{"id":318762,"date":"2026-07-27T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=318762"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:54:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:54:31","slug":"location-location-location","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/07\/location-location-location\/","title":{"rendered":"Location, Location, Location"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLet us pay any price to ensure that we never imitate the West.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Frantz Fanon<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It might be said, and well said, that the United States succeeded despite itself, much like the man who fell off a cliff and thereby found a huge virgin deposit of gold.<\/p>\n

Politics, political leaders, and political institutions did not make the United States pre-eminent, contrary to what is suggested by many historians and journalists; rather, vast natural resources and great distances from dangerous enemies played much more of a role. In other words, what\u2019s happening to Kiev, Mariupol, and Donetsk, Ukraine could\u2014if not should\u2014be happening to Washington, New York, Chicago, LA … pick a city, a location.<\/p>\n

What has protected the United States from upheaval and repeated conflict and extreme instability is its geographic isolation, its great vacant spaces, and its vast natural resources, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (which serve as contemporary moats allowing for America\u2019s global raids and retreats\u2014 so primitive, so simple), none of which are attributable to its political system or political leaders. For example, the Ukraine war is really a US-vs.-Russia war. Ukraine is being used by the US against Russia in the same way the US is attempting to use Taiwan against China. It is silly, infantile, and globally harmful and dangerous. It\u2019s worth remembering the presence of POTUS Biden\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, on the board of a major Ukraine energy company, at some $80,000 per month. This is not irrelevant.<\/p>\n

The supposedly long duration of the American government is often advanced by scholars, who should know better (consider China\u2019s 5,000 years of history, for example), as proof of its superior excellence in a world that has seen many government systems topple\u2014in some countries, system after system. In other words, while there is political instability in other, less fortunate countries, in the United States, thanks to the constitutional work of men of supposedly superior insight and a basically superior population, there is a government impervious to the \u201cslings and arrows of outrageous fortune.\u201d What the so-called Founding Fathers built, it is suggested, is a Rock of Ages, something to be approached by mere mortals with religious awe. This is surely the stuff of myth.<\/p>\n

The argument for America\u2019s excellence due to its long duration is based on the false assumption that whatever human institution is long-lasting is therefore excellent. Many institutions\u2014slavery for example\u2014have lasted thousands of years yet are not considered by any thoughtful person to have been excellent, although slave owners and their sycophants like it. Shorter-lived governmental systems are not necessarily inferior. They have failed or floundered in many cases because of adverse natural and social conditions or because of political pressure by external enemies.<\/p>\n

One big reason many governmental systems have been interrupted is that their home territory was invaded, and their capital captured. It was not their form of government that did them in. In fact, there can be no question but that the United States, by example alone, was and is, in many respects, the most destabilizing force in the world today. Its location, alone, saves it from regular and repeated ass-whippings, like the ones the U.S. got in Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan and now Iran.<\/p>\n

For example, the Iranian missiles bombarding U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Jordan today, would be hitting U.S. cities were it not for its distant location. Do keep in mind that this is not the problem for Russian, Chinese or even North Korean missiles and nuclear weapons that currently target U.S. cities.\u00a0 And even this geographic limitation for Iran may soon change as American hubris and stupidity pushes it to develop nuclear weapons to thwart those of the U.S. and Israel. As if there are not enough of these weapons already. I pray that they do not and will keep the Fatwa, <\/em>and not imitate the West.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we should consider a simple observation and questions raised by Annie Jacobsen. In 1967, the U.S. reached an all-time high of 31,255 nuclear bombs: Thirty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty-five nuclear bombs. \u201c<\/em>Why stockpile\u202631,255 nuclear bombs when a single one of them\u2026dropped on New York City or Moscow, could leave some10 million people dead?\u00a0 Why continue to mass-produce thousands of these weapons when the use of a single thermonuclear bomb will almost certainly ignite a wider, unstoppable, civilization-ending nuclear war?\u201d\u00a0 Idiot logic<\/em> in the Pentagon and Oval office call this \u201cDeterrence\u201d. Please understand that the Pacific and Atlantic oceans afford no refuge or hiding place for Americans from the terrifying and real possibilities Russia and China have in store.<\/p>\n

See: Ferdinand Lundberg, Cracks in the Constitution <\/em>(Lyle Stuart, 1980)
\nAnnie Jacobsen, Nuclear War<\/em>: A Scenario<\/em>. (Dutton, 2024)<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Fritz Pointer is a retired professor of English and African American Studies.\u00a0 He is the vice president of <\/em>Democratic World Federalists<\/em><\/a><\/u> and has published numerous scholarly articles such as <\/em>African Oral Epic Poetry: Praising the Deeds of a Mythic Hero (2013).\u00a0 Being the older brother of the popularly known singing group, <\/em>The Pointer Sisters, he has co-authored <\/em>Fairytale: the Pointer Sisters\u2019 Family History.\u00a0Pointer\u2019s main interests include combating racism, advancing human rights, ending war, eliminating nuclear weapons, and nonviolent solutions to global problems.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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