My point is that Americans are protected from, forget and ignore knowledge of it’s sins. How many people believe Ollie North and the CIA distributed cocaine to American users to finance their illegal and unconstitutional killing of people in Central America? None, heads in the sand. Yet it’s painfully true.

Americans resent people like me, have to try to corner me into calling it the Great Satan because I point out we have a very dark side which is ignored.

We have done enormously wonderful things. Our improvement in civil rights is super, we have cut back on cigarette smoking, we treated the Japanese and Germans after WWII comparatively well, and many others. And we spend incredible amounts on the military with no credible threat. For what reason? To protect American interests! What American interests? So we can have cheap gas?

Nope, it’s the fact that Americans believe the US IS Norman Rockwell and Reader’s Digest and doesn’t acknowledge the dark side at all, except to say “they made me do it”. How much time did Calley get for Mi Lai? How much time in the slam for the premeditated murder of over 200 civilians? Guess.

That’s my issue. But I suppose people would feel better if I said that Head Start feeds breakfast to poor people and isn’t that wonderful without adding that the whole program costs less than one useless bomber. And is constantly threatened by the right wing. (B-2 bomber – 737 million EACH in 1997 dollars. EACH.) Shouldn’t have added that, should I?! Because the US does give a free breakfast to some kids. Which is a good thing.

Nope. The US is good, AND there is a dark, dark side. Which Americans can’t see in a Norman Rockwell painting or Reader’s Digest magazine, and therefore doesn’t exist for them.

America has much in its history to be ashamed of, but much to be proud of, too. We are a truly great civilization, and like all great civilizations, we have our crown jewels and our warts, too. We are the New Romans, just as the British Empire were the New Greeks, and our relationship to it is analogous to the Roman’s debt and and continuation of Hellenic culture and civilization. And along with their enormous accomplishments, the Brits, Romans and Greeks had their warts too, plenty of them.

Overall, I believe America is no worse than anyone else, and probably better than most, and although I am sometimes fiercely critical of it, when the chips are down and I have to make a choice, that’s where I’ll go.

History is a tapestry, and there are both light and dark threads. The patterns are constantly changing and never clear, but I do believe that overall, we will be missed when we go. Rome had its problems, but it took almost a thousand years for the world to pick up the pieces after it fell.

The alternatives now on the horizon don’t look particularly appealing to me.

I had “TIME magazine” in my head when I was typing the post, and started the post on CE. Then I thought about it, and clicked the little box on the right of the entry form over to “Off Topic” before I posted it. Although it was never actually posted on CE, the sidebar still listed it there.

A lot depends on browsing habits on this board. I use the dashboard to track comments, which I suspect is not common, so I miss the header lines until I go back to the mainboard. I always “internalize” my header, setting it off with paragraph marks. Paragraph marks entered with the initial comment disappear, so I have to “edit” them in. It’s all second nature, now.

A lot of us only work off the main boards, or track “recent posts” and click straight into them from there.

I still recommend browsing the rest of the links on that page.

Most of us are operating in a fairyland, and the American press fosters the fantasy. How many Americans believe there were no antecedents to 9-11, that WTC occurred because the infidels hate our way of life and America is an innocent victim of half-crazed fanatics acting without any provocation?

There’s a harsh reality out there which is forgotten and/or ignored because Americans have been fed from birth the vision of Norman Rockwell and Reader’s Digest. Those are fine visions, wonderful to have and are certainly part of the story. But not the whole story.

I don’t know about ostriches, but I do know that Americans bury their heads in the sand and are proud of it. Life is more comfortable as a victim than as a perpetrator.

Pray tell, what is the CIA for? Did they finance and foster the overthrow of Mossadegh? Allende? Other democratically elected governments in Central America? Do you read about it, or did you read about it in the American press?

And you are right. It is easier to view one’s country not as a huge predatory commercial enterprise but as a benevolent Uncle, full of goodwill, candy bars and nylons for the underprivileged of the world. One sleeps better believing they are part of this noble enterprise, even if one doesn’t stop dreaming after awakening.

My apologies. Just think of it as a “joke” on my part, having a little “fun” at your expense.

The US media downplays American atrocities because people don’t want to read them. Do you think Mi Lai was the only massacre of that type? Do Americans want to read how an Iraqi city of 350,000 was leveled because 4 American mercenaries were killed and their bodies dragged through town? Not even the Germans were that bloodthirsty.

However, the rest of the world is aware of far, far more than those in the US. And the stuff the Fundamentalists get, that stuff which is to the right of Fox, well, that borders on fantasy.

TIME adjusts its covers to make each issue appealing to the market its aimed at. It probably adjusts its stories, too. I have no doubt their advertising is targeted as well, after all, they are a business, maximizing their exposure amd sales by tailoring it to specific markets is their job. A lot of purely domestic circulation magazines also have targeted regional editions for different parts of the US.

But there’s no need to rely on TB’s paranoid blog selection. TIME publishes facsimiles of ALL their edition covers on their website, for all the world to see.

Don’t take my word for it. You can see for yourself just how sinister the cover selections for their international editions really are.

http://search.time.com/results.html?sid=140759682BF5&internalid=endeca_dimension&N=46+37&Ns=p_date_range|1&Nty=1

Unlike this blog implies, they aren’t always different, and sometimes they differ only slightly. The differences aren’t necessarily on controversial or political topics, either. An article on Asian immigration to Australia isn’t necessarily front page material for the USA. After I looked at a few dozen examples it got pretty boring and I gave up.

Sorry Tom. No Liberal conspiracy. Just marketing. Now take a stress pill, and go to bed.