July 4
Is Matrix Reinforcement Day
By Paul
Craig Roberts
July
04, 2018 "Information
Clearing House"
- July 4, 2018, is the 242
anniversary of the date chosen to stand as the
date the 13 British colonies declared
independence. According to historians, the
actual date independence was declared was July
2, 1776, with the vote of the Second Continental
Congress. Other historians have concluded that
the Declaration of Independence was not actually
signed until August 2.
For
many living in the colonies the event was not
the glorious one that is presented in history
books. There was much opposition to the
separation, and the “loyalists” were killed,
confiscated, and forced to flee to Canada. Some
historians explain the event not as a great and
noble enterprise of freedom and self-government,
but as the manipulations of ambitious men who
saw opportunity for profit and power.
For
most Americans today the Fourth of July is a
time for fireworks, picnics, and a patriotic
speech extolling those who “fought for our
freedom” and for those who defended it in wars
ever since. These are feel good speeches, but
most of them make very little sense. Many of our
wars have been wars of empire, seizing lands
from the Spanish, Mexicans, and indigenous
tribes. The US had no national interest in WW 1
and and very little in WW 2. There was no
prospect of Germany and Japan invading the US.
Once Hitler made the mistake of invading the
Soviet Union, the European part of World War 2
was settled by the Red Army. The Japanese had no
chance of standing up to Mao and Stalin.
American participation was not very important to
either outcome.
No
Fourth of July orator will say this, and it is
unlikely any will make reference to the seven or
eight countries that Washington has destroyed in
whole or part during the 21st century or to the
US overthrow of the various reform governments
that have been elected in Latin America. The
Fourth of July is a performance to reinforce The
Matrix in which Americans live.
When
the Fourth of July comes around, I re-read the
words of
US Marine General Smedley
Butler. General Butler is the most
highly decorated US officer in history. By the
end of his career, he had received 16 medals,
five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive
the Medal of Honor twice, one of only three men
to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal
and the Medal of Honor, and the only to be
awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of
Honor, all for separate actions.
Butler
served in all officer ranks that existed in the
US Marines of his time, from Second Lieutenant
to Major General. He said that “during that
period, I spent most of my time being a high
class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall
Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
Butler
says he was a long time escaping from The Matrix
and that he wishes “more of today’s military
personnel would realize that they are being used
by the owning elite as a publicly subsidized
capitalist goon squad.”
Butler
wrote:
“WAR
is a racket".
It always has been.
“It is
possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable,
surely the most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in
which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
the losses in lives.
“A
racket is best described, I believe, as
something that is not what it seems to the
majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’
group knows what it is about. It is conducted
for the benefit of the very few, at the expense
of the very many. Out of war a few people make
huge fortunes.
“A few
profit — and the many pay. But there is a way to
stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament
conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace
parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical
groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can
be smashed effectively only by taking the profit
out of war.
“The only way to smash this racket is to
conscript capital and industry and labor before
the nation’s manhood can be conscripted. One
month before the Government can conscript the
young men of the nation — it must conscript
capital and industry and labor. Let the officers
and the directors and the high-powered
executives of our armament factories and our
munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our
airplane builders and the manufacturers of all
the other things that provide profit in war time
as well as the bankers and the speculators, be
conscripted — to get $30 a month, the same wage
as the lads in the trenches get.”
In
November, 1935, Butler wrote in Common Sense
magazine:
“I
spent 33 years and four months in active
military service and during that period . . . I
helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe
for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the
National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.
I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central
American republics for the benefit of Wall
Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the
International Banking House of Brown Brothers in
1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for the American sugar interests in
1916. I helped make Honduras right for the
American fruit companies in 1903. In China in
1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went
on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I
might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best
he could do was to operate his racket in three
districts. I operated on three continents.”
The
military/security complex, about which President
Eisenhower warned Americans 57 years ago,
adroitly uses the Fourth of July to portray
America’s conflicts in a positive light in order
to protect its power and profit
institutionalized in the US government. In stark
contrast, by the end of his career General
Butler saw it differently. Washington has never
fought for “freedom and democracy,” only for
power and profit. Butler said that “there are
only two things we should fight for. One is the
defense of our homes and the other is the Bill
of Rights.”
Today
the anti-gun lobby and militarized police have
made it very difficult to fight for the defense
of our homes, and the War on Terror has
destroyed the Bill of Rights. If there could be
a second American revolution, maybe we could try
again.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate
editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News
Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many
university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts'
latest books are
The Failure of Laissez Faire
Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West,
How America Was Lost,
and
The Neoconservative Threat to
World Order.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
