The NPR contributor resorts to comforting platitudes while the realities of empire close in around us.
If we are told a lie enough, we often come to believe it. This embracing of falsehoods can occur even in the face of massive amounts of countervailing evidence if the lie in question is comforting when contrasted with a disturbing truth. Such a phenomenon was on display in the writing of Scott Simon, which was published on February 13th in the opinion section of National Public Radio’s website. His editorial, The American Flag Flies for Democracy, Not Against it, is an attempt to resuscitate the nation’s reputation after the insurrection in the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. Particularly incensing to Simon, was the fact that the right wing mobs that assaulted the lawmaking fortress, were armed not solely with a hateful rightwing ideology (and in some cases actual guns), but also the treasured American flag. To Simon, to brandish the Stars and Stripes while engaged in activities antithetical to democracy (election result denial) is a sharp departure from the symbolism of the flag in the historical record. He envisions that the flag, and by the transitive property, the United States, have historically stood for democracy. By doing so, he engages in the self deception described above. It is easy and comforting for Americans to believe that their flag has always been symbolic of democracy. However, similar to how children are comforted in their belief in Santa Clause, Simon’s assertion has very little historical or current evidence to support it, and mountains of evidence to the contrary. He almost embodies the tagline of the poster that often appeared in Fox’s series, The X-Files; “I want to believe.” It necessary to point out that in the show, this slogan was an explicit desire to find extraterrestrial life, which did really exist with the X-files‘ universe. Contrastingly, Simon is deluding himself with a desire to believe in a version of history that only holds up to scrutiny with the protection of tunnel vision that excludes all inconvenient facts.
Cherry Picking the History
The article is not lacking in evidence. Simon has clearly done his research and presents several events in US history that on their surface appear to support his argument. The problem lies in the fact that while he points to incidents where (some) Americans were acting in in accordance with democratic values, even then these individuals were often working to correct the overwhelmingly undemocratic behavior of the nation at large. Simon also demonstrates an incredible propensity for leaving out the historical context of the events he uses, which in every case, would prove extraordinarily inconvenient for his argument.
World War Two Always Makes an Appearance
As many Americans do when scrambling to assemble proof of their nation’s benevolent role in history, Simon presents the US role in WWII as evidence. To bolster the reputation of the Star and Stripes as a symbol of democracy, he narrows in on two events from the conflict, the Battle of Iwo Jima and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. In both cases, his focus is narrow and obfuscates the much larger scope of decidedly undemocratic behavior of the United States
The iconic image of US soldiers raising the American flag on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima is symbolic of the victory of the US in the 1945 battle, and subsequent defeat of imperial Japan. It is undeniable that the defeated imperial Japanese army had been engaged in murderous brutality against people of the Asian continent for years prior to this confrontation. The atrocities committed against Koreans, Chinese, and Filipinos serve as a testament to this fact. In that light, isolating the US victory at Iwo Jima and subsequent vanquishing of the Japanese empire would seem to be a triumph for democracy. Yet to make this claim requires a myopic view of history that only begins with the US entry into the war in 1941. Taking a broader view of the Pacific theatre of WWII reveals that the relevant US actions in the decades preceding that confrontation had not only been decidedly undemocratic, but also led directly to the bloody conflict with Japan.
Has Scott Simon pondered the question; why was the United States in a war against Japan to begin with? While the US alone cannot be blamed for Japan’s ascension to imperial power status at the turn of the 20th century, Western imperialism as a whole (a project in which the US was a participant) was a key factor in the Japanese leadership electing for violent expansion across Asia. After seeing a significant portion of Asia fall under the hegemony of the European powers and the US, the Japanese decided the only way to avoid becoming prey was to become a predator. To that end, they proceeded to modernize their military, and put it to use in incredibly brutal fashion. The following decades saw Japan conquer Korea, much of coastline China, and eventually a significant portion of Southeast Asia. The primary area of culpability of the United States for the eventual showdown was in its own turn of the century imperial shopping spree
In 1898, the US shifted from a continental empire to a global one. On the false pretenses of alleged Spanish aggression, the US went to war with the dying empire. The victory over the Spanish was swift, and in the process the US claimed for itself the former Spanish “possessions” of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines with no input or desire to hear from the actual inhabitants of those islands. Simultaneously, president William Mckinley decided to annex the Hawaiian Islands, a sovereign kingdom that had recently fallen victim to a coup that overthrew the legitimate government. The subjugation of the these islands was antidemocratic in its very nature. In the Philippines, the US army conducted a war of extermination, killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who had been seeking self determination. This “pacification” was followed by decades of colonial rule of the islands by the Americans, which included the picking and choosing of leaders, control of the legislative agenda, along with a mass propaganda campaign. This latter effort involved building American style schools to brainwash Filipino children into supporting the US imperial agenda. In Hawaii and Guam, the violence was not as extreme, but the erasure of indigenous cultures was. This entailed the prohibition of native languages and cultural practices, along with the subjugation of native Hawaiians and Chamorros to the interests of US fruit corporations, and the US Military.
And why is all of this significant? Decades later, was exactly Hawaii, the Philippines, and Guam, all US colonies that had been obtained through extremely undemocratic and violent means, that became the Casus belli for US entry into war against Japan. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, they were attacking a colonial outpost of the United States that had been obtained through deception and denigration of the sovereignty of Hawaiians. Hours later, when Japanese planes bombarded Philippines and Guam, they were attacking territories that had been subjugated by an American conqueror decades earlier; territories that only came under US rule through actions based on an ideology of superiority of the white races its right (or burden) to dominate the brown people of the Pacific islands. So when Scott Simon points to the flag raised at Iwo Jima in 1945, and more broadly the defeat of imperial Japan as a symbol of democracy, he is isolating a few years within a decades long saga. This was a period 1898 to 1945 in which the US role in the pacific and southeast Asian was imperial, genocidal, and of course, undemocratic.
Simon’s tribute to the US role in WWII would not be complete if he did not pay tribute to role the US played in the war against the Nazis in Europe. He correctly identifies that the United States’ sacrifice in storming the beaches of Normandy in France, and subsequently liberating prisoners from the Nazi death camps. This is once more a case of myopia though. Immediately glaring is that he leaves out the major detail that the Soviet Red Army liberated more prisoners from concentration camps than the Americans, and that the Soviets played a far greater role in defeating the Nazis than the US (8 out of every 10 German soldiers killed in WWII were killed by Soviets). While not knowing Simon’s internal politics, I somehow doubt that he would view the Soviets raising the hammer and sickle over territory liberated from the German fascists as a symbol of democracy. Yet, he views the Stars and Stripes on such occasions as indicative of a democratic ethos. Secondly, Simon once again neglects the context. When he reminisces about how the United States defeated fascism in Europe, he conveniently leaves out how the United States was instrumental in fascism’s ascendance in Germany. Conveniently left out of Simon’s article are the facts that Adolph Hitler himself was inspired by the United States. He took the example of how the US ethnically cleansed and exterminated Native Americans as it expanded westward in North America as inspiration for what Germany could do as it expanded eastward toward the Soviet Union. This inspiration was acted upon as Germany would later conquered its neighbors, and int he process exterminated, Jews, gypsies, and other undesirables that stood in the path of Aryan dominion. Additionally, Nazi legal theorists were thoroughly impressed with American race law, most intricately developed in the Jim Crow South of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Third Reich developed their own race law based on these precepts. Of course, neither the Jim Crow era United States nor Nazi Germany could seriously be described as democratic. So when Simon romanticizes the raising of the American flag in Europe in 1944 as symbolic of democracy, he is failing to address that those GI’s were responding to an extremely undemocratic situation which the US had at least partially inspired with its own genocidal behavior.
Ground Zero for American Amnesia
As if he was trying to troll me, and everyone else who has a basic understanding of the events, Simon points to the days after the 9/11 attacks as an example of the American flag being symbolic of democracy. In the article he recalls the rescue workers at ground zero in New York raising the American flag over the ashes of the Twin Towers, as if that was an indication of democratic values. On its surface it is difficult for me to pick out anything remotely symbolic of democracy in the rubble of the Twin Towers. What is particularly democratic about firefighters raising the American flag over remains of a building destroyed in a horrific terrorist attack. The act of raising the flag could certainly be described as a display of resilience or perseverance, but it is a stretch to say that it was a gesture that was at all representative of people’s governance. Afterall, terrorist attacks occur in nations worldwide, often in nations that the US does not consider to be democracies. If, for example, China were to be subject to a terrorist attack perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists (as it has been frequently), would it then be seen by Simon as a display of democratic values if Chinese firefighters raised their flag over the ashes of such an attack? I suspect that he would not view the act this way. Yet, he proposes that the raising of the flag over the ashes of the World trade Center was on its own, symbolic of democracy. The reality that the events that preceded the 9/11 attacks, along with the policy prescriptions afterward, were indicative of a highly undemocratic society.
To give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Scott Simon genuinely believes George W. Bush’s lie that the Islamists that perpetrated the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington DC were genuinely motivated by a hatred of our freedom (and democracy).. If the NPR writer does buy into this, he can be forgiven for his ignorance. However, if this is the case, then Simon needs to be schooled with the hard facts that reveal that the tragedy of September of 2001 was the result of the US government’s anti-democratic behavior in the Middle East. I would also encourage Simon to explore the many outlets through which the perpetrator of the attacks, Osama Bin Laden articulated his motivations for warfare on the United States. None of his grievances which could be described as a hatred of democracy. The Saudi dissident’s rallying cry for war on the global superpower was based in very earthly grievances, including:
- The United States’ continuous support for Israel’s violent subjugation of Muslims in both Gaza and Lebanon
- The United States military occupation of Saudi Arabia, the land of the most holy places in Islamic tradition
- US support for extremely undemocratic Arab dictators
- The Untied States’ campaign to sanction and starve the Iraqi people, resulting in mass deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim children.
All of the above grievances are factual accounts of the behavior of the United States in the decade that preceded the attacks on New York and Washington DC. American weapons and diplomatic cover were being used to enforce the Israeli apartheid state wherein Palestinians were living (and continue to live) as a subjugated captive population. US funds, arms and diplomatic support were maintaining brutal (and undemocratic) monarchies and dictatorships in the Arab world, specifically in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and Yemen. US military bases and personnel had been occupying Saudi Arabia, the holy land in Islam. From there, the US air force often initiated bombing attacks on Muslims in Iraq, exacerbating the suffering of a people that was already being suffocated by economic sanctions enforced by the US. Of course, none of the state terrorism described by Bin Laden justifies the slaughter of nearly 3000 US civilians on who had nothing to do with creating those oppressive policies. Similarly, the 9/11 attacks do not in anyway justify the murder of millions of Muslims in the subsequent the War on Terror. Yet, it is apparent that Simon falls into the large camp of people that fail to acknowledge that it was the decisively undemocratic behavior by the United States that motivated al Qaeda to perpetrate violence on Americans in 2001.
Another appropriate question for Simon would be, what about the post 9/11 era resonates as emblematic of democracy? Was it Bush’s manipulation of the public and subsequent wars of aggression on Afghanistan and Iraq? Perhaps it was the CIA’s extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and torture programs? Did Obama’s drone assassination policy wherein the president serves as judge, jury, and executioner strike Simon as synonymous with people’s governance? How about a hyper empowered national security state that has perpetrated entrapment schemes, warrantless mass surveillance of the domestic population? The firefighters raising of the flag ground zero can be more accurately described as an ominous warning of the increasingly fascistic and militaristic nature of the United States, of which the Capitol riots of January 6th were symptomatic of.
An Undemocratic Three Centuries
Even if we grant that the events that Simon includes are symbolic of democracy (and we should not grant this without scrutiny), his analysis is lacking. It is almost as if he is cherry picking isolated incidents out of the larger history wherein most of those proudly waving the flag, (or would be likely to express the accompanying nationalistic sentiment) were engaged in activities that no serious person would call democratic.
Perpetual Aggressive War for the Demos?
To point out the more obvious examples, the United States has been at war for all but 11 years of its 244 year existence. Nearly all of those wars have been offensive in nature, violating the sovereignty of people who were no threat to US citizens. Undoubtedly, the Stars and Stripes were present as the US military conducted wars of extermination on the indigenous people of North American throughout the 19th century. Old Glory must have made appearances as the United States conducted sovereignty violating campaigns of industrial scale violence in Mexico, the Philippines, Korea Nicaragua, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria (for a short list).
It seems unlikely Iraqis and Afghans who were subject to surprise night raids on their homes, which terrified families and often left members dead, would be comforted by the US flag imprinted on the right arm of the US soldiers that perpetrated those acts. It would be interesting to hear Scott Simon explain to a rural Afghan woman cowering in terror as her son or husband is killed or arrested, her home searched, her privacy violated, that actually…the insignia on the soldier’s arm represents freedom! Could Simon muster up such a description of the American flag to the families of the thousands of Panamanians who were burned to death in the inferno created by the 1989 US invasion of their country? What would Simon say to any one of the thousands of Vietnamese women who were victims of sexual assault by US soldiers during the US war in South Asia? What language would he use to describe the symbol imprinted on the same arm that was likely used to hold her down as she was violated? In every war in US history this kind of behavior has been prevalent amongst the men donning the Stars and Stripes, yet Simon would have us believe that the behavior of those waving the flag during the January 6th riots were somehow a departure from the noble history of the symbol.
Undemocratic Beginnings
Other historical inconveniences for Simon are the origins of the nation itself and the motivations for the elite wealthy white men that led the American war for independence. Among these motives were the desires to conquer indigenous land, an endeavor that was thwarted by the British Proclamation of 1763. The British decision to (attempt to) forbid white colonists from invading Native American lands west of the Appalachian served as one of the initial grievances of the American colonists, including George Washington. These were men who had substantial wealth invested in land speculation which had been endangered by the British decision to prohibit white colonization of Indian territory. Such animosity toward the indigenous is even enshrined in the Declaration of Independence with the author, Thomas Jefferson, including as one of the colonists grievances,
“He [King George] has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
It is clear that the first men wielding the American flag were at least partially motivated by a desire to conquer the lands of the North American continent’s original inhabitants and exterminate them with minimal concern for democratic procedures.
And from there… Consistency
Other facets of US history that discredit Simon’s assessment include the fact the the nation was officially practicing slavery until 1865, and remained a racial apartheid state for an additional century afterward. Also damning is that the nation that Simon seems to believe genuinely stands for democracy, spent the back half of the 20th century constantly undermining democracy with extreme violence in nations throughout the formerly colonized world. (See Iran 1953, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, and Nicaragua throughout the 1980s for a small taste). Equally challenging for Simon’s thesis is that throughout the second half of the 20th century the United States was thoroughly committed to supporting decidedly undemocratic governments. This trend was articulated at the beginning of the Cold war by policy planner George Kennan:
“We have about 50 percent of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population…. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…. We should cease to talk about vague and…, unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
The actions of the United States for the decades that followed fall in line with Kennan’s policy prescription. A martian visiting earth at any point between 1945 to 1991 would have acknowledged that the United was unequivocally on the side of undemocratic governments throughout those decades. This included installing and/or supporting authoritarian right wing governments in (among many other places) Iran, El Salvador, Brazil, South Korea, The Philippines, Argentina and Chile It also involved standing with the South African apartheid state long after it had become a global pariah. Most egregiously the nation that Simon believes to stand for democracy also assisted governments involved in outright genocide in Indonesia, Pakistan, and Guatemala. In Simon’s defense, it seems that he is being consistent. If he is convinced that the Stars and stripes stood for democracy during the 19th century genocide of the indigenous populations of North America, there is no reason to expect that he would view the support of genocide of non white populations outside of US borders in the 20th century as incompatible with democracy either.
Self Governance for Some.. If We Approve
In theory, at the core of democratic values is the respect for the people of a given nation to rule themselves as they see fit. Yet, the United States, the nation that Simon believes to stand for democracy, has a consistent habit of subverting people’s rule. Aside from the obvious cases of the US frustrating populations’ efforts to govern themselves, (the aforementioned CIA coups, and invasions by the US military) there have been innumerable other ways that the US has accomplished the goal of destroying democracy (mostly in countries of black and brown people).
This has entailed supporting invasions of sovereign nations whose form of self government in one way or another did not align with the interests of US elites. A short list would include US president Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger giving approval and armed support for Indonesia’s invasion of the small island nation of East Timor. The resultant death roll of East Timorese during the i975 invasion and subsequent 25 year occupation, lies somewhere in the range of 200,000. Indonesia’s leader, General Suharto, was likely unsurprised that the United States supported his violence, as just 10 years earlier, the nation that Simon believes stands for democracy, assisted Suharto in the mass murder of a million suspected leftists and ethnic Chinese within Indonesia. If the general received US support commit mass murder of his own people, it logically follows that Uncle Sam would have no issue with exporting that violence to East Timor.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 after a dispute over an oil field, President George Bush and the United States took umbrage with the act of aggression. This resulted in an (unnecessary) war on Iraq that devastated the Arab nation’s people. Hussein was likely perplexed by the US response to his aggression, because like Suharto prior to his invasion of East Timor, Hussein had received considerable US support for the gravest of his crimes during the preceding decade. These mostly notably included the Reagan administration giving Iraq arms, diplomatic support and intelligence during its brutal nine year war on Iran in the 1980’s. This illegal incursion resulted in the most devastating war of the last third of the 20th century, killing half a million on each side. The conflict also saw the US support the Iraqi use of chemical weapons on both Iranians and the Iraqi Kurdish population. Ironically, it would be (false) allegations against Iraq for possession of the same kinds of weapons the US had tolerated in the 1980s, that would result in the 2003 US invasion of the Arab state. But was there some noble reason for US support for Hussein’s brutality in the 1980’s toward the Iranians? Was it perhaps the only option to encourage or preserve democracy in either of the two warring states? The answer, is of course, a thunderous “no.” Iran had recently undergone an Islamic revolution, overthrowing the decidedly undemocratic, but US installed and supported autocrat, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran has since developed significantly more democratic government since the Islamic revolution than during the Shah years, but that is irrelevant to Uncle Sam. As Hussein would find out in 1990, the US will tolerate and support many varieties of violent undemocratic behavior, but it will not tolerate disobedience to its imperial dictums. By overthrowing the US puppet in the form of the Shah, the Iranian people defied the self appointed right of the US to control the Middle East, and thus had to be disciplined. Similarly, later, by Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait, he himself was demonstrating a willingness to act independent of US demands, and therefore also had to be destroyed.
More recently, in 2006, the degree of US commitment to the principle of people’s rule was made evident to citizens of Somalia. The Islamic Courts Union, (ICU) had come into power in the East African nation and enjoyed a high degree of popularity. This was due to their record of having marginalized the violent (US supported) warlords that had been wreaking havoc on the nation for years. The ICU also gained the people’s support by establishing sanitation collection, along with reopening the seaport and airport in Mogadishu, (both of which had both been closed for years). However, Washington’s new theme was the War on Terrorism, which incidentally had the same effect as the previous war against communism; The crushing of popular governments that were deemed to be outside the orbit of US control. In this case, the Bush administration’s incorrect conflation of the ICU with Islamist terrorism resulted in Washington destroying the most stable government that Somalia had in years. This was accomplished not by the US military, which at the time was bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, but through the US proxy, Ethiopia. Out of the ashes of the devastating US supported invasion arose a group known as al Shabbab, the militant wing of the ICU. The organization’s ideology is distinctly tied to violent jihadism with a flavor of anti-Americanism. Its membership continues to swell with Somalians who identify the American flag as symbolic of a nation that has repeatedly demolished Somalia’s attempts at self determination.
USA Against the World
Is democracy something to only be aspired to in the domestic realm, or should nations professing to be democratic adhere to its basic principles on the world stage? If we agree on latter criteria, then the United States’s actions in opposition to rulings by international institutions, such as the International Court of Justice and United Nations, should be disqualifying. The same could be said of behavior engaged in by the US that illustrate a total disregard for global public opinion. The US ignores the will of the demos, not just of the its domestic population but also of the planet. An abbreviated list of such disdain for global democracy would include the 1980’s terrorist campaign on Nicaragua, the 60 year US embargo of Cuba, the wars on Iraq, Grenada, Panama, and Afghanistan, and the continued economic sanctioning of Iran. Also indicative of a contempt for world opinion is the rejection of proposals that the large majority of nations agree to. While the preponderance of countries have favored establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East, participating in the International Criminal Court, condemning international terrorism, and the halting the Israeli settlements, the US has rejected all of these propositions. If the American flag stands for democracy, it would be unknown to any observer of the superpower’s behavior in international politics.
Current Affairs
It is apparent that Simon is very much unaware of what the American flag, and by extension the United States, stand for currently. To imagine that the Stars and Stripes currently stands for democracy is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. A brief list of inconvenient facts that undermine Simon’s assertion is that fact that the United States arms and supports 73% of the world’s dictatorships. This includes devoted assistance to Saudi Arabia’s monarchy in its oppression of its domestic population and its genocidal war in Yemen. Of course, also persisting into modern times is the US’ unconditional backing of the Israeli apartheid state.
An Uninformed Public is Undemocratic
The American flag currently represents a government that behaves increasingly unconstrained by the public’s desires. This is accomplished at least partially by the Orwellian levels of secrecy with which powerful government and private institutions have been able to function. The national security state operates under a veil of classification that renders their activities unknown to the public, and thus assures that they are not accountable to the citizenry. It is unfortunate that a malignant figure like Donald Trump co-opted the phrase “deep state,” because what he was referring to actually exists. In the US we have a permanent state of unelected intelligence agencies that operate in spaces completely invisible to the public. During the Bush and Obama administrations, the National Security Agency engaged in rampant warrantless mass surveillance of both the domestic and foreign populations. The Central Intelligence Agency is even more undemocratic, engaging in clandestine and violent activities around the world that are invisible to the American public. The agency also operates a “black budget,” that funds its activities with sums of money that are kept totally secret from Congress.
Perhaps the gravest indictment of the lack of the undemocratic nature of the military and the intelligence agencies is the treatment of those who make crucial information public. The fact is, that one of the only ways we learn of our government’s malignant activities is through courageous whistleblowers who leak classified information to the public. One would think in a democracy, individuals who alert the masses to the criminal behavior of their government would be exalted and seen as heroes. In the United States, such people are marginalized, prosecuted, imprisoned, and even tortured. This was true of the treatment of William Binney, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, who all exposed major crimes (and undemocratic behavior) of the US government. By contrast, those powerful government officials who have been complicit in crimes such as torture, illegal invasions, warrantless spying, and perjury go about their lives without ever being held accountable for their actions, (See George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Brennan, and James Clapper). I would ask Simon, what about national security apparatus’ secrecy resonates as democratic to him? To my view, it resembles something far more fascistic than democratic.
The Free Press In Our Democracy
Are we not taught that a free press necessary for a functioning democracy? While the US constitution grants this, in practice the US press is hardly free from private and government interests. To start, nearly the entire US media landscape is owned by just six gigantic media companies. These conglomerates have investments in many other powerful industries, thus hindering news gathering and making conflicts of interest inevitable. The main outlets are also highly dependent on advertising. This creates an environment wherein advertisers are not likely to support content that is critical of their products, which of course limits the spectrum of news that can be covered. The need for advertising also creates a desire to create news that appeals to a wealthier audience who can buy products. Consequently, the news relevant to working class and poor people goes unreported by mainstream networks. There is also an incestuous relationship with the big media companies and the powerful entities they are supposed to be scrutinizing. The owners of big media companies generally share the privileged background and worldview of the political elite, and thus largely share the same agendas with regard to issues of domestic and foreign policy, This limits the range of discussion to that which exists in the narrow range between the two major political parties (who incidentally usually agree on issues of empire, capitalism, and militarism). Because of this close relationship, big outlets will often depend on, and thus give a veil of legitimacy to powerful people within government. This is often seen in issues of war, wherein current or former officials from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies enjoy an inordinate amount airtime. This propping up of the powerful occurs while dissidents, activists, and whistleblowers rarely obtain mainstream platforming. Corporate news outlets regularly hire militaristic foreign policy officials as “experts” as seen with MSNBC’s hiring of the former CIA director John Brennan (who has on his record to thwart a investigation into the agency’s torture program by spying on senate staffers) As a result, with regards to foreign policy, there is always a pro imperialism bend. The media watch dog, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting documented this phenomenon during the mainstream coverage of the buildup to the Iraq War in 2003,
“More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official U.S. sources—Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.)—expressed skepticism or opposition to the war”
By prioritizing some voices over others, a narrative is created whether the networks officially endorse it or not. In the case of covering major issues such as war and peace, the decisions of who to platform can have dire consequences.
With this type of deference to powerful interests already baked into the natural function of US media, the government rarely needs to get involved to ensure its narrative is reinforced. However, even with this mostly pliant media, there are times wherein stories are buried or delayed due to pressure from the state. There is no better example of this than when prior to the 2004 presidential election, James Risen of the New York Times, was told by his bosses to delay releasing a story until after the election. The story in question was a groundbreaking (and true) revelation of the domestic mass surveillance conducted by the Bush administration. Risen’s bosses at the Times refused to let the story be released under pressure from the executive branch. Obviously Bush stood to benefit tremendously by this story being hidden until after the election, but the Times ignored this conflict of interest and chose the path of deference to power rather than scrutiny of it . This is a case that I’d call to Simons attention to specifically, because it is literally interfering with the democratic process by denying voters access to information that might have affected their votes.
The US belligerence toward a free press extends even to non US citizens. The ongoing persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (an Australian citizen) is due to his exposure of American war crimes and corruption. Despite having earned the ire most recently of mainstream liberals for allegedly helping Donald J Trump win the 2016 election, the reality is that his current incarceration and torture in a British prison has nothing to do with this allegation. He is not being prosecuted for revealing the corruption of the Democratic party by leaking the DNC’s emails in 2016. Rather, the US government is attempting to charge him with the Espionage Act (IE treasonous behavior to a country he is not a citizen of), for leaking the Afghan and Iraq War logs and State Department cables that had been leaked to him by whistleblower and hero Chelsea Manning. While the Obama administration declined to pursue charges against Assange, citing the grave danger to free speech, the Trump administration decided to go after him. Despite a failed attempt to extradite the maligned publisher in January of 2021, it appears that the Biden Administration will continue to pursue the Wikileaks founder for the crime of… journalism.
While the Assange case is the most well known example, it is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the US empire helping to suppress the free press globally. An incident that highlights the manner by which US pressures other nation’s leaders to suppress their own domestic journalism is directly connected to Wikileaks. Among the state department cables revealed by Chelsea Manning and published by Wikileaks, were disturbing details regarding the US relationship with the government of Yemen. What was revealed was that while the US was conducting its War on Terror operations in Yemen, the Yemeni dictator had agreed to claim responsibility for US missile attacks within his nation. This would serve to exonerate the superpower of the brutality that the air war was having on Yemeni civilians. Before Wikileaks had even revealed the truth about this agreement, Yemeni journalist, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, had been piecing together the evidence and exposing some details that were inconvenient for American leadership. He had been investigating the Al Majalah massacre, a 2009 missile attack that killed 44 civilians. While the official story had been that it was conducted by the Yemeni government, Shaye uncovered evidence that it had been a United States Tomahawk missile that had been fired at the civilian camp, revealing the US role. For his efforts, he was jailed in 2010 by the Yemeni government at the behest of the United States. When he was due to be released in 2011, president Obama requested that the Yemen dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, extend the journalist’s incarceration. For Shaye’s journalistic prowess that embarrassed the global imperium, he was forced to spend an additional 2 years in prison. The Washington Post has a slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”, referring to the necessity of a free press for democratic government. A search of that paper’s archives will reveal that the Shaye’s case was never mentioned. The Post and other mainstream US news outlets often serve as the very darkness that poisons democracy.
Democracy For Some!
The manner by which domestic US politics function could hardly be considered democratic. Wealthy individuals and corporations control legislation far more than the citizenry does. The agendas of the weapons, fossil fuel, health insurance and pharmaceutical industries are far more evident in our domestic and foreign policies than the will of the American people. This is not surprising, given the influence that monied interests have through persistent lobbying of politicians, donations to political campaigns, funding of think tanks that create the proposed legislation that is later debated in Congress. This disparity was documented by a 2014 Princeton study that indicated the United States government functions as an oligarchy, wherein the wealthiest Americans have disproportionate control over policy decisions. This influence of the rich extends to the issues that are even subject to debate.
Furthermore, there are US citizens to whom the constitution that articulates the tenants of American democracy, do not apply to. The United States still has colonies that are not incorporated as states of the Union. These are populated islands that had been gained through the violent US imperialism of the Spanish American war. in 1898. While Simon’s treasured American flag flies over the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the Mariana Islands, the residents of the islands are exempted from basic democratic practices. The 1901 Supreme Court ruling in the Insular Cases first established that some constitutional rights did not extend to the conquered peoples of these territories. Most blatantly, these US citizens are the denied right to vote for the president of the United States, and also lack any voting representation in the US congress. In other words, people of US colonies are denied any democratic participation in the decisions that often shape their lives. (emergency relief, US military spending and actions, social safety nets, etc) They remain subject to the whims of their imperial overlords in Washington DC.
Incarceration Nation
I wonder if Simon considers that flag that he claims stands for democracy is the flag of the nation that currently incarcerates the most people, both by population and rate. This includes 2 million Americans in prison, of which some 80,000 are subject to solitary confinement, a practice that the United Nations has determined to be a form of torture. With specific regards to the democratic process, one assumes that Simon must deem the practice of voting to be of paramount importance. Here, though, I’d remind him that nearly all of the nation’s incarcerated citizens, and even many US citizens who have already served a prison sentence, are not permitted to vote. In other words, those affected the most by the criminal justice system are barred from any meaningful participation in government that could change laws or policies that render people imprisoned in the first place.
The Tyranny of Work
I would also call attention to the fact that even if one believes the myth of the United States as a beacon of democracy, the reality is that most US American’s spend a significant portion of their lives in extremely undemocratic circumstances. That is to say that the majority of adult US citizens spend significant portions of their lives at work, where they are subject to authoritarian rule which if existed at the national level, many people would associate with authoritarian regimes that Westerners have been propagandized to abhor. Author Bob Black encapsulates the obscenely undemocratic nature of the modern workplace in his essay, The Abolition of Work,
“The authorities keep them under regular surveillance. State bureaucrats control even the smaller details of everyday life. The officials who push them around are answerable only to higher-ups, public or private. Either way, dissent and disobedience are punished. Informers report regularly to the authorities. All this is supposed to be a very bad thing. And so it is, although it is nothing but a description of the modern workplace.”
In the American workplace, employees are exploited for their labor, told when to arrive, when to leave, when to eat lunch, and in some cases even limited as to when they can use the bathroom. Most concepts of democracy prescribe that people who are affected by decisions should be permitted to participate in making them. The American workplace falls far short of this standard. Instead, the owners, the major shareholders, and the board of directors (typically less than 20 people) make major decisions for companies and how they function. This occurs while the workers, who form the large majority in every enterprise, are excluded from such decision making. Issues such as what to produce, how to produce, distribution of profits, and the hiring and firing of supervisors are rarely influenced by the workers who have the most stake in the result of such determinations. Making the workplace more democratic alone would do wonders in terms of moving toward the society that Simon imagines the flag stands for. Workers would be very unlikely to elect to have the CEO’s of companies earning hundreds of times what the average employee makes, thus drastically reducing wealth inequality. If we claim to be a democratic society then it stands to reason that most citizens’ daily lives should resemble some form of democracy
Standing in the Way of Change
My problem with Simon’s article is not just that it presents hokey, ahistorical, West Wing-esque analysis of the United States and its behavior. The issue is that intelligent people actually believe this type of recounting of US history, and that has proven to be extremely dangerous. The very word “democracy” has been wielded by the United States to justify extreme violence against people around the world, going back to when Woodrow Wilson claimed to be making the World safe for democracy as he helped the British and French expand their empires to control the Middle East in WWI. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the United States used “spreading democracy” to wage wars of aggression in the same manner that in the preceding centuries, the European colonizers used spreading Christianity to justify conquering most of the world’s people. At a larger level, Simon’s rosy picture of US history fuels the national religion of American exceptionalism. This belief in the inherent noble purpose of the American experiment is what has allowed US citizens to support, tolerate ,and at minimum accept 244 years of near constant offensive violence. Articles like Simons reinforce the belief that US leaders have “good intentions” that justify their acts of sadism, while never applying nuanced views to foreign enemies who would undoubtedly point to their professed altruism as a defense for their own criminality.
Mostly, a belief in the United States as exceptional or uniquely benevolent obfuscates the need for reflection and course correction. We need war crimes trials, truth and reconciliation hearings, and reparations for the millions of people that the actions of our nation have harmed. None of this is possible if our reaction to tragedy is to resort to evidence free, feel good platitudes about the inherent goodness of the American experiment. It is why after September 11th, instead of taking stock of the real grievances emanating from the Arab world and attempting to address them, the nation pursued a path of bloodlust and endless war with destructive results. While January 6th riots are in no way the level of tragedy as the attacks of 2001, but they similarly do offer an opportunity for reflection. To dismiss the flag’s presence right wing riots of January 6th as a departure from an otherwise democratic past, is an exercise in ignorance on par with believing that the 9/11 attacks were the unprovoked acts of violence perpetrated by those that “hate our freedom.”
This attitude requires none of the discomfort that would accompany investigation of root causes, examination of our behavior as a nation, and scrutiny of the deeply entrenched malignant ideologies that cannot easily be disentangled from the American empire itself. Simon chooses to take the narrowest view of the American past and present, one in which anything he views as positive is associated with the flag, while dismissing the events of January 6th and the presidency of Donald Trump as aberrations. Simon’s ability to imagine a reality wherein only the positive aspects of a society’s history represent its true nature is a fantastic trick, and one that any apologists for the most tyrannical regimes of the past would have loved to employ. After all, such a performance of mental gymnastics is comforting. However, like any intoxicant, it enables the user to numb themselves to reality while continuing to march toward disaster, ignoring the necessity for course change.