John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CHARLES FREEMAN IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Instead of Fixing Itself the US Seeks to Retain Supremacy by Tripping Up and Immobilizing China
“But, finally, in China, we Americans have a cure for enemy-deprivation syndrome”
I've long thought that one of the great formative influences on American society was European Puritanism.
If you've ever read any serious history of the Puritans coming from Europe, they weren't the charming Pilgrim figures of American Thanksgiving decorative candles.
And they weren’t escaping religious persecution. They were escaping the wrath of many people they had offended.
They were truly nasty people, many of whom had been driven from countries owing to their ugly practices, which included everything from running through some of glorious ancient British Cathedrals and smashing statues and relics and stained glass to desecrating tombs and attending other people’s church services to make a complete nuisance of themselves.
Self-righteous in the extreme, believing others completely wrong in their beliefs, and very much believing in the living presence of Satan.
America, since its early days, has featured those very qualities. And the strain of Puritanism is still seen in many things, including certain intolerant attitudes and aspects of American Christian Fundamentalism, especially stuff about the Second Coming of Jesus and about Israel.
The presence of Satan in American foreign policy and wars is represented by some much-despised enemy who changes periodically - whether, at various times, Britain or Spain or France or Russia or Japan or China. There seems always to be the need for having such an enemy.
