Letters to the Editor

• Shining City

  [Read the article: Why has world opinion of the U.S. changed dramatically since 2000?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  From its earliest days, the architects of what became the United States believed that it should be “A shining city on a hill,” as far back as John Winthrop's famous in 1630, who called for the colonies to be a virtuous community that would be a shining example to the Old World – or Thomas Jefferson. The rest of the world may from time to time find the idea of the United States as a beacon of democracy, principle and the rule of law mawkish and vain – but it also takes it seriously. France for example saw the United States as a special place, from the 1700s through to the 1950s. It was this that led , Édouard de Laboulaye and Frédéric Bartholdi to build the statue of liberty and gift it to the United States in 1876.

  And it is in part because the United States portrays itself as a better country, and because people believed it, that there is such antipathy to the United States in the world today. People feel betrayed, cheated and at the same time patronized by a US media that seeks again and again to portray the US as the good-guys, the straight shooters, the ones who believe in civil rights, when the reality is increasingly tawdry and contrary. (The same thing applies to Israel by the way, having sold itself as a new country, one of rights and democracy, decency and Kibutzs, discovering the truth of how Palestinians are treated causes opinions to sink fast.)

  Part of the problem is the US’ self-image. The American is the honest man, the United States behaves well – no one in the US really seems to believe that Abu Ghraib happened, that if reflects a broad problem. The other problem is that Americans are gaining a worldwide reputation for incredibly arrogant ignorance – for bellowing in English at the “natives” patronisingly believing that if you talk loudly and slowly people will understand (my wife had colleagues in Virginia explain this technique to her once.)

  I read the recent posting of Realname (who by the way can only be characterised as a total Gobshite) in which he suggests that unpopularity does not matter. Is he nuts? The US is massively in debt to the rest of the world; it is dependent in many respects on China, Europe, Asia, etc. Moreover, the way the US does things is not automatically better – the French healthcare system for example is facially better than the US; other countries not have better education systems.

  I honestly do not know how the US will begin to repair the damage that Bush and Cheney have done. The mess that is Iraq will not go away – if the US stays it will be a running sore – if the US leaves, a bloodbath. In Israel/Palestine the Israeli government has over the last decade, with the active encouragement of the Neocons systematically pissed away every opportunity to achieve at least a modus vivendi with the Palestinians. The US fiscal situation is so irretrievably in the “shitter” thanks to Bush that it seems hard to see how any new administration can fix it.

  The shear horror of all of this mess is only exacerbated by the nitwits and gobshites who seem to be in a perpetual mode of deny, deny, deny. That if like a child they stick their fingers in their ears and go NaNaNaNa everything will be alright – and you know it won’t. And by the way, I may not be that rich, or that successful, but by most peoples standards I am, and still, I am a pessimist when I look at what the Republicans hath wrought. If I had done half the crap Bush and Cheney pulled off, or been a Bush/Cheney backer I’d break out the whiskey and spend an evening clumsily cleaning my loaded gun.

  Permalink Friday, July 6, 2007 10:04 AM