Letters to the Editor
Ché Pasa
Published Letters: 913 Editor's Choice: 2
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The Problem Nation
[Read the article: The tragic collapse of America's standing in the world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I tend to agree with Timberman regarding Glenn's somewhat lazy conflation of issues as some kind of demonstration of The (Fringe) Leftist View of How Murka Is Seen In The World.
Glenn might do well to submit to some dismantlement of his argument by, oh I don't know, Amy Goodman or somebody on The Left he knows.
What he may find is that what he is critiquing is not what The (Fringe) Left believes the rest of the world has always believed about the US, but what the Activist Left has long said American actions in the world do -- regardless of popular opinion at home or abroad.
Activists on the Left have long said that the United States is the chief Problem Nation in the World, and that its foreign policies are grotesque. A long discussion of why and what specifically constitutes Grotesque American Foreign Policy then ensues, generally with extensive demonstrations of the effects of American foreign policy in Third World villages and testimony from Natives to support the premise.
The Case Against America is Thereby Proved and the Plaintiff Rests. Jury deliberations return a verdict of, "Mmmm, Could Be," and the process repeats. What the Natives believe about America may or may not coincide with the Case Against America just offered, either in general or in specific instances.
I don't think that Floyd, for example, is arguing what Glenn seems to think he is, and I have never heard Goodman (nor most of her guests) argue the case Glenn says a fringe leftist element claims.
So who, specifically, has been claiming an ancient, enduring hatred for America in some or all of the rest of the world?
They have, on the other hand, made excellent cases that American foreign policies, for generations, some would say since the Foundation, have been and are responsible for calamitous results in much of the rest of the world, and that some of the resentment of America that we see now and in the past is due to the calamitous results of American foreign policies. But foreign opinions of America do not necessarily directly correlate with American foreign policy disasters. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
Yet there is no doubt that America's "moral standing" has undergone a precipitous collapse under the Guiding Hand of the Bush/Cheney Regime, a collapse that will not be easy to rectify.
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No, it does not mean that, Glenn
[Read the article: The tragic collapse of America's standing in the world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That would mean, then, that America has been victimizing the world, but the people in the victimized countries -- America's victims, at is were -- don't seem to see it that way. In large numbers, they have respect and admiration for America and its values, and perceive it favorably, despite America's raping and plundering and pillaging. Why are America's victims so deluded en masse? And why have their eyes suddenly opened in the last six years?
Your rhetorical skills are usually a lot better than this.
It means that the dambed foreigners' perception/opionion of America does not necessarily directly co-relate with America's behavior on the world stage.
The Activist Left's Case Against America, as I understand it, is as follows: The United States can be -- and often has been -- a Very Bad Actor on the World Stage, proved by testimonials and scholarly assessments, and yet the opinion of The Dambed Dirty Foreigners of America may (or may not) be very high. The objective factors that have historically made the United States a Bad Actor didn't necessarily translate into a Bad Opinion by Foreigners.
Since the Founding of the Nation, American Foreign Policy (including the Domestic Foreign Policy toward Native Tribes) has -- according to the Case Against America -- been brutal, genocidal, and rapacious. Nevertheless, Natives have not always been negatively disposed against America. They aren't necessarily negatively disposed against America right now, though Activist Leftists might argue that they should be.
I think you're trying to make a false equivalence between the Authoritarian Hugh Hewitt's propaganda that They Hate America Because They're Evil -- and they always have and they always will, so kill them all -- and the Activist Left's argument that American foreign policy often results in calamity for the poor and downtrodden in the world, regardless of what their opinion of the United States may be.
Since the advent of the Bush Regime, however, as your post demonstrates, the Dambed Dirty Foreign Devils' opinion of America has plummeted. Due, we think, to foreign perceptions that America's actions are antithetical to World Peace, Prosperity, and/or a Better Future for all. And they are antithetical because the United States is perceived to be a warmongering, hate and violence filled behemoth set on a course of bloodshed, plunder and destruction such as the world has not seen in many a year.
Threatening and launching pre-emptive attacks on other nations, conducting brutal occupations, directly performing/enabling torture, kidnap, murder and disappearance, sacrificing basic human rights and dignity, shredding its own Constitutional protections of rights, declaring itself subject to no law... on and on... all these things are, as you say, innovations of the Bush Regime. While there was a robust critique by the Left of America's behavior prior to the Bush Regime, much of what's been innovated by the Busheviks is orders of magnitude worse.
And THAT is what has driven the collapse of America's standing in the world.
But there is no intellectual or other equivalence between the Left's long-standing Case Against America and the Authoritarian notion that they've Always Hated Us and therefore deserve whatever bloody punishment they get.
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Kitt
[Read the article: The tragic collapse of America's standing in the world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to think that you are arguing just to hear yourselves argue.
This place is infested with Libertoovians. Infested, I say. All they ever want to do is "blah blah blah". Argue for the sake of it. It's what they do.
Libertavians. Bah!