Dear Glenn,

After reading through your last post and some of the commentary there and here, I don't have too much more to add. I will say that I, like many others, do not believe that American behaviour under Bush has really changed that much - what has changed, and this is the puzzle that you point out, is the perception of that behaviour. I think that some people have offered good explanations for this changed perception. It was true that during the Cold War, the US had, in the Soviet Union, a counterpart which was, in many ways, much worse - many people, particularly in Europe, were willing to forgive American sins for that reason. People in Latin America or Southeast Asia, who were direct victims of American brutality, were less forgiving.

However, I wonder if this image would have persisted. Maybe part of the puzzle here is that the image of the US that you are defending really only had a 40 year life-span before the CW ended. If the CW had gone on, would the weight of American actions and the hypocrisy of US foreign policy eventually have sunk through to everyone and changed the international perception of the US? I don't know, but I suspect that this might have happened. After all, torture, unnecessary/unjustified wars, all of these things were carried out by the US during the 1960s, 70s and 80s - sometimes on a scale far worse than what is happening in Iraq now. That is another unpleasant fact. So, is this something that would eventually have sunk in? I don't know, but this counterfactual, I admit, does not really address the question.

So, what has changed with Bush? Well, maybe the end of the Cold War removed whatever excuse the US had for saying one thing and doing another. Sins that the world was willing to forgive when the Soviets were present were no longer forgivable when there was not a justifiable excuse. Clinton played his international cards well and maintained the illusion of a beneficent America to remarkable effect. But, as Chalmers Johnson has pointed out, the American military empire that has tried to blossom under George W. Bush was started during the Clinton years.

Bush is different because he came to power with absolute contempt for the rest of the world (even before Sept. 11) and did not bother hiding it. He presented the image of a US that is an unmitigated bully, and he rubbed the faces of the entire world in the fact that he did not care about the rest of the planet. I don't think any US president has been so open about this - or so arrogant, since most have appreciated the need to at least respect other international actors. The international community has returned Bush's contempt for it, but this has been extended to the American public in general. After all, Bush won in 2004. The rest of us were willing to excuse the American public the first time because of the questionable circumstances of Bush's first election, but the second time around that excuse was not present.

Anyway, this is a question that requires much deeper study. Thanks for raising the issue.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Dear Cary,

I guess I'm just not open-minded enough. These people are talking about the facts that they are into bondage and sadomasochism at work? And the boss is into BSDM and is discussing it at work? And encouraging it to a 19-year old?Where does this husband work? Why on earth are these things coming up? On top of that, the LW and her husband are "polyamorphous" - which I take it means multiple sex partners while still maintaining a marriage? How does that work for the kids? Don't children need a stronger sense of structure and security? (I'm not condemning this, I just suspect that it is very emotionally risky, at a number of different levels.) I remember reading a biography of a woman who was raised in a commune by hippy parents. One of the problems she encountered as a child was that her parents did not give her enough structure and a sense of boundaries/security. Perhaps not surprisingly, she grew up to find very conventional, structured relationships most comforting. This may well not apply with the LW and her husband, but I wonder how a polyamorphous couple deals with this aspect of their lives with the children.

Anyway, my major point is that this stuff should not be coming up at work. There are boundary issues here, but maybe not just with the 19-year old.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine