America: Founded on Truthful Lies
Hello folks,
I have just one word to say! AMERICA!
I like America, I like her a lot in fact. More than most non-Americans I’m sure. I like Disneyworld and McDonald’s. I like your product selections and the green look of your money. I like your films and television exports and would gladly watch anything you have to offer compared to Corner Gas or that ridiculous knock-off Canadian Idol which loosely pass as TV shows in my native land.
I’m not ashamed of this by any means and I have come to the conclusion that her history means little to me. It’s so PC to hate America and American Imperialism, but I don’t blame the past for the present. So many countries are guilty of such crimes.
Why do I think this way? The simple truth is;
America was founded by liars, expanded via genocide, built up by cheats, and despite what the bleeding hearts think, that IS the American way. Environmentalists and anti-corporation whack jobs may believe that capitalism is wrong and America is going the way of the Roman Empire and who knows, they may be right.
But anyone who believes that America is some grand old lady who’s chastity and purity has been slowly sullied over the last 200 years need to open their eyes. Let’s have a little history lesson;
In 1763 the Thirteen Colonies wanted to be relieved of certain fiscal burdens placed upon them by the British Crown. The English response was to send in the army and so began the war.
In 1776 the Declaration of Independence was drafted into being by a bunch of slave owners, take note of this important passage;
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
See?
This country was founded on a lie. “All men are created equal.”
After the revolutionary war was won the United States then had Manifest Destiny to justify their expansion, the taking of territory from foreign governments and of course the genocide of all natives to the North American continent.
The term of Manifest Destiny is attributed to one John L. O’Sullivan, who on December 27, 1845 wrote in his newspaper the New York Morning News:
“And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”
O’Sullivan was talking about a boundary dispute against Great Britain over Oregon, but one can easily see that it didn’t stop there and Manifest Destiny mania quickly swept across the country and here we are today.
So the expansion of the United States was their God-given right and destiny. To hell with the Comanche.
Once the dust settled they had a country which needed a bustling economy and so capitalism was encouraged. But the history of American capitalism isn’t the rags to riches story that so many people like to romanticize. I have no issue with some poor immigrant coming to find the American dream and be successful. I like money, I like the idea someone can make themselves a millionaire through hard work, a little determination and some luck.
I have a problem with what so many of these men have done. I have an issue with all the dirty tactics used to obtain their wealth. Here’s a small list of suspects and their alleged crimes:
Suspect#1 - ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
According to The Naughty American it was Elisha Gray and not Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone.
Poor Elisha Gray was kicked out of history books and the moolah because supposedly Bell bribed a patent clerk and had his lawyers suppress the truth!
Suspect#2 - THOMAS EDISON
Edison has 2 strikes against him according to some. First he hired Nikola Tesla and promised him fame and fortune for fixing one of his faulty designs. Tesla succeeded and Edison subsequently reneged on his deal.
Edison also tried to corner the market on the motion picture industry through his Motion Picture Patents Company. This resulted in both the unintentional creation of Hollywood by the independents muscled out by Edison and the 1912 judgment against their raw film patent. Shame on you Thomas!
Suspect #3 - ALLAN PINKERTON
The famous Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and U.S. Secret Service, had a second job being the hired muscle for the big businessmen of the time, including Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
Pinkerton himself was not a major contributor to American capitalism on an inventive angle, but he helped to keep the status quo as the unions began to form. Among his many crimes, Pinkerton and his agency helped to protect “scabs” during strikes, inciting riots to discredit the unions and taking part in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914.
Suspect#4 - WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST
The son of George Hearst (whom I hope was nowhere as evil as HBO’s Deadwood made him out to be) William Randolph Hearst created a vast publishing empire and lived by the credo; ‘It’s not so much that I must succeed, but all others must fail.’ Or so that is the impression I think he formed over the course of his life.
True, it’s hard to verify that Hearst coerced the Spanish-American war simply to sell newspapers, but that thought is quite disturbing. We’re talking Bond villain territory here.
Let’s not also forget that yellow journalism exists today thanks to this great American.
His paper empire threatened by Hemp, helped to demonize marijuana leading to the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act.
Offended by Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Hearst used his considerable influence to ruin the picture by forcing his friends in Hollywood to limit bookings and hurt the box office returns. Welles never truly bounced back from this, (though one can’t say he didn’t have a remarkable career otherwise) it’s just not morally justified to try and ruin a man whom you disagree with.
And of course being such a man, when business partner Thomas Ince dies on his yacht people can’t help but assume that Hearst murdered the man and covered it up. That’s how it is when you destroy people for a hobby.
Suspect #5 - JOSEPH P. KENNEDY
Finally we come to Joe Kennedy, a legend in American history of course for his contribution to business and political interests. He founded an American family legacy that exists still to this day, though the history of his little empire on the east coast is rife with trouble.
Among his notable crimes: Joe manipulated stocks with the Libby-Owens-Ford stock pool, allegedly was an anti-Semite and my personal favorite lobotomized his own daughter who had “personal difficulties” and threatened to shame the family name. I’m sure there’s more that we don’t know.
And so there it is… Just a few great Americans who helped to shape this country.
The lesson I think being learned here is; You can lie, cheat and steal yourself into a fortune because all wealth is good wealth. It doesn’t matter if your wealth came from stealing an invention from some other chap. It’s perfectly acceptable to destroy your competitors to form a stranglehold on your chosen profession.
The more money you have it seems, the more crime you’re excused of.
Now sure this is quite upsetting and I hate to think of the damage these men have done. But I have no illusions about this country. I won’t blame a stretch of land for what her occupants do on it, I blame the men. I don’t blame the ideals even if the men who wrote them were hypocrites and could never hope to live up to them.
I accept America for who and what she is.
I bid adieu,
your Origami reporter,
L.Manly
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2 Responses to “America: Founded on Truthful Lies”
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January 25th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Hmmm. Not sure if it’s really fair to point to certain businessmen (who were after all in it for the bucks) as the soul of America. Many of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, were deeply conflicted about slavery and did understand the ironies (to say the least) of the document they founded and the institutions that provided their wealth. But, judged by the context of their times, they were very forward thinking. If not for their small steps, the later steps toward equality could never have been achieved.
And a point of contention. Aren’t you, as a Canadian, an American? I thought America went from the tip of Canada down to Tierra del Fuego. Aren’t all people in the North American and South American continents (including Central America) Americans?
January 25th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I’ve always said that, too. Canadians are American — North American.
I’ve been taking a sociology course that teaches about how we have certain values but we also have a “do as I say, not as I do” approach to things sometimes. For example, my textbook quotes that most people believe in marital fidelity, but still we have 25% of men and 10% of women saying they would or have had an affair. It’s a bit bizarre that we share these “illusions” but at the same time I think many of us are trying to live up the beliefs. Some of us I think do things in name only when we think the idea *sounds* good but the practical application proves difficult.