Robert Scheer: Foreign Entanglements Derailed the American Experiment

In the eighth installment of an interview series on The Real News Network’s “Reality Asserts Itself,” Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer tells TRNN Senior Editor Paul Jay that over time, American leaders have “lost sight of the essential wisdom of the American experiment,” which was that if you enable prosperity “for your own people, and if it’s good, others will follow it.”

How did the U.S. get into this predicament? “Because of the very thing that George Washington warned about, the impostures of pretended patriotism,” Scheer says. “We get into it because we haven’t avoided foreign entanglements. So we see we get crazed with hysteria—oh, they did that to us. They’re the enemy. They’re going to get us. They’re going to blow us up. They’re going to—you know, irrationality. Nationalism has an irrational side. Warmaking appeals to people. There’s a culture that supports warmaking and stupidity and simplicity.”

The interview is part of a 10-part series conducted after the publication of Scheer’s book, “They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy.” Watch Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven.

A transcript of the discussion provided by The Real News Network appears below.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/video_robert_scheer_foreign_entanglements_derailed_the_american_20150706