America’s actions indicate that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives. This failure to see people as living, breathing people, but only as “Americans” or “Iraqis” shows how desensitized America is.

A friend of mine confided that he cannot stand going to Bayshore Mall anymore because it is simply too much of “rich people getting what they want.” The all-too-common Bayshores, Starbucks, and SUV dealerships which dot the land lead me to believe that America itself is nothing more than “rich people getting what they want.”

The American motto “give me liberty or give me death” is the perfect summary of America’s contradictions and shortcomings. The phrase is shallow and infantile as written: “Give ME liberty” is rank with America’s egocentrism, which saw slavery side by side with free white men, and to this day treats gays as second-class citizens.

“Or give me death” is a joke when the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of America. For example, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, while over 1,100,000 North Vietnamese were killed in that rich man’s war, poor man’s fight.

The saying should be “give everyone liberty, or give me death.” As Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere;” and, “Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”

The way America laments the deaths of its 3,800 soldiers killed in Iraq would lead you to believe it is a caring country. Yet, over 655,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed thus far (170 innocent Iraqis per soldier). Do we Americans mourn as much for the Iraqis?

Shamefully no. In fact, we mourn less for them than we do for our soldiers, who are not altogether innocent.

America’s actions indicate that Iraqi lives are worth less than American lives. This failure to see people as living, breathing people, but only as “Americans” or “Iraqis” shows how desensitized America is, revealing a disgusting and all-too-prolific national pride. It is tragic to hear an already indoctrinated six-year-old say that America is “the greatest country in the world.”

Asking which country is “the greatest” is not remotely valid because countries as such do not matter, but rather the people within them do, and they cannot be ranked according to “greatness.”

Fortunately, most kids stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance by high school. Instead of pledging allegiance to “the flag,” representing our Republic, wouldn’t it be better to pledge allegiance to Truth, Justice, and the Brotherhood of Man, irrespective of nationality? Aim higher than America, or at least don’t hide behind it.

“America” is something to be overcome. The fact that phrases such as “the CIA has helped overthrow at least fifteen democracies” and “30,000 children die to poverty every day” fail to impact society shows the extent to which denial, scape-goating, escapism and cynicism have become a part of our desensitized culture.

Objectification is the leading strategy for suffocating sense of compassion. It is easier to deny downtrodden people access to jobs when they are not considered humans in the flesh, but rather “illegal immigrants.” (When fictitious national boundaries are considered more sovereign than human beings, you know something is wrong.)

Being opposed to immigration because it threatens “American” jobs betrays a low level of class-consciousness, especially considering it is by chance that we were born Americans and we could just as easily have been born Mexican.

A little bit of thought will reveal that a politico-economic system where the means of production are privately owned by a ruling stratum leaves much to be improved upon. Currently 1% of Americans wield a third of the wealth and an equally disproportionate political power (45 senators are millionaires although only 1% of citizens are.)

It is possible to create a system where more workers means less work per capita rather than excess competition over jobs; that is, livelihoods. In fact, the amount of poverty worldwide leaves more than enough work to be done. Moral: Don’t oppose immigration; oppose the structural problems which make immigration and employment issues.

I conclude that we the people are not America, because we are not rich people getting what we want. We suffer even when “America” wins.

Elitist politicians and wealthy capitalists hide behind worn-out phrases that elicit patriotism. They preach an ideology that belongs to the past. The narrow-minded lie of the American way, which has exploited people the world over to build a commoditized materialist culture that leaves us alienated from that which matters most: our shared humanity.

Pledge allegiance to humanity and the goal of a classless society, not to America the bureaucratized.

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