Are we the baddies?
The British comics David Mitchell and Robert Webb did a sketch about that a decade ago, portraying two German soldiers. It was funny because, indeed, we couldn’t conceive of ourselves as the baddies.
But we often are. We usually are.
Even Barack Obama didn’t stop us from being bad. He didn’t get out of Iraq until he had a government there of his choosing, not the Iraqis’. He never got out of Afghanistan. Those detention centers kids are languishing in were built under his Administration.
Nowhere, however, have Americans done more in the way of evil, and more consistently, than in Central America. That’s important to note when Trump is separating Central American kids from their parents and locking them up in baby jails, while blaming a gang called MS-13 for his crimes.
MS-13 wasn’t born in Central America. It was born in Los Angeles. It moved to Guatemala when members were deported there. It is emblematic of American policies going back over 150 years. Its ruthlessness is a natural reaction to military force.
The U.S. overthrew the government of Guatemala in 1954, in a coup e’etat. It’s the same thing we did to Iran, and for the same reason. Anyone who smelled “socialist” was seen then as a Soviet puppet. The coup was a Cold War activity.
It was also something more. It was a continuation of economic exploitation we had done to Guatemala for decades. Guatemala was called a “banana republic” because our policy had supported a dictator there on behalf of United Fruit, which wanted the land for growing bananas. Never mind the environmental damage, never mind the rights of the people. We exploited Guatemala, and other countries, on behalf of hand fruit.
Guatemala is not the only Central American country we have treated in this way, as an American possession in all but name. We overthrew the government of Honduras in 1963 and installed a military dictator there. Throughout the Reagan years we fought a war in El Salvador on behalf of military dictators. The Nicaraguan Civil War was fought against an American-installed military dictator, and resulted in government by a left-wing military dictator.
This is a key point. When you are under attack by a foreign power there are only two choices, acquiescence or resistance. Civil society, the nuance of choice, disappears. Politics, business, social structures, everything becomes binary. You’re either for the dictator or you’re a target. It’s total war.
It’s what many liberals say Trump represents to this country. It is why resistance to him is so fierce. But this has been the reality of Central America since before our Civil War.
Go back.
Panama should not exist. It was part of Columbia until that government refused Theodore Roosevelt’s demand for a canal concession. We created that country. It would not exist but for our military involvement. We claim the right, and have enforced the right, to overthrow its government at any time, and install a government of our choosing. Noriega was our creation before he was our villain.
Go further back.
You know the original meaning of the word “filibuster?” It derives from a Dutch term for “pirate,” but refers to American militarists who sought to invade and take over Central American countries in the 1850s, with the intention of making them slave states.
Let’s not get started on Mexico.
When it comes to this hemisphere, to our southern neighbors, we are the baddies, and we have always been the baddies. When it comes to the Monroe Doctrine, its meaning there has always been clear. It’s not that there are no European colonial powers allowed. We are the colonial power. We exercise the veto. We determine what happens.
What makes Trump different is that he and his allies have ripped the mask off. The racism, the sexism, the misogyny, the ruthlessness, the greed, the callowness, the dehumanization, the rape of the environment and the worship of military strength – they’re all there in plain view. They have brought the war home, making political war on the American people.
About one-third of us, mostly male, almost entirely white, love this shit. They’re not just the “white working class” of which the networks are so beloved. They’re the white upper middle class, baby boomers like me who’ve had it easy while our government has had its back on the necks of the world. My people. They disgust me.
Obama did nothing to fight the growth of this entitled attitude. He embraced the military’s Astroturf campaigns of “hero family reunions” and “God Bless America” at the ballgame. He expanded the military industrial complex into a weapon that now threatens the world. He didn’t fight the war against the war. He went along with the war. He took the path of least resistance, and for that was portrayed as feckless by his friends and was rolled by his enemies.
A righteous government, like a good journalist, will try to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I have spent my career as a business journalist, conscious of the evil we do in money’s name, sometimes speaking out against it, fighting to be allowed to explain how scandals often hurt those they claim to benefit, making them lazy and incompetent.
But I’ve been complacent too. I’ve assumed the triumph of the good, through technology, while technologists have continuously disappointed me.
Well, no more Mr. Good Liberal. There is a rising tide of my anger in the United States. It does threaten our institutions just as Trumpism does. As I have said, reversing Barry Goldwater, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is a vice, for with extremism there is no liberty. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is a virtue, for without moderation there is no justice.”
To a Central American the previous sentence is meaningless drivel. It’s meaningless because America’s actions have made it meaningless.
Maybe, in America, it’s meaningless today. Maybe, in America, it’s a luxury we can no longer afford. But when you look to see who to blame for all this, look in the mirror.
