Is Islam in itself an impediment to democracy or is it the village-mind of hundreds of millions of muslims living in third world poverty around the world, barely literate enough to read even Holy Qu’ran, let alone anything that would foster democratic thinking. Of course, I see women in my neighborhood wearing burkas and I do sometimes wish I lived in Paris. But then I am not so certain that the French have always been the greater protectors of freedom and brotherhood in the world. We do a very good job of that, even though a good part of the time we also undermine our efforts, and that’s we the government, we the bureaucrats, we the financiers on Wall Street, we the media, we the Public as well as we the People . . . Impediments to the spread of democracy may also be the United States acting less than genuinely in maters of treaty, policy, foreign affairs of several kinds, whether economic, military, geo-political, et cetera; although I do not oppose the United States violating Pakistan’s sovereignty to kill Bin Laden, I do understand how that affects international relations. We still look upon the world as if it were Dodge City. Wyatt Earp looms large in our legends.
Democrats are as much to blame for any of our geo-political problems as are our Republicans, neither one more diametrically opposed to the other than let’s say heads is diametrically opposed to tails on any coin you hold in your hand. For us to continue to believe that the Democrats are representatives of the little man was a big part of the reason Wall Street has gotten away with what it has gotten away with over these last 20 years. The Democrats are the party of Wall Street as the Republicans are the party of oil.
Do I still believe as Lincoln once thought that The United States is the last best hope for humankind? Yes, I do. But that is going to take greater literacy, and not just the alphabetics the corporate world sponsors through their control of education in America. The feds make no policy in education apart from corporate lobbies. These are the same corporate lobbies that could care less about the hundreds of millions of muslims living in third world poverty, again in illiteracy or semi-literacy, the latter two being soils within which many fanatics and terrorists grow. No. These are the corporate lobbies that throw millions at politicians in Washington, in the White House, in Congress, and care little to nothing for the American worker and his family or their economic plight. Capitalism is responsible for the worst slums in human history, some of the direst poverty, the greatest inequitable distribution of wealth, and yet, like most Alpha gorillas, we beat our chest in pride, but a pride based on a lie–we are freer than any people have ever been, or so the propaganda continues, and we have to be grateful for our lives in America because we could be living in China or Afghanistan.
We have to stop comparing ourselves to the third world and start comparing ourselves to what we should be and could be.
The Falling Leaf Review 