The terminal impact is extinction --- the politics of exceptionalism drive global destruction and turn all of their impacts

The attitudes and behaviors exhibited by our Anglo-Saxon ancestors that resulted in the cruel dispossession of the natives who already inhabited the land, formed the defining experience of the "American" Republic. Our cultural character has enabled a pattern of conduct rooted in deep-seated racism (unresolved fear manifesting in hatred) and arrogant ethnocentrism ("Manifest Destiny") that has never been adequately checked or corrected. How else can one explain our long record of rationalized interventions brutally crushing other people's quests for freedom and independence? Our civilization's ethos has been rooted in a delusional sense of moral superiority enabling a persistent pursuit of selfish interests. We have been so drunk with greed and power that we are unable to see straight! My personal experiences as a military veteran, including "service" in Vietnam, and from traveling to a number of countries studying the nature of U.S. policies has left me in deep anguish, and intense rage, as I have witnessed the resulting carnage caused by those policies. Are we so insulated from our own personal feelings and those of human solidarity with others that we are numb? Is it possible that we really don't care? Is it possible that we are not astute enough to distinguish the lies of our government from the realities on the ground? Perhaps. Or perhaps there is a collective mental illness that arguably reduces our capacity to determine right from wrong. Whatever the diagnosis--whether a product of criminal intent or mental illness--our conduct as a nation poses a severely grave, violent threat to virtually all life on the planet. The world desperately needs the perpetrators of these crimes to be immediately confronted with the nature and consequences of their behavior, and then to be engaged in a profound process of healing. But who will be able to assure the confrontation and initiate the healing? The World Court? A United Nations international peace force? A new international criminal court? Obviously not. The amount of power exerted by the U.S. government and the corporations it serves is so overwhelming, protected by historically unprecedented destructive military forces, that there are no human-created institutions able to stop this international bully. It has the power to choose the continuation of policies capable of destroying massive amount of life in an instant, and if not checked it seems intent on doing so. As one examines U.S. policies from Iraq to Mexico to Colombia, from Korea, Vietnam, and Nicaragua to Cuba and Grenada, it is striking how much pain, suffering, and death these policies have caused, and continue to cause. Similarly, as one examines the history of domestic policies relating to poor Whites, "Third World" peoples, women, dissidents, and labor organizers, a tremendous amount of suffering is uncovered. How can an allegedly intelligent, caring people, simply observe this pattern of repression and cruelty, being carried out in our name, without revolting? The abhorrent atrocities that have been a trademark of U.S. policies worldwide, when seen up close, would cause a normal person to vomit. And yet we hardly blink. Make no mistake. This pattern of malignant human behavior will be stopped, whether or not we intelligently choose to make the necessary changes. Ultimately, the balancing forces of the universe, and of Gaia, will assure a continuation of the sacred, evolving cosmos that began some 15 billion years ago. The only question is whether we as a species, but 5 million years old, will continue to be part of it. Though we are an intrinsic part of that evolution, by virtue of our terribly misguided ill behavior, we may be on a short branch leading to early extinction. We may choose to continue to defer to our inflated egos, unwilling to accept humility, unwilling to recognize the wisdom of abiding by the requirements of cooperative living with the sacred interconnected web of life that is already imprinted deeply within us since creation. Or we may choose the painful but liberating path of radical healing, away from selfishness and toward wholeness, while seeking unity through diversity. Fortunately, there are a number of people and organizations, within the United States and elsewhere, who do understand this behavior as a chronic, intentional pattern, not as a series of aberrations or mistakes, that must be addressed at both structural and psychological/emotional levels. The emerging popular movement against the cruel policies of globalization is a reminder of the importance of people power. It is this dynamic force of caring people, and only this force, that has the human capacity to make the "arrests"--to stimulate a profound process of national transformation and healing that just might save humanity from the continued assaults against its own health and the health of the earth upon which it totally depends for survival.