has ensured the greatest prosperity and freedom to its inhabitants. A product of human enlightenment, America is a country where the rule of reason and logic reached its zenith while blind faith and dogma were pushed to the back seats. It was this enlightenment that led America to recognize the inalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

This spectacular triumph of reason and logic freed the spirit of inquiry from the stifling stranglehold of prophets of doom. With a questioning mind set free from state’s control, scientific and technological progress gushed forth in full force. That in turn further spurred on the pioneering spirits into ventures that ultimately turned America to the mightiest of nations.

America has won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, is home to scores of the world’s finest universities and half a dozen of the world’s best symphonies, has built the world’s most vibrant economy, is the world’s only military superpower. Americans have landed on the moon, sent robots to Mars and set up stations to communicate with aliens who may one day possibly land on planet earth.

Ironically, until now a power house of moral, intellectual, artistic and scientific greatness America is fast turning into an Orwellian farm. The key to America’s success has always been inextricably linked to the heroic legacy which she inherits from her history, culture and society. The achievements of her past heroes has so far catalyzed and facilitated even greater achievements from generation after generation of Americans.

Why then can’t a huge mass of contemporary Americans perceive the distorted values that their current leaders radiate at a frequency that has in no time sunk this great country to murky depths unprecedented in its past? How then has this marvelous nation allowed men of such abysmally horrendous moral and intellectual standards to lord over them? How then has it permitted them to turn their once great country into the sham that it is fast becoming? Is it all coming to a tragic end? Are blind belief and dogma back to bring about an inglorious end to that glorious age of reason?

When speaking of his sterling discoveries in science and mathematics, Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” In all fairness, he was probably a giant himself standing on the shoulders of giants. Are current American elites mere pygmies who, even when they stand on the shoulders of their past giants, still cannot see any further?

Has America turned into a Fourth Reich or will it yet come around? The following are highlights of some of the very welcome emails I’ve received from Americans. My hope is that these voices may find their way into their body politic, serving as an antidote to the arrogance of power and its insidious stench.

The blood is on our hands.

We can’t escape to Canada, or wait for Europe to sanction GW Bush. It’s up to us to stop him, to put our bodies on the line for peace, to cross the line for justice. We must continue our struggle for peace and justice regardless of what the election said or did not say. We don’t even have to be a majority to win our election of peace and justice. We can be the small but certain pressure that creates the hairline crack, bursting the dam and flooding the valley with surging water. We don’t need huge numbers to be powerful in our resolve to stop the killing.

The blood is on our hands.

——-x——-

Pervasive fears of speaking one’s mind, highly un-American one must admit, are often spoken about. One correspondent writes, “I am afraid to speak out as much as I would like, I am afraid of the backlash I feel. . . . While the US administration works their war on terror on the world they simultaneously dismantle our constitution one piece at a time.”

——-x——-

Other correspondents point to the corrupting influence of materialism, and an election believed to have been stolen. Some see the executive branch leading the country into fascism, while shamefacedly demanding democratic action in the Ukraine.

——-x——-

Spirituality is emphasized in one email, the writer acknowledging our call to a higher consciousness, a world citizenship of the enlightened, whereby “we are freed from greed, anger, hatred or the arbitrary and false social constructions of nationalism, race and religion.” For this person, a call to arms would be a “surrender to the sword of destruction that has swept through every generation.”

——-x——-

Military veterans are appalled by the indefensible acts carried out in their name and with their tax dollars.

——-x——-

A Texan, ashamed of what is being done to Iraq and its citizens by the United States, despairs at futility of conventional attempts to have a political voice, having contacted the relevant Congressperson on numerous occasions, getting only “the usual crap from her office.”

——-x——-

Another contrasts pro-life people “who hold up posters with pictures of aborted babies”, while at the same time seemingly indifferent to small children “torn apart by a bomb.”

——-x——-

Then there is the person who points to the fanaticism of those wielding power, finding them as destructive as those conventionally branded as “terrorists”. “They will use the power given to them by those who support them as ruthlessly as did Nazi Germany, to be unleashed against any who dare to oppose them whether they be Iraqis or Americans.” “I hope the world will rise up to stop them quickly but I do not expect it.”

——-x——-

And finally there is the mother who writes in pain for the children of Fallujah. She asks for no mercy for herself or forgiveness for her country. Confounded by the cruelty of the world and of her country, she hopes only that, somehow, her children may be spared.

——-x——-

he writers of the emails spoke in so many voices, touching on so many themes. But there is one common thread. Their country has become hostile terrain and they feel as aliens in their own land. Their government is not a government of the people and certainly not a government for the people. There is a deep shame over the horrors perpetrated in their name, at home and abroad. Alienation and fearfulness reign, rather than community and hope. They experience a culture of greed and corruption, rather than one of sharing and transparent accountability.

The Americans who have written would not choose to be war mongers. They would choose peace. They would choose for mankind to relish in their common bonds, rather than feed a military machine that tears those bonds asunder. These many wonderful voices; will they, in time, find the power to speak with all their collective strength, in the sure knowledge that they are not alone? Or will the current American elites, pygmies all, finally, rub out the last vestiges of hope?

America…the Fourth Reich? Will it, won’t it?



Comments

Leave a Reply






Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
.: ARTICLE BLOCKED :.
ON MARCH 2008
Who links to my website?