The Exception or the Rule

"If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism."

-Vladimir Lenin

The news lately is just so, so bad. I find myself thinking that the narrative about "American exceptionalism" on which my generation was raised indeed highlighted the exceptions. Birthed as a representative democracy, to be sure, but only for white males with property. We sent 600,000 to their graves in a war to make men free, as the song went, but a little over a decade later decided it would be better for business if Northerners cooperated with Southern whites to resurrect an apartheid state within a state, which in turn would remain in place until the Great Society. It now seems to be making a comeback.

We brought our message of peace and freedom around the world, often at the point of a bayonet, but also invaded Guatemala at the behest of the United Fruit Company, invaded Mexico to wrest away a huge chunk of its land to create space to expand slavery, invaded Haiti because it defaulted on some French debt our investor class had purchased.

And now we invade Venezuela without any pretext of a legitimate excuse. Drug interdiction? They were bit players in the U.S. market. Removing a repressive dictator? We left the regime in place under his vice president, taking a pass on an opposition leader whose party won two-thirds of the vote in the last election because Dear Leader thought she stole his Nobel Peace Prize.

No, this one was about stealing oil no one seems to want because it's on the very heavy side, dirty and tough to refine. The infrastructure in place is old and neglected, but not to worry--He's promised to fund the investment in new equipment out of our tax dollars, for the benefit of his oil company supporters.

Meanwhile at home, the news outlets have been seized by his oligarch supporters. The thinking class stands silent, for fear of losing grants or finding themselves under FBI investigation. A senator who flew more combat missions than your author sees his retirement rank reduced for "sedition" that consisted of counseling military members not to follow unlawful orders, something that was hammered into our skulls when I was a cadet.

By all appearances, this weekend there were enough soldiers willing to invade a sovereign nation in the middle of the night, with not even a courtesy note to Congress, that the mission proceeded without a hitch, dragging a head of state out of bed along with his wife. There's a lot of rot in the military.

And in our society. The polls yesterday showed a country evenly split on the issue of whether this sort of thing is okay. Something like 74% of Republicans approved of the kidnapping. Is it still possible to be a principled Republican? I think not, although I suppose it depends on the principles one seeks to advance.

All this leads to a certain despair, knowing that if these people are ever forced from power, the damage they've wrought appears so pervasive that it may never be repaired in my lifetime.

But then again, the country that brought us the Three-Fifths Rule, Gunboat Diplomacy, Jim Crow, and the Sedition Act of 1918 also became, by the middle of the last century, an actual beacon of hope and opportunity for the planet. Every now and then the better angels of our nature prevail. Just not right now.