The Exceptional Ignorance of American Academics

Fearing the Pains But Not the Cause

”Donald Trump Scares Me” headlines Diane Ravitch’s article in Common Dreams (March 4, 2016). Diane is a historian of education at New York University and has authored several books. Despite her academic merits she, like most of her peers, proves to be ignorant of living in an empire.

Surely Diane has heard her leaders speak about America as an exceptional and indispensable country.
“The United States is exceptional, and will always be the one indispensable nation in world affairs.” Barack Obama

Diane has learned to pick a sentence apart, name the different components and describe their function, but she has not learned to see the easily recognized language of overlords. Her education hasn’t taught her to recognize steel-fisted superiority. An exceptional, indispensable nation, indeed! Do they have to brand a swastika on their foreheads for her to understand what they are talking about. Claiming that one nation is indispensable implies that all other nations are dispensable. The results of such arrogance coupled to massive military power can only be tallied in blood and destruction.

A lot has changed in the past 80 years. The exceptional nation concept of the American empire is the modern version of the Aryan nation concept of the Nazis, which was a modern version of ”manifest destiny” for American conquests during the 1800s, which ran parallel to ”the white man’s burden” of the British empire, which was the latest declaration of superiority by conquerors all the way back to the chosen Israelites annihilating the peoples of Canaan/Palestine 5000 years ago.

The leading players in an empire are symptoms of the system, as predictable as pains in the ass with colon cancer. The different rulers and their administrators differ only in the methods to promote the enterprise of conquest, which is what empires are all about. None of alternatives includes justice, peace or security for those they rule over.

Diane has every right to be scared, terrified even. But confining her terror to one or another of the bozos performing in the court of emperors qualifies her as spectator in the bozo league.

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“Common criminals talk about their needs,
great criminals about their rights.”
Dartwill Aquila

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