I am so tired. It is exhausting trying to run the world! And, as an American citizen, it is my duty to police what everyone else is doing, right? By providing our military might to these poor countries, we provide the opportunities for them to focus on scientific and philosophical advances, right? And because we saved them from whatever was threatening them, those advances belong in part to us, right?

Sounds like imperialism to me!

I support our troops; they are doing what they are told, they are doing their jobs, and most of them are doing just fine; they are not setting out to hurt anyone. But somewhere, up the chain of command, there comes a point where responsibility for actions kicks in. I'm not saying there's a table of evil men sitting around somewhere making these decisions; I'm saying this way of thinking has become indoctorinated. We never stop to think about what we're doing. In a country based on the principles of freedom, religious and otherwise, we set out to carry "our view" across the globe. We use everything we have to change the world around us to suit our needs; military might, of course, commercialism (have you READ some of the psychology that goes into the simple message of "ours is better than theirs?)our very words are designed to let us feel like we're doing the world a favor. Instead we spread a hyper-materialism and uber-Americanism that has edged our own populace to become a culture of drug-addled consumers while we gleefully eliminate anything we don't understand (how can they be HAPPY when they don't HAVE anything? Therefore they must not be HAPPY... let's make them happy) not understanding that we ourselves aren't happy... we're complacent.