A thought occurred to me – forgive me for the length.
History tells us that we (Americans) used to be a people that longed for peace; but that simply isn’t true. We wanted peace for us, first and foremost; peace on our terms with no compromise.
We came to this country and saw natives. They weren’t all living in peace with each other, but even if they had been, our ancestors looked at the new world and said ‘Ohh, shiny! Mine!’ and over the course of a few hundred years, all but exterminated the natives and took what they had. All so we could ‘live in peace’. Thing is, we were the aggressors. But History is written by the victors, so our history books for years have taught generation after generation that we were ‘defending ourselves’. Never is the tale told in full.
When we declared Independence as a Nation, we used terms like ‘Liberty’, and ‘Prosperity’ in our most sacred documents; so Freedom and Wealth are goals – what about peace? The word ‘Peace’ is only said three times in the Declaration of Independence, and each time it is pared with a statement on war. Indeed, in the Constitution itself, the word ‘Peace’ is only used four times. A more appropriate word instead, used at the time, would be ‘Tranquility’. But even here, it is ‘to ensure Domestic Tranquility’. And again, knowing that, at the time this document was written, not all people were considered ‘people’. Women had no rights, Slaves had even less, so that countenance to ensure ‘tranquility’ is still (at least initially) a statement of , ‘Give us what we want, and there will be no trouble’.
Yes, we have fought for some good causes in our history. And yes, not all of our struggles were selfish ones. But to assume that we, as a people, hold some kind of moral high ground, when you look at our own history of belligerence and intolerance, is most certainly in error. Americans are often base and crude, which is forgivable. But we are also often cruel, and unjust, giving excuses of a non-existent moral turpitude as the basis for our imagined superiority. And we should be better – but we are not. And no assumed superiority changes that in anyone’s mind but our own.
We as a people may say we want peace; but that is not true. We are, in a very broad sense, a war-hungry, bloodthirtsy civilization, whose appetite for violence is not thrust upon us by literature, movies, of video games. The base instinct of American Culture is one of conquest, racism, and raising oneself not by a rising tide, but through acts of vengeance, theft, murder, and outright terrorism. As much as our history touts all the goodness we have done – there is a shadow that’s reach goes much deeper, much farther, than the light we’ve cast. And now, that dank underbelly of our history, that has walked alongside us, driven us, and shaped us in ways both silent and boisterous, has circle back on us, and as the Ouroboros, devours what it has created.
