America got it wrong about property from the very beginning.

The founders of this nation saw other humans as property. The government of this nation has enshrined genocidal maniacs on its money to remind us all that property is legitimized from behind the barrel of a gun.

The completely wrong-headed ideas of slavery and manifest destiny continue today behind layers of false democracy and public relations campaigns.

The powerful rule, and they take what they want and call that property.

The wealth that built Eurocentric economic institutions was stolen when the Spanish callously enslaved the indigenous peoples of America in gold and silver mines and channeled that wealth into the industrialization of western Europe. Humans as property of white Europeans provided the labor that was the basis of U.S. industrialization.

Flushed with pride and righteousness, Europeans called their brutality a God-given destiny, but it was slavery that fueled the U.S. economy and propelled the murderous regime westward.

These actions are now widely repudiated but the system of property that flows from these crimes remains in place.

American democracy is a thin but highly celebrated veneer. The corporate lobbyists, free speech campaign contributions, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, voter suppression and disenfranchisement are all out in the open and in plain sight. Inequality in access to education has long been a major democratic concern.

As modern technology began to level the playing field, the government moves to suppress the free exchange of information. Our traditional news institutions, intended to serve as the peoples’ information conduit, are consolidated in the hands of entrenched power structures.

Even the news organizations that are considered liberal fall blindly in line whenever it’s time to drum up patriotism and support for military aggression as the New York Times did in the lead up to the second Iraq war.

American democracy is just white supremacy in disguise. It’s an extension of manifest destiny and an extension of people as property. The United States is continuing the same genocidal and enslavement policies that birthed this nation.

U.S. foreign policy facilitates the theft of resources from underdeveloped countries with its aircraft carriers, nuclear silos and drone bases. The wealth from the raw materials of the global south is funneled into corporate profits rather than the education, infrastructure, and social services needed to lift struggling nations out of poverty.

With their wealth stolen and their environment and food systems polluted from resource extraction, the peoples of these nations continue to be a vulnerable and inexpensive workforce.

Banking institutions callously enrich themselves from the theft of raw materials, while proudly offering “economic development” in the form of slave wage jobs stitching western clothing or mining the coltan for electronics.

Of course, the U.S. creates layers of separation, we don’t do our own dirty work. The U.S. sends the CIA to install leaders who will sell out the people of foreign lands to big business interests. Then, U.S. arms industries provide the weapons for CIA puppets to violently suppress peoples’ revolutions.

The primarily white American middle class has accepted this global kleptocracy in exchange for protection of their meager holdings by violent police forces at home.

The grotesque public spectacle of lynching has gone out of style, but the mechanisms to violently enforce white supremacy are functioning better than ever.

The U.S. military, and all its intelligence and black ops services, terrorizes black and brown people around the world to generate massive profits for the corporate superstructure — while white middle class liberals look the other way.

It’s a convenient excuse to lament yet another osculation of right wing fascism as a consequence of a complicated “democracy.” The Trump voters of this country have always known what they are fighting for, they want militarism and global dominance that ensures western white superiority.

It’s America’s educated liberals class who want the benefits of white supremacy wrapped in plausible denial.

Ending white supremacy in the U.S. and around the globe means a safer more prosperous world for everyone. Movements for reparations and for the return of lands to native peoples are not just about compensation for past crimes. Reparations and aboriginal land rights movements are about putting in place real systems of democracy and accountability.

The ability to control resources including land, labor and water is what generates power. Beneath the myth of American democracy, the real decisions are made in corporate board rooms by the ultra-wealthy who control the flow of resources.   

True democracy requires equality of power and equal access to resources, information, education, technology and development. A system in which a few so-called democracies control the flow of resources through military might, without international accountability, is not democracy — it is violently enforced supremacy.

Indigenous peoples throughout the world have expressed values that pertain to the well being of future generations and the health of ecosystems. Africans and African-Americans have led the world with concepts of social justice, civil and human rights. We are cutting ourselves off from an incredible knowledge, philosophy and wisdom when we do not create inclusive systems of democracy.

If all peoples were represented fairly in global decision making we would not be suffering the same selfish power-hungry world that has been created and upheld by white, western businessmen.

If people are to have equal decision-making power in global democratic institutions, then they must have equal access to resources, information, education, technology and development funding.

Real democracy is a scary concept. There are so many violent evil people in the world and we need that military to protect us, so the story goes.

But violent evil people don’t only exist only in other nations — we produce them here at home as well. There needs to be equal accountability for violent destructive behavior whether it is perpetrated by a U.S. business executive or a Nigerian fisherman.

We need accountability for nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia just as much as we need accountability for North Korea and Iran.

There is no clearer example of western white supremacy than the hypocrisy of the U.S. weapons arsenal. The U.S. clearly holds itself superior to other nations in its ability to responsibly wield nuclear weapons.

This is the idea of manifest destiny all over again.

There are no special God-given abilities that allow the U.S. to behave more responsibly with nukes than other nuclear-capable nations.

If Iran should not have nuclear weapons than neither should the U.S.

The problem with letting go of violence is that you have to come to agreements that are equitable to all parties involved. You have to create systems of laws and accountability that are just.

Laws should respect other people as equal human beings rather than treating others as resource that can be dominated with military might.

Finding ways to respect all humans and to respect life is a difficult challenge, but if we don’t make strides in toward peace, diplomacy and equal protection under the law then we will continually be at war.