RES: My Rightwing take on Sept 11

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Sep 22 10:22:43 PDT 2001


Alexandre Fenelon wrote:


>-But the majority of US working class usually supports US imperialism.
>-Am I wrong?

It's not that simple. Decades of polls have shown that the U.S. public, like George Washington, resists "foreign entanglements." It doesn't share the elite's passion for empire. I'm also tempted to say that most Americans have no idea what their government does abroad, though it may be that many people "know" in some sense, while splitting off any deep acceptance of that knowledge. In the kinds of short, one-sided wars the U.S. has fought since Grenada, it's been pretty easy to wave the flag and get popular support, but the reason the gov controls info so tightly is that they rightly fear that news of mass death would quickly erode popular support. Sure there are some, maybe a lot, of Americans who bellow about nuking the ragheads and camel-jockeys, but if it were the majority of the U.S. working class, then our rulers wouldn't have to lie so much.

Doug



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