by Chris Marlowe
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Stolen from a comment with links added by b.
—

There is a certain irony in the Bush administration’s attempt to
"isolate Syria" by complaining about Pelosi’s visit to Damascus. Many
Americans don’t seem to understand it, but on the international stage,
America under the Bush administration is about as popular as Typhoid
Mary.

Sure, everyone wants to do business with Americans, but that’s about
it. Hollywood films are not as popular as they once were, and American
culture and appeal has lost its gloss. Coca-Cola and McDonald’s
symbolize cheap and unhealthy junk food, not fashionable trends.
Americans are thought of generally as consumption hogs, driving big
cars and eating cheap unhealthy foods and as being overweight, arrogant
and ignorant.

The industries America is best well-known for, such as media and
entertainment, are crumbling under the assault of the Internet, which
represents a whole new world which cannot be so easily dumbed and
controlled by four media conglomerates. Many of my acquaintances
celebrate the collapse of the old media model.

Moreover, American consumerism can no longer dominate the global
economy as it once did. Now there are Asian and European economies
which are growing at faster rates. The American economy is no longer
the engine of world growth. It is major and important, but the world
economy no longer depends on it.

And it is plain for all to see that American economic growth and the
standard of living will soon begin to fall. The number of poor will
increase, while the rich get richer. The Republicans do not seem to
fear that US society will fracture along class, and maybe even worse,
ethnic lines. The press does not even discuss the possibility that the
US will turn into a version of Lebanon. Christianity has been turned
from a religion into a business and political tool by the likes of Karl
Rove, Gary Bauer, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Pat Robertson and AIPAC.

Of course, this American behavior of arrogance and ignorance meshes
very well with the image the Bush administration has been putting out.
After all, more than 59M Americans voted for W in Bush in 2004. In
spite of a major terrorist attack in 2001, and the invasion and
occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans remain just as
ignorant, if not even more ignorant of the world outside America’s
borders. Lou Dobbs has built a whole media career (and maybe later
political career) around anger at poor, Hispanic people who come to the
US to do jobs other people won’t do. And he gets good ratings over his
coverage of this "problem".

When America was the sole leading world power, that worked. But that
is no longer the case. When will Americans realize that America is no
longer an island they can withdraw to; it is part of a globalized world
economy where they are just one player among many? My guess is that
this whole globalized WTO world will fall apart in recriminations among
the many players, and that governments will try to become isolationist,
but that will become impossible because communications and technology
have made total isolation impossible.

The whole problem with Republicans and Democrats is that no one has
answers to the real problems. American elections have all the relevance
of who wins "American Idol".

Right now, the president is a mean-spirited version of Sanjaya
Malakar who goes through the motions of being a statesman, but can’t
even carry a tune. It took many Americans more than four years to
figure it out. American society seems to be in a death spiral of
arrogance, ignorance and stupidity.

America and Bush, they go together…