Misunderstanding America

Understanding the real America is important but for reasons few grasp. Those paid to explain and report on America, many nominally Americans themselves, live insular lives in New York or Los Angeles, etching out a living in lunatic fringe “hipster” society while pandering to the world, feeding audiences fluff and fakery.

Americans aren’t understood by other nations. This statement is important largely because, geopolitically, if people in a dozen nations are facing disease, poverty or even a violent death, America in some way, may well be responsible.

Saudi, Israeli or mobster cash pays American politicians and the American military has, for generations now, been the bully boys of the corporate mobs, doing their dirty work. Marine General Smedley Butler deals with this, for those who wish to follow this bent, Butler’s works, easily available, provide some of the needed backdrop. The rest is unavailable, history long lied into obscurity and fiction. Believe none of it. Television occasionally gets it right, shows like Deadwood or Damnation or films like Goodfellas or Gangs of New York. Otherwise, ignore it all.

Today social networks describe Americans even to other Americans. The truth is darker. Social networks have been a breeding ground for domestic terrorists, stalkers, extremists and a national disease of professional ignorance. A Trump presidency and the various narratives that have come in its wake, the attacks on media, the Russia investigation, all are part of it. Why would the Russians want America? Can a media totally controlled by corporations that has lied for two centuries suddenly become “fake?” Sometimes it’s the little truths behind the little lies that can set the tone. Let me explain. Debunking the big stories, the ones obviously hand-fed to deceive the public is a job more and more are taking on. No, Russia didn’t rig an American election, they can’t do it, the risk is unreasonable and the potential gains, as recent events have shown, are non-existent, of course it is the case if we believed dismissals by Russian officials especially President Putin . Did others do it, like the CIA or Israelis? Then again, why are the women doing 99% of the complaining those women who adhere themselves to ugly but powerful men? Is the story as told totally false? Might it be true that the press cares nothing whatsoever about women other than those who target men the press also targets in American society?

Worse still, are women with legitimate concerns being mixed in with human trash as part of a political agenda? This is most likely where a real story exists, but too often real stories debunk the press itself and are, thus, not “stories” at all. But let’s go elsewhere as promised. I, the author of the article, grew up in Detroit. My family has lived there for 235 years. We used to cheat the Indians or indigenous peoples out of their furs, Scottish traders working with the French. Little has changed, we simply steal different stuff from different people now, but we still live in and around Detroit, those very few of us that survive.

In America and around the world Detroit is hated, the “murder capital of the world” we are told, decay and poverty. Recently, we visited downtown Detroit, along with tens of thousands of others, a town filled with restaurants, clubs, public parks, pristine new buildings and streets lined with high priced late model cars. The real Detroit is a better visit than New York, London or Chicago, certainly better than Paris during the holidays at least. Parking is cheaper, food is better, more activities. We got our big “Detroit shock” this summer, visiting Belle Isle, which is Detroit’s answer to New York’s Central Park. Both were designed by the same folks, same time. Detroit’s is nicer, more used, safer, much safer than New York’s. Yet, you can still find miles of Detroit in decay, abandoned war plants from World War II, neighborhoods that are more open fields than homes. There is poverty and homelessness. However, given the choice, on a holiday Saturday, Detroit is much better than Chicago. At heart, however, Detroit is an African-American community. That story is mixed, with strong community leaders accomplishing tremendous things and a history of others that is not so good. There is poverty and homelessness. There are gangs, there are shootings, there are areas that aren’t safe at all.

You will never see a documentary of a Detroit where you can safely walk miles, shopping, visiting restaurants and clubs, a downtown where “white money” flows in from the suburbs and racial lines that poisoned generations are nearly gone. You could also visit the communities inside Detroit, Dearborn and Hamtramck, now nearly totally Islamic, crime free, children playing outdoors, vibrant community centers or the “Mexicantown” on Vernor, with its commercial districts and newly built homes in areas that were ghost towns only a decade ago. The story isn’t about Detroit, the story is about lying. Why invent discord where none exists? Look around the internet, particularly at “YouTube.” You will see a frightening ghost town of Detroit and you will be faced with making a decision. The decision you make as an “out of towner” or not an American at all will be based on not so accidental lies. Locals flock into Detroit because it is a place to party, to visit theatres, to attend events, a place to enjoy.

The issue isn’t just that some might be a bit wrong but that they are so wrong, so utterly wrong and why they are wrong? America has problems, divisions, hatred for sure, but where does it come from? Are Americans being taught to hate by the same people who depict Detroit as a ghost town when, in truth, it is a city filled with new construction, new jobs, pristine highways, new bridges and friendly faces, including Muslims and Mexicans. The lies about Detroit are the lies told about the world as well. Hell, Damascus, Syria is a decent town as well, great restaurants, good hotels, fine people and only light shelling anymore. Beirut is the same, better food, a showplace, Lebanon is a wonderful nation. Visit Erbil or Tehran or Cairo, maybe Haifa too. Why is it so important to some that we, the Americans, fear and distrust each other?

What you heard and read was from an article, and in his own tongue, by Gordon Duff who is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of the Veterans Today. Gordon Duff, in simple words, discloses the story of the fabrication-making system in American press and media. He believes that in doing so, certain rotten officials inside the US are in harmony and money-based cooperation with Saudi and Israeli entities.  The two pay money and the rotten act, especially through the press, to portray certain nations as they wished, just remember Syria’s Assad-phobia, Iranophobia, Shia-phobia and alike. Duff says the story is the same even inside America and vis-à-vis their own citizens.

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