Americans Need to Recognize our own Authoritarianism
Getting on the wrong side of the U.S. government is as scary as it gets
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(Russian President Vladimir Putin [L] & U.S. President Joe Biden)
Protests for justice and against the powerful are beautiful, courageous things. Every time I become aware of some happening abroad I perk up and pay special attention, often along with special respect to the movements.
I’m far from exceptional in this regard. Even the most white bread, establishment-inclined among us here in the United States are routinely roped into rooting on this or that foreign band of protesters…so long as they’re protesting a government our own elites tell us to hate, of course.
That’s why, for example, heroic Palestinians and Lebanese fighting their Israeli occupiers aren’t celebrated in Western press, nor were warriors for democracy in Central and South America fighting against American-backed despots, nor the Vietcong or Korean forces fighting off invading U.S. imperial forces. You get it…Goodness gracious I hope you get that.
Not many Americans on social media seem to understand that this week, though. Americans who had nothing to say about the rightwing coup we backed in Ukraine in 2014, overturning their democracy, and who also haven’t uttered a peep as we continue to send millions of dollars to literal neo-Nazi nationalist militias in Ukraine, militias who have committed atrocities against ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, are suddenly vocal and certain in their shade-less condemnation of the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine this week.
This isn’t surprising considering that most Americans (as well as their parents and grandparents) have been trained since childhood to fear and suspect Russia as a mythological monster. It’s also perfectly fine to abhor and condemn the Russian government’s bombing and invasion of Ukraine, even taking into consideration the full context of the U.S. and NATO goading Russia into war for years.
After all, this writer is no more a fan of Russian President Vladimir Putin than he is of U.S. President Joe Biden, whose own career body count vis-à-vis the genocidal wars he’s backed and waged, the carceral system he helped create that is peerless in its brutality and rapaciousness, or the current ethnic concentration camps he now operates inside of our borders, dwarfs anything Putin will ever reach. That is to say, fuck them both, fuck them all.
If you criticized your own government for overturning democracy in Ukraine back in 2014, or Russia’s embryonic one in 1996 through our comprehensive, open, and expensive meddling in the reelection of Boris Yeltsin, then you are certainly doing nothing but being philosophically consistent if you lament Putin’s new invasion. If, however, you are an American who has not been vocally opposed to our own subversions of democracy in Ukraine and Russia in recent years, you might want to take it easy with the blue and yellow flag waving right now.
If you’re an American and you’ve tweeted more about Russia’s bombing of Ukraine than you have about your own nation’s bombing of several places this week including Somalia, you cannot be taken seriously, no matter the nobility of your intentions.
If the above is true of you I’d also recommend introspection on the matter of why White people being bombed by a nation across the world this week got your attention more than your own country using your money to bomb people of color this week in many countries, just as we do every week of every year.
For the sake of moving in another direction, however, let us assume philosophical consistency of one another. For the remainder of this essay let us converse as peers who consistently and proportionally condemn abuses of power and subversions of democracy.
From that position let’s consider the outpouring of adulation for Ukrainians defending themselves from the Russian military. From that vantage point let us consider the thousands of Russians being praised for taking to their streets to demonstrate against their government’s military actions.
In both cases the conventional wisdom as I’ve observed it these past few days is that these warriors are not merely brave and righteous, but that they are especially brave because they are going against authoritarian governments. I don’t disagree.
I do disagree with the implication that the United States is a nation and government exempt from that authoritarian classification, however. Russian protesters are brave.
Chinese protesters are brave. Take your pick of people protesting against entrenched power and I’m more than likely to count them as brave and noble.
Protesting our own government here in the U.S. is no less courageous, however, and that is because our government is the most lethal on earth. Perhaps that’s why we don’t see as many mass protests as other nations, with supposedly more authoritarian governments than ours, do.
In the United States it is often legal to run over civil rights protesters with a car, but not to tease a police officer. If this is news to you, please start paying better attention.
In the United States a woman was convicted of chuckling at then Attorney General Jeff Sessions. If that is news to you, please start paying better attention.
In the United States police kill more of its own people than the police forces of any other wealthy nation on the planet. In the United States we imprison more humans than any other nation on earth, not just as a percentage of population, but in total.
In the United States children are executed by the state. In the United States mentally handicapped children are executed by the state.
In the United States all of our telecommunications and most all of our physical comings and goings are monitored by the government and/or corporations with government contracts. In the United States, the federal government has recently categorized anyone who criticizes capitalism as a domestic extremist.
If that is news to you, please start paying better attention.
In the United States our military troops are used to police citizens within our own borders, in violation of our own federal constitution. In the United States people are held in jail indefinitely without the state having to bring charges against them, in violation of our own federal constitution.
In the United States labor activists are deported to other countries as retaliation. In the United States we operate ethnic concentration camps within our borders and kidnap migrant children from their parents. I live in the United States and, a few miles from my house, local police operate torture facilities.
In the United States corporations are allowed to prosecute and imprison attorneys who reveal their toxic pollution. In the United States it is illegal to teach about racism in schools.
In the United States, police bomb the people they’re sworn to protect. If any of this is news to you, please start paying better attention lest you and yours get caught up in our native authoritarianism while lecturing the world about theirs.
More people in so many of the nations we think of as authoritarian turn out to protest their government more often and in larger numbers than we do. The reasons for that are myriad, but our nation’s consistent and devastating repression of dissidents in all fields and at every level is certainly one of them.
Protesting in other countries is brave because protesting there isn’t safe. Sure.
As much as we might hate to realize it, however, our country is not exceptional in this regard. Speech isn’t free, and space is privatized, under penalty of jail, surveillance, torture, or death in these United States of America.
Call out any and all strongmen, always, but save some outrage for your own government, please. Not just for the way in which we rain down more terror on other nations than does any other country, but also for the way in which our government oppresses us right here at home.
Protesting in the United States isn’t as safe as you might think. In fact, getting on the wrong side of our government is as scary as it gets, and that’s because the United States is more authoritarian than any other nation on earth.
If that sounds off, go ahead and check the body count in the killing fields and in the jail cells. See which government is ahead on the scoreboard.
Really nailed how I feel about it.
Excellent essay