A look at Colonization Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
We are Americans!
How many times have we heard this as though we speak for the inhabitants of the whole Western Hemisphere. People in the US or Europe who still use this language are those who are clinging to a colonial era mentality, which has long been rejected by many people in the US and the world. It has been rejected domestically due to its self-destructive nature that robs US citizens of any pride in their country or any peace in their lives. It has been rejected internationally because it leaves no room for global cooperation, or any sense of the obvious interconnectedness with our global human family.
These types of references only demean the rest of the populations who inhabit the Western hemisphere, particularly the indigenous tribes whose ancestors suffered repeated genocides at the hands of the European colonial invaders.
The historian David Stannard recounts these events in his text The American Holocaust published in 1993, and sadly his words still ring true. “The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world.” Stannard and others estimated, “Almost 100 million indigenous people in the Western Hemisphere have been killed or died prematurely because of the Europeans and their descendants in five centuries.” Like Aaron Bushnell, the US Airman who spiritually immolated in front of the Israeli embassy on February 25th, 2024, to rock the worlds conscience into an awareness of the ongoing Palestinian genocide, Stannard also reminds us of the current reality,
“The murder and destruction continue, with the aid and assistance of the United States, even as these words are being written and read. And many of the detailed accounts from contemporary observers read much like those recorded by the conquistadors’ chroniclers nearly 500 years earlier.”
They Came with Biblical Warrants
“To put this in a contemporary context [1993], the ratio of native survivorship in the Americas following European contact was less than half of what the human survivorship ratio would be in the United States today if every single white person and every single black person died. The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. That is why, as one historian aptly has said, far from the heroic and romantic heraldry that customarily is used to symbolize the European settlement of the Americas, the emblem most congruent with reality would be a pyramid of skulls.”
Some political pundits claim that the USA was meant to be a refuge from the hatreds in the world. This would be laughable if he weren’t so deadly wrong. The predatory policies that the US political, economic, and religious (PER)* elites have in place use financial and military conquest to reach their goal of gathering wealth for the few. These are violent policies that divide communities and destroy human lives; prompting anger, hatred, and hostility domestically and internationally in order to position populations into their sphere of control. These policies which define the US are neither a refuge for the general populous or the elites. The former continually being pushed to the political, economic, and religious margins, the latter, being infected with the anxiety ridden disease of avarice, as they stand at the border of total mental and moral breakdown.
This is why you have people currently protesting all over the globe in solidarity with the people of Palestinian. If the Palestinians are saved this could mark the beginning of a political transformation away from further colonial expansions. Not only in Palestine but in the last bastion of colonialism, the US. These brutal PER policies are by far the leading cause of misery and suffering that has stagnated the development of the human global family for the last five centuries.
Through their suffering, the Palestinian people have opened a rare opportunity in the history of humanity. The opportunity to heed the advice of Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, and numerous other visionaries of the past, the opportunity to overcome what the American economist and sociologist, Thorstein Veblen called “‘the predatory phase’ of human development.” We have to get over the hump of conquest.
For the marginalized in the US, as the cost of living continues to rise and our quality of living continues to fall, resentments become inevitable. These resentments aren’t from some prehistoric civilization. They are the product of the PER elites slowly and methodically eroding the constitutional rights of a large portion of the domestic population in a big way for the last 75 years.
They are the result of PER elites who have been manipulating the information that the public receives, to conceal the fact that they, or their hired proxy thugs, have been committing rape, torture, and mass murder on a regular basis in many countries across the globe. Like they are doing it right now in Palestine. These are the same PER elites whose policies promote a culture of fear that glorifies violence, defines greed as a virtue, putrefies sexual intimacy, and rewards the exploitation of children. Violence and mayhem are literally the PER elites most plentiful commodity.
Humanity In Its Darkest Hour
On October 7th, 2023, Hamas defense forces escaped from the Israeli open air torture prison that held them and began attacking their captors. The Zionist Israeli colonists determined that someone had to pay. The hell that followed was recorded live stream and fed to the world for the next 16 months. The shield that guarded the underbelly of the US Empire was shattered and evil became incarnate.
A Chronicle From Gaza:
Less than a month after Aaron Bushnell’s spiritual immolation, on Monday March 18th, 2024 at 2am, a US and Israeli coordinated terror operation began in Gaza City, Palestine. This came in the midst of a 6 month old bombing campaign, again coordinated by the US and Israel, whose primary targets were women and children who had no ability to defend themselves. The colonists call these victims “soft targets” who will be tagged as unnamed “collateral damage” when the history of the event is written. This program of sheer devastation caused the inhabitants of the Strip to flee in maniacal terror, as their loved ones were blown to pieces and their body parts littered the ground of the 64,000 acre enclave. The missing were somewhere under the rubble.
The news outlet Al Jazeera reported:
“Israel’s military forces have stormed al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City with tanks and heavy gunfire, resulting in deaths and injuries, Palestinian officials have said. The Israeli military said in a statement on Monday that it is conducting a “precise operation” at the medical facility. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said about 30,000 people, including displaced civilians, wounded patients and medical staff are trapped inside the complex.”
“In a message in English on Telegram, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said anyone “who tries to move is targeted by sniper bullets and quadcopter.” It added that the raid, which began at 2am, has resulted in a “number of martyrs and wounded”.
Journalist Wadea Abu Alsoud gave a live video report while inside the hospital:
“We are now besieged inside al-Shifa hospital. We are being heavily shot at. The occupation forces suddenly raided the hospital. As you can hear now, there are intense clashes going on. We are hearing sounds coming from the gate. There is shrapnel falling all over the hospital’s courtyard.”
This was the fourth attack on the hospital since October 7th. Calls came into the hospital reporting that there were many casualties outside, as Israel Occupation Forces could be heard over loudspeakers ordering the hospital’s inhabitants to immediately evacuate. The siege lasted two weeks. By April 1st reports from eye witnesses began seeping into independent media.
One survivor stated:
“The army then brought out a huge number of men from the group of suspected Hamas and PIJ members and employees, gathering them in the center of the courtyard. It then proceeded to execute them, one after the other. When the slaughter was done, army bulldozers piled up their corpses in the dozens, dragging them through the sand and burying them.
As this was ongoing, other soldiers stormed various buildings in the compound in search of people who had refused to evacuate when the initial order was given. They killed anyone they found, regarding them as suspects.”
Al Jazeera continued to follow the story:
“Gaza Civil Defense spokesman, Major Mahmoud Basal, said on Monday that, following the Israeli withdrawal, about 300 bodies were found in the Shifa complex and its surroundings. Basal added that the Israeli forces burned entire departments of the hospital, and destroyed all medical equipment and supplies.”
One Al-Quds Network head line read, “Shocking testimonies from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza: Rape, murder, and entire families burned alive.”
On April 5th, 2024 British Parliament member George Galloway reported:
“In the previous 24 hours, Israel withdrew from the al-Shifa Hospital…leaving 400 corpses behind. Corpses that were being eaten by dogs, corpses that had their hands tied behind their back, corpses that had rope around their legs indicating that they had been dragged by military vehicles over the ground until they were dead, corpses of doctors, corpses of nurses, corpses of technicians, corpses of patients, corpses of small children… There are 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip and not a single one has not been attacked.”
The dust settled by April 12th as the News outlet Mondoweiss reported “at least 1,500 people had been killed, injured, or reported missing.” Forced evacuations included another 25,000 people, while over a thousand dwellings near the complex were also destroyed.
On the same day of the IDF withdrawal, they announced that the military operation had concluded and claimed that it was conducted without causing “harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams,” hailing it as one of “the most successful operations” of the war.
This is the US Supremacist version of, “spreading democracy and freedom around the world.” Witnessing the US/Israeli genocide in Palestine has made it clear to attentive global citizens, in the US and elsewhere, that “Pax Americana” is really “Pox Americana” for everyone else. As the economist Michal Hudson stated in a recent interview, in the context of US hegemony, “Peace’ is when the United States controls everything and no other country has any ability to fight back. That’s ‘peace!”
Realities in Post-Colonialism
As long as US Centrism reigns, colonialism and slavery will be human realities. This is what empires do. In order for the PER elites to maintain control over the populations they administer, they have to overlook blatant realities that the rest of us live with every day.
One such reality is that the world has become a much smaller place in the minds of human beings than it was even 30 years ago. With the spread of instant communication and satellite imagery, the Russians, Chinese, and Palestinians are no longer foreign entities “over there” but come alive to us in real time on a screen that is right in our face. Only those who have been indoctrinated beyond hope can view the images of the suffering that is taking place in Gaza and the West Bank and not be moved.
Human beings are intrinsically connected to all other forms of life on the planet. The short version reads, one cannot do without the other for very long. With this being said, it causes one to think that it is with extreme myopia that the political Zionist Israelis are hell bent on eliminating the Palestinians, the very people that they need to survive in that land scape. When defining justice, the Unity Scholar Michael von Brück, points to this reality,
“Justice is the realization that living beings depend on each other for the very foundation of their lives. There never has been nor is an independent individuality or cultural self-sufficiency. Especially in a cross-cultural context we not only need to be aware but practice the mutual interdependency on all levels of life… Since all beings and events are primarily interrelated, there is no individual realization or individual good, but a common good that needs to be realized by overcoming individualism or any self-centered perspective.” (Emphasis mine)
With the newly inaugurated President of the US repeating endlessly that he plans to punish and isolate all other nations/societies who do not fall in line with his often obscurely defined foreign policy, is a show of absolute blindness to this reality.
Another reality comes from the understanding that authentic intelligence requires empathy and compassion for ourselves and others. Without these traits, planetary survival ceases to be an option. I find it bizarre that we are taught in our society to measure smartness by the number of digits that come after the $ sign of a person’s wealth index. Extreme wealth breeds, extreme anxiety, breeds extreme stress, and stress is a major contributor to deadly diseases.
Stress will cloud the mind, causing one to forget the lessons learned from the past, promoting tunnel vision that overlooks cooperative possibilities that are present. For a brief 3 minute analysis on how this happens you can Listen to the neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky here.
The reality of impermanence: There is wisdom to be gained from embracing the fact that nothing remains in a static state. Political, economic, and religious understandings are in a constant state of change. Empires and the institutions that support them come and they go. The US Empire is on its way out and the PER elites pretend that they can conduct domestic and geopolitical affairs as though it is the 1950s. They spent their lives creating a system that funnels most of the country’s revenue into their corner, so it pays for them to arrest any further development. People are naturally fluid, and are inclined to adapt to the changes in their inner and outer environments. Colonial empires have always moved in the opposite direction.
The two major political parties in the US have held sway in the electoral process for over 165 years. They are no longer providing credible answers to the questions that the majority presents to them. This leaves the people devoid of any sense that a better life awaits their future. From an economic perspective, people know that compound interest accrues more rapidly than national growth, which means that the majority will be marginalized into debt enslavement for the rest of their lives if our circumstances do not change.
Colonialism carries dire self destructive consequences. The longer the PER elites continue policies that deepen the wealth divide, the domestic population moves closer to mass revolt. This is the oligarch’s greatest fear. Without public cooperation their political power becomes sterile, non-functional, and unsustainable. To quote the physicist and social philosopher Albert Einstein, “No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.” (see page 3 of the link)
Wisdom and Justice can be served when we foster an environment where people are able to interact on a level political and economic playing field. This allows for the spontaneous evolution of their creative potential. Therefore, we not only need to ensure access to the primary necessities that sustain life but, to envision the future potential of the population as whole. In the ongoing colonial genocide in Palestine, the supreme loss was the obliteration of entire blood lines. Families going back three and four generations were evaporated. This is one of the hallmarks of the colonial system. A complete erasure of the population that was invaded so a history can be written that favors the invaders and scandalizes the victims.
As I was writing this, the words issued in 1966 by Marine General David Shoup, one of the many Joint Chiefs that opposed sending more troops into Vietnam, kept coming to mind,
“I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-crooked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own. That they design and want. That they fight and work for. [Not one] crammed down their throats by Americans.”
I say amen to that!
Guy Schell © 2025
