I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. America is a wonderful country but it is consumed by fear. They need a military that costs them as much as the next 9 most expensive militaries cost combined! They need that fire power because they fear retribution for their sins of slavery of blacks and genocide of indigenous people. The more guilty your conscience the more protection you need.

There is a good example of this in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The incident happened on the Phelps farm, a small plantation of slaves. There was a minor slave revolt on the Phelps farm; what every slaveholder dreaded. They dreaded that justice would be imposed on them.

The rebellions started when “one nigger was crazy but there was “a dozen helping him” to steal a nigger slave.  There was a “plumb crazy” nigger  with a dozen disciples! Who else would make a “ladder out of rags,” to steal into and out of a white man’s house.

The white folks figured the slaves must have been spirits because even their dogs could not track them. The white women of course were terrified. They were afraid to live!  They could hardly go to bed, or lay down or get up.  They were amazed the niggers hadn’t stolen any of their family. Why were they afraid of that? Because that is what they would have done!

She said, “I was just to that pass I didn’t have no reasoning faculties no more.” She was so scared for her children she locked them in their room. As she explained, “when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to doing all sorts of wild things.”

The people are of course entirely credulous, expecting the worst that is imaginable, because that is what they would do. They think the time for retribution is at hand. In a nation built on the twin original sins of black slavery and indigenous genocide such fears are as real as fears can be.