Yes, another good angle. But given the political climate here, and the fact we can't even get a toothless shade like the Kyoto protocol signed by the U.S., I had a much more humble goal in mind, which is to build an understanding that imperial conquest is not benefitting the ordinary U.S. person. We're in a sorry state, one in which it's a blinding insight to see that our interests as workers are not the same as George Bush's. The illusion that U.S. wages, health care, living conditions, etc. are the best in the world is very widespread here and it's attributed in part to U.S. power in the world. But if it's not true (and it isn't) that our wages are the highest, our healthcare is the best, and it is true that our free time, our rights on the job, our ability to have a life outside of work, all of these things are in fact considerably worse than countries which are less powerful, then U.S. power in the world is not a benefit to us, and this throws the costs into a different light.
>Some people on LBO will go all squeamish when they hear that word,
>reparations, I'd guess. Though the politics aren't nice to think
>about, Yoshie, you do have to consider Lenin's labour aristocracy
>thesis, applied to the 'Republican Proletariat' (NLR's phrase) in
>Kansas or Alabama (where I was raised). That correct thesis - the
>interests of most Northerners in sustaining Empire's spoils, whether
>British when Lenin wrote or petro-military today - is why I'm not all
>that bothered when periodic hysteria about 'anti-Americanism' emerges
>in liberal circuits here in South Africa.
There comes a time when the costs outweigh the spoils, though. Perhaps they always do (I suspect), but we're at a time when they certainly, provably do, and if the left keeps going on about how our lives are made wonderful by imperialism when it's not true, we're just shooting ourselves in the gonads. "Kick their ass, get their gas," and "draft SUV owners first" are two sides of the same coin. The beneficiary is assumed to be the general public.
>If the argument is made
>properly and carefully, I think a general Third Worldist
>anti-imperialism retains a good amount of material logic. When even
>nice Canadian churchy folk can express the principles of the North's
>ecological debt to the South in such clear terms as you read below,
>it's time for a reckoning.
I do think there's a question about where to focus on reparations and why start there. And I think in the U.S. the most fruitful starting point is reparations for slavery and its sequelae. Unless you want to start with reparations for the Indian genocide, it's almost criminal to start anywhere other than slavery and the semi-slavery that follows it. And politically, there is much to gain from that discussion even if the cash is far off.
Yoshie writes:
>James Baldwin wrote, "As long as you think you're white, there's no
>hope for you." The same can be said about being American: "As long
>as you think you're American, there's no hope for you." The more
>national privileges you gain, the more class power you lose.
And the more national illusions you have, the more class power you lose. For example, "America has the best health care system in the world" among other whoppers, allows health insurance companies to roam the land unmolested while they condemn people to death through denials and medical gatekeeping.
Jenny Brown