They tell you “America First.” It is a slogan that sells a country. It promises that the flag is a shield. It promises that the nation is a guardian. It promises that the power of the state is used to protect the citizen.
They lie.
The record is not written in the stars and stripes. It is written in the blood of the invaded. It is written in the bills of the uninsured. It is written in the coffins of the children.
Look at the list. Since 1950. The United States has intervened in nineteen nations. South Korea. Dominican Republic. Iran. Guatemala. Cuba. Vietnam. Laos. Cambodia. Grenada. Nicaragua. Panama. Somalia. Philippines. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Yemen. Syria. Iraq. Libya. This is not a list of allies. This is a list of victims. Each name represents a coup, a bombing, an invasion, a regime change that was never decided by the people in the country. It was decided by a committee in Washington. It was decided by a dollar amount in a defense budget.
The banner does not list the dead. The numbers are staggering. Three million in Vietnam. Half a million in Indonesia. Hundreds of thousands in Iraq. The dead in Korea. The dead in Laos. The dead in Cambodia. The dead in Guatemala. The dead in Iran, where the US installed a Shah and birthed a revolution that still burns. The dead in Nicaragua, where the Contras were funded by cocaine. The dead in Libya, where a stable nation was reduced to an open-air slave market. The ledger does not show the faces. It shows the countries. But the blood is there. It is three million souls in Vietnam alone. It is a pile of bodies that would stretch across the continent. And the US does not count them. It does not apologize. It does not even remember.
The US leads the world in military spending. It leads the world in foreign bases. It leads the world in drone strikes. The “protector” narrative is a cover for the predator reality. The Pentagon does not protect the world. It polices the world for the benefit of the dollar. When a nation tries to set its own currency, the regime changes. When a nation tries to nationalize its oil, the invasion begins. The banner does not ask for permission. It does not ask for a vote. It just lists the names.
But the invasion is not always with tanks. The US uses debt as a weapon. The IMF and the World Bank are the first wave. They offer loans to developing nations with conditions attached. Privatize your water. Cut your social services. Open your markets to US corporations. Sell your resources to the highest bidder. The loans are not aid. They are traps. The debt is structured to be unpayable. When the nation defaults, the foreclosure begins. The resources are seized. The sovereignty is stripped. The structural adjustment is the economic equivalent of a bombing raid. When the debt trap fails, the bombers follow. The loan softens the target. The war finishes the job.
The war is not a policy failure. It is a business model. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing. These companies do not make peace. They make profit. Their business model requires endless war. They lobby for conflict. They fund the think tanks that justify the invasion. They buy the politicians who sign the budget. The defense budget is not a defense budget. It is a revenue stream. The US spends more on its military than the next ten nations combined. The money does not disappear. It goes to the contractors. The war must continue because the profit must continue. Peace is a market crash. The dead are the overhead.
The cruelty does not end at the border. It spills back into the streets of the US. The same state that bombs a capital for oil shoots a teenager for possession of a backpack. The same state that destabilizes a government for resources refuses to stabilize healthcare for its own people. The US is one of the few developed nations on Earth where a citizen can go bankrupt because they got sick. It is one of the few nations where a school shooting is an annual event, not a tragedy that ends with new laws. It is one of the few nations where the police are the ones who are feared, not the criminals.
This is not an accident. It is a system. The “America First” slogan is not about the American worker. It is about the American Capital. The capital cares nothing for the life of the citizen. It cares about the value of the dollar. It cares about the stability of the market. It cares about the flow of goods. When the market is threatened, the state sends the military. When the market is threatened, the state sends the police. The function is the same. The enemy is the same: anyone who challenges the order.
The police are not protectors. They are the local branch of the occupation. The 1033 program transfers military equipment from the Pentagon to local police departments. The same MRAPs that rolled through Fallujah roll through Ferguson. The same tactics used in Kandahar are used in Chicago. The police are armed with bayonets, grenade launchers, and armored vehicles. They look like occupiers because they are equipped by the occupation. The domestic force and the foreign force are the same machine. The hammer that falls on Kabul is the hammer that falls on the Black neighborhood. The border between foreign policy and domestic policing is a line on a map. The violence is continuous.
The domestic death toll is the price of the empire. Forty thousand gun deaths a year. Sixty-eight thousand people a year die from lack of health insurance. These are not random tragedies. They are the domestic equivalent of the foreign collateral damage. The state accepts these deaths as the cost of doing business. The gun manufacturer makes a profit. The health insurance executive gets a bonus. The politician gets a donation. The family gets a funeral. The flag is draped over the coffin. The speech is made about freedom. The business continues.
The racism is not hidden. It is built into the foundation. The wars are fought by the poor. The police violence is directed at the poor. The health crisis is treated as a personal failure rather than a systemic design. The list of countries on the banner includes the Dominican Republic. It includes Guatemala. It includes the Philippines. The US has a history of treating the people of these nations as expendable. Why is it a surprise that the people of these nations are treated as expendable at home? The logic is the same. The value of a human life is determined by its proximity to the dollar.
The “Protector” is a bully. The police are not protectors. They are the enforcement arm of the property rights. The military is not a protector. It is the enforcement arm of the global interests. The slogan “America First” is a promise that the state will take care of the American. But the state is busy protecting the banks. The state is busy protecting the borders. The state is busy protecting the weapons. The state is not protecting the life of the child. The state is not protecting the life of the patient. The state is protecting the profit.
The ledger is open. The numbers are in the red. The US leads the world in school shooting deaths. The US leads the world in healthcare costs. The US leads the world in military intervention. The US leads the world in the destruction of sovereignty. The banner at the stadium asked for a single photo. The photo is missing one part. It does not show the cost of the war. It does not show the cost of the peace. It does not show the children who are dead at home and abroad.
The true ideal is not freedom. It is capital. The flag is not a symbol of liberty. It is a symbol of the market. The military is not a shield. It is a hammer. The police are not guardians. They are the guards of the fence. The US claims to lead the world. It does. It leads the world in the metrics of harm. It leads the world in the capacity to inflict violence. “America First” is a lie. The truth is “America Only.” The rest of the world is the cost of doing business.
The ledger is balanced. The profits go to the few. The costs go to the many. The slogan ends. The reality remains.
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