Recently a friend said that I had become an ideologue in my condemnation of the American government’s historic record and the two-party political system which has facilitated the crimes.

An ideologue is a zealous proponent of an ideology. An ideology is “thinking or theorizing of an idealistic, abstract, or impractical nature; fanciful speculation.” I plead guilty to thinking and theorizing of an idealistic and abstract nature. Whether or not it is impractical and fanciful speculation cannot be my concern because I am an ideologue. It is a riddle, in an enigma, wrapped in a conundrum to paraphrase Joseph Conrad.

How did I get to this point? I lived and accepted the American way of life, but there had always been that feeling in my soul of “Is that all there is?” I went to war in Vietnam, came home and realized it had been a scam. I felt betrayed by my country, but went on with the American way of life and while I became distrustful of our government, I slumbered though life and ignored the realities which were there.

I though invading Afghanistan was a mistake, but I saw and took no avenue opposing it. It took the Bush and Cheney war drums for the Iraq invasion to bring me to the point of action. I joined the millions of people across the globe demonstrating against the incipient invasion. Of course that got us nowhere, but it did get me somewhere and that was out in the street saying no to war. The liberation that comes from actively withholding one’s consent to the crimes of a criminal government can be exhilarating.

So I began the journey of education, outside the mainstream of American compliance to and support of governmental crimes by our corporate media and society in general. I went from being an anti war activist to being a peace activist and finally to being a social justice activist; and now I am told, an ideologue.

Social justice is simply the recognition that society has an obligation to strive for the equitable sharing of its burdens and rewards and that injustice for anyone, anywhere, is injustice for all.

Our history is clear and it is not what we were taught in our youth. It is a history of land theft from the First Americans, wars, broken treaties, forced removal after forced removal; all amounting to genocide. It is one of centuries of slavery for Africans whose labor built much of our country for their elite masters. It is one of pitting African against Native American against poor whites against each wave of immigrants; German, Irish, Jews, Slavs, Italians, Poles, Hunkies, Chinese etc. and now more recently Mexicans. It is one of wars of aggression with Mexico, Spain, Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is one of CIA coups in Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Greece, Haiti, Venezuela, Iran and Iraq. It is one of torture against non-white peoples: First Americans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis.

The American Revolution fought under the banner “all men are created equal” did nothing more than replace British colonial rule with a similar rule by the white propertied colonial class. Excluded from participation in the new government were the vast majority of inhabitants; women, blacks, First Americans, and the majority of whites who did not own property. But they were not excluded from participating in the back breaking labor of slave plantations, sweatshops and factories of the propertied class. America being the land of opportunity, their children were also invited to participate in the drudgery of dawn to dusk labor in a stifling or freezing factory for pennies a day.

This is the American dream our ancestors had. And when they tried to organize against the oppressive conditions, they were lynched, beaten, clubbed and shot in the streets. “Divide and conquer” was the mantra of Rome and the American elite did the Roman Empire proud. They maneuvered the poor white working class against the slaves (later the dirt poor black tenant farmers). Of course, women were always in this mix and always at a lesser wage than men. The capitalists laughed on their way to the bank as each successive wave of immigrants was thrown against the workers already here with wages cut and hours increased.

Historically the American workers’ struggle for class equality has always been trumped by the reluctant acceptance that progress must come within the political framework of American democracy. That the struggle for the equality promised in the Declaration of Independence will receive a fair hearing in our two-party political system. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Our two-party electoral system is really a bit of genius on the part of our elite masters. They control both parties with their funding. God forbid if one of the pols might actually take a stand against his corporate masters, then the threat of funding a challenger to his next campaign arises. They didn’t have to write the two-party system into the Constitution and they didn’t have to legislate it. It appeared and our elite leaders were astute enough to realize that two-party politics controlled by them was the perfect foil to democracy.

A little while back, I realized how the two-party system works. Our elections don’t require a majority to win, only a plurality. This way we are told that voting for third parties or independents will be wasting our votes and in fact allow the super bad guy from the other side to win. So we must settle for the lesser of two evils when we vote. With both parties pushing the corporate agenda of war abroad and capitalist domination at home, we are presented a classic dilemma (forced to make a choice from equally bad alternatives). This allows the two parties to play continual politics, while the important issues of the day are completely ignored. Necessitating run-off elections if no candidate receives a majority of votes would allow divergent views to percolate and third party and independent positions to gain traction. We will never achieve anything even approaching democracy without run-off elections, 100 percent public campaign financing and media controlled by the people.

The corporate media drones on incessantly, repeating time and again the American myth: America is the greatest, kindest country on the face of the earth. Yet it was really only after WWII that we began to have a middle class, due to the really minor adjustments to American capitalism necessitated by the devastation it had wrought with the Great Depression. These minor adjustments were thrown out starting with the Reagan presidency in 1981. Both parties jumped on the corporate bandwagon supporting the new creed of neo-liberalism (free trade, free markets and no regulations).

Thus began the decline of our fledgling middle class. Productivity rose 40 percent from 1980-2000, yet workers real wages declined and the number of billionaires increased from 13 in 1980 to 449 in 2008. Our corporations were encouraged to go global and move their manufacturing jobs overseas. NAFTA allowed American capital to enter Mexico and buy up their agricultural land, thus putting their poor farmers out of work and heading for the border to resettle the former Mexican provinces we stole from them in the Mexican War. Thus, neo-liberal capitalists received the benefits of near slave labor in factories overseas and, in the “homeland,” wages were depressed with the increase of both legal and illegal immigrants.

Growing up in the fifties, I believed the American myth. While the wars, genocide, slavery, labor struggles and human rights struggles were mentioned in our history classes, the emphasis was always on spinning the narrative of the American myth.

We have a history rich with defiance to the propertied elite who have ruled our county, but the emphasis in education and media has never been to present this to the American people. We have some knowledge that the First Americans fought and resisted the genocide perpetrated upon them. Our African American populace has a much greater knowledge of and empathy for the struggle of their people than the average white citizen who is stuck in time wondering why black history courses are even taught in our universities. While there is a general awareness that there was a labor struggle and unions were formed, I seriously doubt if too many of us have spent much time thinking about the oppression our ancestors endured and their courageous efforts to level the playing field with the rich in both factories and farms.

Turn off the TV and radio, put away the magazines and newspapers and actually think about the American myth. Is it possible that our country has been wrong time after time after time? Was it wrong to kill the First Americans and steal their land? Was it wrong to enslave the Africans? Was it wrong to allow capitalism to have a free reign? Was it wrong for a handful to live a luxurious life, while children were working 70 hours a week or more in the sweatshops? Was it wrong to fight wars of aggression with Spain, Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to expand the American empire? Was it wrong to torture non-white prisoners?

But this is our history and it continues in the present. These are our American values and all efforts of resistance have been swallowed up by our two-party electoral system. Past and present, those opposing governmental crimes and societal inequities are conned into entering the American electoral arena, never to be heard from again in any substantive way. The populist farm movement, the union movement, the civil rights movement and the peace movement all got involved in electoral politics and then lost their edge after getting some of what they fought for, but certainly nothing approaching social justice. If opposing these crimes and our two-party political system which enables them makes one an ideologue, we need more ideologues. Stand for social justice and become one yourself.