Is America Good or Evil? It Depends...
I found this article at Zerohedge.com
A Diabolic False Flag Empire: Is The American Trajectory Divine Or Demonic?
bashing America's role in history, treating it as an evil land of oppression, a powerful killing machine that speaks well of itself as it brutalizes the world. We should sometimes pause to consider opposing viewpoints, so even the most pro-American, democracy loving patriot may want to consider the price paid in blood for the level of freedom America enjoys and enforces. I once wrote a book which in no small part focused on America matching dozens of biblical descriptions of the end times evil empire, Mystery Babylon. But the work this article is focused on is David Ray Griffin's new book:
THE AMERICAN TRAJECTORY: Divine or Demonic?
I'll point out the obvious - Griffen seems like a left-wing extremist, the kind I would hope would never be able to influence young minds. But he has been a professor at Claremont University and has written extensively for SUNY (State University of New York.) He has also written dozens of books on liberal topics like destructive climate change through carbon dioxide emissions, and spewed hatred about various Republican administrations - especially Bush/Cheney. The book we discuss here has a supporting quote from Pepe Escobar on the cover - you know, the Brazilian journalist who has written for Russia Today, Al Jazeera, Sputnik News, and The Asia Times. So I would take anything Griffen writes with a grain of salt, as he is a poster boy for the anti-American extreme left, fitting in with those who burn flags and salivate over Barack Obama.
I also can't help but notice I am finding this article on the eve of America's greatest false flag attacks, perpetrated on America itself, to justify deep involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in general. Far from establishing democracy and peace as a result, the Middle East is still mired with civil wars, fundamentalist Islam, and "Death to America!" level hatred of the West that could still lead into WWIII. Though I do believe the United States was the free-est and greatest nation on Earth (and any rivals for that title today exist largely because America has defended Western democracies from totalitarianism) I also see the dark underside of American policies, both foreign and domestic. With all this in mind, I conclude my long-winded introduction to the article:
Authored by Edward Curtin via EdwardCurtin.com,
"...No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad.
But, as Pinter said,
“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.”
No one is more emblematic of this noble effort than David Ray Griffin, who, in book after book since the attacks of 11 September 2001, has meticulously exposed the underside of the American empire and its evil masters. His persistence in trying to reach people and to warn them of the horrors that have resulted is extraordinary. Excluding his philosophical and theological works, this is his fifteenth book since 2004 on these grave issues of life and death and the future of the world.
In this masterful book, he provides a powerful historical argument that right from the start with the arrival of the first European settlers, this country, despite all the rhetoric about it having been divinely founded and guided, has been “more malign that benign, more demonic than divine.” He chronologically presents this history, supported by meticulous documentation, to prove his thesis. In his previous book, Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World, Griffin cataloged the evil actions that flowed from the inside job/false flag attacks of September 11th, while in this one – a prequel – he offers a lesson in American history going back centuries, and he shows that one would be correct in calling the United States a “false flag empire.”
The attacks of 11 September 2001 are the false flag fulcrum upon which his two books pivot. Their importance cannot be overestimated, not just for their inherent cruelty that resulted in thousands of innocent American deaths, but since they became the justification for the United States’ ongoing murderous campaigns termed “the war on terror” that have brought death to millions of people around the world. An international array of expendable people. Terrifying as they were, and were meant to be, they have many precedents, although much of this history is hidden in the shadows. Griffin shines a bright light on them, with most of his analysis focused on the years 1850-2018.
As a theological and philosophical scholar, he is well aware of the great importance of society’s need for religious legitimation for its secular authority, a way to offer its people a shield against terror and life’s myriad fears through a protective myth that has been used successfully by the United States to terrorize others. He shows how the terms by which the U.S. has been legitimated as God’s “chosen nation” and Americans as God’s “chosen people” have changed over the years as secularization and pluralism have made inroads. The names have changed, but the meaning has not. God is on our side, and when that is so, the other side is cursed and can be killed by God’s people, who are always battling el diabalo.
He exemplifies this by opening with a quote from George Washington’s first Inaugural Address where Washington speaks of “the Invisible Hand” and “Providential agency” guiding the country, and by ending with Obama saying “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” In between we hear Andrew Jackson say that “Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number” and Henry Cabot Lodge in 1900 characterize America’s divine mission as “manifest destiny.” The American religion today is American Exceptionalism, an updated euphemism for the old-fashioned “God’s New Israel” or the “Redeemer Nation.”
At the core of this verbiage lies the delusion that the United States, as a blessed and good country, has a divine mission to spread “democracy” and “freedom” throughout the world, as Hilary Clinton declared during the 2016 presidential campaign when she said that “we are great because we are good,” and in 2004 when George W. Bush said, “Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.” Such sentiments could only be received with sardonic laughter by the countless victims made “free” by America’s violent leaders, now and then, as Griffin documents.
Having established the fact of America’s claim to divine status, he then walks the reader through various thinkers who have taken sides on the issue of the United States being benign or malign. This is all preliminary to the heart of the book, which is a history lesson documenting the malignancy at the core of the American trajectory....
Ironically, Griffin makes a masterful case for his thesis, while forgetting the one pivotal man, President John Kennedy, who sacrificed his life in an effort to change the trajectory of American history from its demonic course.
It is one mistake in an otherwise very important and excellent book that should be required reading for anyone who doubts the evil nature of this country’s continuing foreign policy. Those who are already convinced should also read it, for it provides a needed historical resource and impetus to help change the trajectory that is transporting the world toward nuclear oblivion, if continued.
If – a fantastic wish! – The American Trajectory: Divine or Demonic? were required reading in American schools and colleges, perhaps a new generation would arise to change our devils into angels, the arc of America’s future moral universe toward justice, and away from being the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, as it has been for so very long."
It seems to me that this way of thinking, whatever truth it may contain within its extreme anti-Americanism, is promoted by the global elite that wants to destroy nation-state governments (through WWIII if necessary) to usher in their New World Order and One World Government with even more power concentrated in their own hands.