I've actually spent the past 3 weeks ingesting and absorbing Howard Zinn's book, "A People's History of the United States". I was planning to insert a lot of excerpts in this post, but, you really need to pick it up and read it yourself. Plus, I had to return it to the library so I didn't get a chance to xerox all the passages at work. Every time I came across something that seemed like what we've seen in the news lately, I would dog-ear the page and read on. After 670-odd pages I had a lot of dog-ears.
In case you've never heard about "People's History", it's Zinn's reaction to the Board of Education sanctioned history that he was taught from elementary school through college. It's history from the perspective of those who lacked the power to enforce their version of the story. The good news is, you can avoid having to read a two pound paperback book by paying close attention to a wide variety of news outlets. The bad news is, after 500+ years on this side of the pond, rich white males, and the rest of us, haven't appeared to learn a damn thing.
Here's the basic plot: A bunch of Caucasian guys backed by an economic superpower, on a mission to expand their financial control over the global economy, encounter brown people who have natural resources that are highly valuable commodities in the global marketplace. Through propoganda, treaties, and failing the first two, brute force, the Caucasian group wrests control of the resources away from the brown people. Then, having depleted their pool of cheap labor, the Caucasians realize they need to get more people to do their dirty work. By various methods, they import labor into their newly aquired territory, but economic imbalances create tension and the situation often erupts into chaos. Order is restored enough so that trade can continue and the status quo, at least on the surface, remains intact. For the most part, this status quo is maintained through two methods; a journalistic component that is heavily promoted as being free and fair minded, and cultivation of competion between various groups of people who are at a cultural and/or economic disadvantage.
That's pretty much it.
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