What’s happening to me? Again agreeing with Alex Lo! Am I becoming a Noam Chomsky-ist? An America hater? An anti-globalist?
Well, no, I still love America. BUT… it’s easy to see how non-Americans are put off by this incessant militarism. The military bases everywhere. By some counts 1,200 and more. While China has just one.
I remember in Subic Bay, Philippines, one time after our yacht race there from Hong Kong. Standing at the hotel check-in, along came a group of American army guys, in uniform. These are big white men. I’m also a big white man. But I felt overwhelmed, intimidated even. How then do the physically smaller and non-white Filipinos feel about them? When they bump into them often. As Japanese must do in Japan with America’s 120 (!) bases. They’re intimidating.
Ref the highlight above, Australia already is “another branch of the Pentagon”. We couldn’t even get America to release Julian Assange to us. They swatted us away like an uppity Pentagon section head. Be gone!
