July 4 Is Matrix Reinforcement Day
July 3, 2018
July 4 Is Matrix
Reinforcement Day
Paul Craig Roberts
July 4, 2018, is the 242
anniversary of the date chosen to stand as the date the 13 British colonies
declared independence. According to historians, the actual date independence
was declared was July 2, 1776, with the vote of the Second Continental
Congress. Other historians have concluded that the Declaration of Independence
was not actually signed until August 2.
For many living in the
colonies the event was not the glorious one that is presented in history books.
There was much opposition to the separation, and the “loyalists” were killed,
confiscated, and forced to flee to Canada. Some historians explain the event
not as a great and noble enterprise of freedom and self-government, but as the
manipulations of ambitious men who saw opportunity for profit and power.
For most Americans today
the Fourth of July is a time for fireworks, picnics, and a patriotic speech
extolling those who “fought for our freedom” and for those who defended it in
wars ever since. These are feel good speeches, but most of them make very
little sense. Many of our wars have been wars of empire, seizing lands from the
Spanish, Mexicans, and indigenous tribes. The US had no national interest in WW
1 and and very little in WW 2. There was no prospect of Germany and Japan
invading the US. Once Hitler made the mistake of invading the Soviet Union, the
European part of World War 2 was settled by the Red Army. The Japanese had no
chance of standing up to Mao and Stalin. American participation was not very
important to either outcome.
No Fourth of July orator
will say this, and it is unlikely any will make reference to the seven or eight
countries that Washington has destroyed in whole or part during the 21st
century or to the US overthrow of the various reform governments that have been
elected in Latin America. The Fourth of July is a performance to reinforce The
Matrix in which Americans live.
When the Fourth of July
comes around, I re-read the words of US Marine General Smedley Butler. General
Butler is the most highly decorated US officer in history. By the end of his
career, he had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to
receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of only three men to be awarded both the
Marine Corps Brevet Medal and the Medal of Honor, and the only to be awarded
the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
Butler served in all
officer ranks that existed in the US Marines of his time, from Second
Lieutenant to Major General. He said that “during that period, I spent most of
my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for
the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
Butler says he was a long
time escaping from The Matrix and that he wishes “more of today’s military
personnel would realize that they are being used by the owning elite as a
publicly subsidized capitalist goon squad.”
Butler wrote:
“WAR is a racket. It always
has been.
“It is possibly the oldest,
easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one
international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in
dollars and the losses in lives.
“A racket is best
described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of
the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted
for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a
few people make huge fortunes.
“A few profit — and the
many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament
conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning
but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed
effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
“The only way to smash this
racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation’s
manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the
young men of the nation — it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let
the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament
factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane
builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in
war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get
$30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.” https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf
In November, 1935, Butler
wrote in Common Sense magazine:
“I spent 33 years and four
months in active military service and during that period . . . I helped make
Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped
make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect
revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics
for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International
Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican
Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right
for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it
that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have
given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in
three districts. I operated on three continents.”
The military/security
complex, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans 57 years ago,
adroitly uses the Fourth of July to portray America’s conflicts in a positive
light in order to protect its power and profit institutionalized in the US
government. In stark contrast, by the end of his career General Butler saw it
differently. Washington has never fought for “freedom and democracy,” only for
power and profit. Butler said that “there are only two things we should fight
for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights.”
Today the anti-gun lobby
and militarized police have made it very difficult to fight for the defense of
our homes, and the War on Terror has destroyed the Bill of Rights. If there
could be a second American revolution, maybe we could try again.
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