In a recent debate Congressman Ron Paul claimed the United States military had troops in 130 countries. The St. Petersburg Times looked into whether such an outrage could actually be true and was obliged to report that the number was actually 148 countries. However, if you watch NFL football games, you hear the announcers thank members of the U.S. military for watching from 177 countries. The proud public claim is worse than the scandalous claim or the "investigative" report. What gives? We are supposed to be proud of the U.S. empire but to reject with high dudgeon any accusation of having an empire. Abroad, this conversation makes even less sense, because those troops and their bases are in everyone's faces. I lived near Vicenza, Italy, years ago. The people tolerated the U.S. Army base. The addition of a many-times larger one in the same town, now underway, has led to outrage, condemnation, and bitter resentment of being handed second-class citizenship in one's own country while being asked to show gratitude for it.
As President Obama encircles Russia with missile bases and China with naval bases, the people who live or used to live where the bases are built resent the occupation, just as the people of Iraq and Afghanistan resent the occupation. A global movement against U.S. military bases is rapidly rising from all corners of the empire. But so is a movement against the occupation of Der Homeland by an unrepresentative and unrepresenting police state.
Those of us not in the Forbes 400 have been handed second-class citizenship in the place we are supposedly protecting through the occupation of every other place. A large majority of us want the rich and the corporations taxed heavily, but they are not. We want the wars ended, the troops brought home, and military spending cut. None of this happens. Nor do the outcomes of elections impact the likelihood of any of these things happening. We want to keep and strengthen Social Security. We want Medicare protected and expanded to cover us all. We want rights enlarged for human beings and curtailed for corporations. We want to cut off the corporate welfare and the bankster bailouts. We want to invest in infrastructure, green energy, and education. We want the right to organize and assemble. And we want a clean system that allows public pressure through ordinary means: publicly funded elections, verifiable vote counting, no gerrymanders, no media and ballot barriers to candidates. None of this is forthcoming. We are paying taxation and receiving no representation.
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