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If American martial culture had not operated with such impunity in foreign theatres, it would not have made the mistake of thinking it can apply the same policies within its own borders. Complacency and complicity brought us to where we are today.

And what America feels in the last week is a form of karmic retribution for all the suffocating that the American people have, themselves, supported over the last few decades.

The victims may speak a vastly different language, but the policies that led to the boot on the neck are one and the same.

>>fit2ru+(OP)
'dragonwriter is correct that USA is founded upon thoroughly colonialist principles from the beginning. Even the War of Independence was fought at least partially in reaction to England's Somerset v Stewart case in 1772. The nineteenth century in North America was a devastating slaughter of the natives from beginning to end. African Americans got a few years of hope and respite during Reconstruction, but that was preceded by centuries of slavery and followed by a century of Jim Crow. The 20th century began with exporting our racist colonialism to the Philippines, which was to be a model for American military action up to the present day. Our later atrocities in Asia and Latin America weren't anything new for us.

In short, we've been at this a lot longer than you seem to appreciate. I think you're right that today's barbarities depend on those of yesterday more directly than those of centuries ago, but they also depend on those of centuries ago. It might be that poor whites are more observant of our common interests with minorities than we used to be. We had been promised a society with more freedom and possibility than the one we have received, and our Stupid Wars have played a role in that, here and abroad. As Thucydides observed, the tyranny Athens imposed on others it finally imposed on itself.

>>jessau+pe
My argument that something can and must be done about this, today, is of course going to be eternally defeated with the contradictory 'it has always been this way since forever' position.

The point is, there is something that can be done about it today, and it involves unity and cohesion and universality among a large group of people.

This isn't happening fast enough, because there are very real criminals standing in the way - out there in the shadows - and until the light of truth is shone on them, civil upheaval as we see, will continue.

So, the riots will be quelled, eventually, and so too the protests. Remember Occupy! And after that, a return to regular school-shootings and terrorist attacks.

After all, it has always been that way.

>>fit2ru+Ro
> My argument that something can and must be done about this, today, is of course going to be eternally defeated with the contradictory 'it has always been this way since forever' position.

No, your argument that “fix the (recent) US overseas policy and you fix the (centuries older than the country’s independence) domestic problem since the latter is just a domestic reflection of a culture rooted in the former” will continue to be defeated by the fact that you have the relationship backwards.

Maybe you can fix the one that is the reflection automatically, or at least more easily, by focussing on fixing the one that is the historical and cultural antecedent, but if so you need to fix the domestic one to fix the foreign one, not the other way around.

> The point is, there is something that can be done about it today, and it involves unity and cohesion and universality among a large group of people.

No one is arguing against that vague platitude, but against the much more specific claim that foreign abuses the US has committed since becoming a superpower are the root of domestic abuses it has been engaging in since it was colonized by Europeans.

>>dragon+Tp
Ah, no actually you really do mis-construe my position - to avoid an uncomfortable truth, perhaps.

I believe the American people will forever be driven by this utterly violent, racist, intolerant turmoil, because they allow it to occur in their name behind a veil of secrecy and privilege: in the actions of their military.

Americans cowardly do not want to be shown what their military does to other 'inferior cultures', they actively invest in efforts to make sure such light of truth is never shone on their state, and when it happens within their own borders, live, on TV, in a way which cannot be denied...

America is an embarrassment to itself, since this means that its own citizens don't have a clue what the rest of the world knows about the victim count in its illegal wars.

There's a reason this victim count for the Coalitions' wars, as well as its ROE, are high secrets - and for citizens of various 5-eyes state, just knowing these secrets makes them 'criminal' in the eyes of their corrupted judiciary.

Today its the cops. Tomorrow, it should be the Generals. As two groups, they share many, many social networks. There really isn't sufficient distinction between the US Police circle, and the US Military circle for it to be of any real consequence.

And that is my real and final point: We, the people, will be forever ruled by a criminal elite for as long as we let them get away with murder.

Which is happening at the rate of, about say .. 1 innocent victim every twenty minutes for the last twenty years ..

Kapisch?