Arrogance

After 58 years and nearly 9 months I continue to be outraged and refuse to accept the status quo. I refuse to linger in this world intent on destroying itself without resistance and solidarity with revolutionary actions of the oppressed.
We have a world where small children are made soldiers and prostitutes. A world where a child dies every 50 seconds or so in ways related to hunger.
What’s worse is a country rich beyond the realm of imagination spending billions of dollars on weapons of war or the means to kill people. These dollars could feed the rest of the world, provide healthcare, jobs and increased standards of living around the globe.
Instead, the people of my birth nation consume wildly and still aren’t satisfied with huge homes, gas guzzling SUV’s and flat screen televisions for every room. They ignore the plight of the impoverished and dying children. They think the money given the Church will somehow filter down to the unfortunates and their consciences are clear. But they insist the churches be some miniature form of the Sistine Chapel first.
My nation has arrogantly created enemies when it could have formed friendships and cooperation around the world. My nation is a nation of arrogance that fears the ever growing tide of world wide demands for justice.
The great American Empire has failed us. The people of the empire fail to see the emperor is without clothing. They stand still with apathetic disregard as more and more of their rights are stripped from them in order to “protect” them from the boogey-man of communism, terrorism and unionism.
The American people live in a perpetual fear that has been manufactured by the elite rich trying at all costs to protect their wealth and power. The fiefdoms of corporate America have off-shored the American jobs to further emasculate the workers’ attempts to merely earn a living wage.
One in every one hundred adult Americans is incarcerated. The growth industry of prisons continues to mushroom. Soon they will have all the “niggers, spics, white trash and fucking liberal terrorists” locked up and the country will be cleansed for the ruling whites who have always ruled since the time they stole the lands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Whites and the elite claim the reason for the decline in crime is because of the numbers incarcerated. They just can’t explain the Columbines, the Virginia Techs and the other senseless killings caused by mostly white gunmen with ready access to every type of weapon except heavy artillery, jets and tanks.
Wars continue to rage and bombs built in American factories continue to kill wherever they’re dropped without discrimination of victims. Nine out of every ten killed will be an innocent man or woman. Or child. Forty percent of the deaths in wars are children. That number fails to account for the deaths of innocent children because of fouled water and lack of food.
American imposed sanctions meant to allegedly punish dictators and tyrants, often brought to power by American government, punish only the poorest and weakest of the nations they’re imposed upon.
Arrogant America continues to live in a delusional world in which the past is to be forgotten by all those victimized by the rich and elite powers that have always ruled. Reservations far from the original lands of the indigenous people are still the poorest areas of the richest nation in the world. Italian-Americans continue to celebrate the fictitious “discovery” by the barbarian, Columbus, and refuse to understand his initiation of genocide, rape and the theft of lands sacred to indigenous people.
Arrogant America screams in revulsion when a professor accuses them of being the cause of the September 11, 2001 bombings of the towers in New York. They fail to understand the historical grievances of so many in the Middle East. They refuse to accept a new “shoah” or holocaust is happening in Palestine caused by a nation established by the Nazi death camp victims.
Arrogant Americans continue to think the electoral process is the keystone of “democracy” when the truth is no son or daughter of a common man will ever be elected President or Senator. And most likely they will not be elected to the House either. The alleged democracy of Arrogant America is bought and paid for by special interests. Special interests equate with the rich and elite of multinational corporations evading taxes and investing outside American shores. These are the special interests that still continue to steal the natural resources of poor nations and exploit the poor and weak of every nation they enter.
Arrogant America elects stooges and sell-outs that lack original thoughts and ideas. They spend obscene amounts of money for sound bites on a mass media bought and paid for by the rich and elite. Most Americans can’t hold a political discussion based on anything other than the oft repeated bullshit of those sound bites. Most Americans fail to understand the connection between the costs of war and the costs of groceries. Most fail to understand just how obscene it is to spend billions on the rigged two party elections. A toss of a coin is just as likely to bring the same results without any of the costs of the foolish campaigns.
Obama, Hillary and John are the choices this time around. A black, a woman and a senior citizen are supposed to be evidence of how far the nation has come in acceptance of diverse people. Tell that to the imprisoned young blacks, Chicanos, Hispanics, Latinos and poor and impoverished that couldn’t buy their justice like so many in this nation is able to.
Arrogant America will cheer their young soldier off to war but once the parades are over on their return the same soldiers are tossed away like the weekly trash to be dumped in landfills. Arlington, Ft. Logan and other national cemeteries become their landfills.
Arrogant America will continue to allow brothers and sister with non-white faces to be profiled by the over-seers of the racist power structure. The over-seers wear blue uniforms and badges in disguise but they aren’t here to serve and protect anybody except the status quo. Inequity of sentences for the same offense remains a constant between non-white defendants and whites.
But most likely the justice served has to do with the socio-economic factor of the defendants. The poor go to the prison industry’s warehouses while the rich will get away with murder figuratively and literally. The poor are more frequently non-white.
Arrogant America will continue to allow the poisons of crack, meth, heroin and other opiates to kill and disable the children of the marginalized communities. The addict continues to be treated as the criminal while the drug trade in poor nations is often started and funded by black bag operations of Arrogant American “spooks”. Arrogant America is down with letting gang members deal and trade in the poisoning of brothers and sisters. The blue uniformed gangs of police oversee the criminalization of entire generations of blacks and non-whites but seldom if ever does the investigation reach the true criminals reaping the blood money of the drug industry.
Ollie North and his gang got their slap on the wrist and Arrogant America quickly forgot their government was a major player in drug and gun running. Follow the syringe of the drug trade. Every nation that suddenly becomes the leading exporter of the poisons seems to have a connection with Arrogant American military actions. Vietnam, Latin America, Afghanistan and on and on.
The oppressors make money while they poison the young of the non-white and marginalized communities. Addiction is just another form of oppression used by the power structure to keep the masses subdued.
Arrogant America has discovered they can privatize armies and bypass any rules against torture. They have redefined torture to be acceptable with Orwellian tactics and language. The Prince of Machiavelli would be pleased.
Arrogant Americans found they can repair the Superdome and hold Mardi Gras in the French Quarter while continuing to ignore the lower 9th Ward because the sheep and asleep citizens not living there don’t give a fuck. Arrogant America can steal the homes of displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina for the rich developers and the rest of the nation is led to believe the rebuilding of NOLA is progressing.
Arrogant America sends more troops, arms more Iraqis and creates the ruse of the surge when in effect they have created sectarian rifts that will last for generations. The Salvadoran option fulfilled just as Operation Phoenix was in Vietnam. Mass media and arrogant American officials are allowed outside the charade of the Green Zone only to see the model rebuilding projects of Iraq. The claim is the maneuvers of the occupation troops have caused new hope in the war on terror. They don’t show the continued insurgency has only moved from one heavily manned area to an area where there is less presence of the occupier. Guerilla warfare tactics are being followed as they were in Vietnam.
The Iraqi infrastructure remains in ruin and potable water remains scarce for most of the Iraqi people. Electricity remains infrequent for most. Foreign workers continue to have more work than Iraqis. The medical care of Iraq has gone from state of the art to being overwhelmed and lacking modern equipment and enough doctors. The once thriving economy and educational system no longer exists. Russian arrogance in Afghanistan has given way to American arrogance throughout the region and sectarian violence is assured whether the oppressor leaves or stays.
The litany of arrogance and oppression could go on for many more pages. The fiction of democracy continues despite all evidence to the contrary. Oligarchy has continued since the first signing of the Declaration of Independence. The gap between the poor and the rich grows larger while the middle class continues to disappear.
We are at a tipping point in history. We can continue to cower in fear and allow freedom to be taken completely away or we can resist. The time of oppression has been continuous for many brothers and sisters while many of us have had it good.
We can continue to allow the oppressor to keep us divided with racism and other evil tactics of oppression or we can join together to resist. The only recourse we have to retain as much freedom as possible is resistance.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
VVAW member – Denver
USMC combat vet of Vietnam
December 31, 1967-February 12, 1969