Forum Post: But Why Americans are cowards ?

WHY THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE COWARDS

We Americans are so used to being screwed over by our elite, we accept it. In fact, we're grateful.

We're big-time victims of Stockholm Syndrome.

Some of us are so deluded we run around waving teabags, calling Obama a socialist, a most peculiar form of Stockholm Syndrome -- call it Evangelical Stockholm Syndrome. When Pat Robertson says the people of Haiti got earthquaked because they made a pact with the devil to win their freedom from the French, he's doing much more than being dadaesque callous -- he's talking an evangelical dialect that is viscerally understood by his Evangelical Stockholm Syndrome people.

When Cheney says Obama is pretending we're at war, he's doing much more than lying -- he's talking a language that is viscerally understood by his Stockholm Syndrome followers on Stockholm Syndrome-engendering Fox News.

When Obama says if the banks can pay their employees big bonuses, they can pay back the American people, he's trying to appeal to his base of Obamian Stockholm Syndrome victims. Except a majority of his section of Stockholm Syndrome victims don't buy it. OnThe Ed Show, the host asked viewers to call in and answer the question: Is Obama doing enough to rein in the banks? 31% of Stockholm Syndrome victims said he's doing enough, 63% of Stockholm Syndrome victims said not.

Call it Stockholm Syndrome or cowardice, it amounts to the same thing: inaction in the face of injustice done to every one of us personally. How many times have you been hit by an overdraft charge? The banks even hit the party who receives the overdraft check. And we put up with this outrage.

Is your bank account at one of the 25 biggest banks in America? If you don't move it to a smaller bank or a credit union, you're helping the fat cat bankers to screw you: you're a coward.

If you're one of the 58% Americans who think the Explosive Gonads Bomber should be waterboarded, i.e. you're willing to sacrifice our principles simply because you're scared, you're a coward.

If you keep paying the minimum on your mounting credit card charges, or if you're paying off an underwater mortgage, you're a coward. Billion-dollar corporations walk away from their obligations all the time; if they're immoral punks, why not you? Especially when they're ripping you off.

If you're giving Obama a pass on his coddling of fat cat bankers, you're a coward.

What is it with us? Don't we have the courage of our convictions? Or don't we have any convictions to be courageous about?

Last Monday, a 100-year-old woman died in the Netherlands. Her name was Miep Gies. She worked for Anne Frank's father Otto, and agreed to keep the Frank family and three other Jews in a secret annex to Otto's office where the Gestapo wouldn't find them. Mrs. Gies biked to various groceries so her food purchases would not arouse suspicion. She and her husband kept the Franks going for more than two years. After the Gestapo raided the office, she tried to bribe them to save the family. She kept Anne Frank's diary, hoping the girl would come back for it.It's because of Miep Gies that we have Anne Frank's Diary.

This is what Miep Gies said about herself: “I am not a hero. I was just an ordinary housewife and a secretary.”

Miep Gies risked her life. Most of us Americans can't even risk our time. We spend a great part of it in front of the TV machine. Our couch-potato passivity and ignorance and cowardice have earned us the right to be screwed by our elite day in and day out.

This is an agonizing time in the life of our nation. I have friends who've been devastated by the Great Recession. A neighboring country is suffering unimaginable devastation. During days as dark as these, our choices define us more precisely than usual. We create who we are in our own eyes and in the eyes of our loved ones, our children, our neighbors, our peers, and everyone whose paths we cross. In pop-Sartrean terms: faced with the absurdity of existence, we're condemned to exercise our freedom of choice. Maybe this is a crude, blunt, shallow way to put it, but I look at it like this:

Once I was a coward. Now I ask myself: who would I rather be from now on? Lloyd Blankfein or Miep Gies?

Over to you, dear reader. When you look in the mirror, who do you want to see?

And what do you want to do about it?

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/01/whats-wrong-with-america-were-cowards.html