It’s starting to a bit depressing to say you’re from America when people here ask you. I almost always have to qualify it to say that yes, I too think George Bush is an idiot.
What’s most depressing about America these days is that folks are either too scared to stand-up for the beliefs (e.g. Liberals) or they are so strident and fundementalist as to sound almost crazy (e.g. Dick Cheney and the whole Conservative neocon movement). It’s gotten so scary in America that the neocons would say that this blog post is anti-American.
Sorry, but I’m not anti-American, I’m just anti-neocon Amercia (i.e. the ideology that America is “the best” and that it’s the job of the American government to pursue its interests regardless of the cost).
What the hell happened to my America that I once knew and loved? That America that the whole world loved and admired is almost gone. America is falling apart at the seams.
In today’s NYT Thomas Friedman compares his experience at the Beijing Olympics with the current state of America. Here’s a link to the article.
Also, check-out this Comment below left by a reader of Friedman’s column and selected as an Editor’s Choice Comment.
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I’m afraid on this occasion that Friedman may be right. His great fear has come home to roost – the US is cooked. It certainly looks and feels like it’s well past its best. If Friedman is correct in attributing this decline in the US to the costs of war, the pursuit of al Qaeda etc. then al Qaeda has achieved a stunning victory over the US – for that was always their intention. I think, however, that it is the deep psychology of Americans that is the problem. It’s an insular backwater in terms of outlook. Too many Americans are isolated narcissists in their thinking – they think, for example, that the rest of the world wants to be American. No it doesn’t.
No other major country – democracy or not – would have so overreacted to 9/11 as the US has. No other country would still be arguing about national security, “terrorism” and the patriotic credentials of its presidential candidates seven years after a single terrorist attack.
The fact is that al Qaeda is not worth the candle. Afghanistan is not worth the candle. US meddling in PAkistan has produced the opposite result to the one intended. US criticism of Russia is seen by the rest of the world as no better than hypocrisy. And still billions are spent on futile acts of “national defense.” And still American news channels leave the rest of the world scratching their heads about how the US sees itself and the rest of the world.
The US is not just in decline, it is out of touch. And the worst thing about it is that it can’t even have the conversation it needs to have with itself to pull itself out of this mess without hysterical finger-pointing about the memory of 9/11, accusations of un-Americanism and so on. America, simply, is no longer a beacon, no longer the object of desire.
— Spinoza, Europe
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