Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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the american dream ....

the american dream .....

God it's wonderful - really diverting in a macabre sort of way, at least if you have a diseased sense of humor and enough Padre Kino red. Which I do.

As I write the world's only delusional superpower, perennially in love with itself, navel-gazing as narcissistically as ever, ignorant, self-indulgent, gurbling like an insane relative in the attic and fondling electro-trinkets from Japan, is broke. Yes, we see a beautiful dive from the high board, two somersaults and a half-twist, into the Third World. And so richly deserved.

Congress, a collection of whores, con-men, and penny-ante sharpers from East Jesus, Nebraska, ponders the Great Question: Default now, and admit manfully to being the economic lepers everyone else already knows we are? Or raise the debt ceiling, keep spending like a spoiled Swarthmore sophomore with daddy's credit card, and collapse a bit later?

It's just lovely. The World's Greatest Economy holding out the begging bowl to China. "Alms? Alms for the poor?" Maybe I don't have enough Padre Kino after all. Maybe there isn't enough.

On the lobotomy box, congressmen come and go, not talking of Michelangelo, like mayflies but without the brains, calling each other names. They seem to think that they are in an off-year election. I mean, it's only the future of the country. What, me worry? What if a huge cosmic flyswatter came down on Cap Hill and turned them into barely historical smears? How the hell do you start a cosmic flyswatter?

Slouching Towards Guatamala

bushit begged too...

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/5793

second rate schools, first class war machine...

Not only are America's public schools starting to look second-rate, but so is its infrastructure, which had long been a source of national pride. How many travellers nowadays can fail to note the difference between Asia's new, efficient airports and the aging, clogged antiques in some major US cities?

The budget war is not producing any consensus on fixing America's infrastructure, but it is beginning to produce a view that Afghanistan and Pakistan are far from being core US national interests. Why, people ask, are schools and roads in Afghanistan and Iraq more important than those in Colorado or California? At one point in 2008, the US military picked up the cost of transporting a tiger for the Baghdad zoo. When was the last time the US government did that for a US zoo (outside of Washington, of course)?

What will happen?

How this debate sorts itself out will have profound consequences for how America conducts itself in the world. But it might also take a toll on how the world reacts to America's fastest-growing export: unsolicited advice.

Countries take others' advice for many reasons. Sometimes they respect the adviser's wisdom and insights (fairly rare in diplomacy). Or they might fear the consequences of not taking the advice (an offer one cannot refuse, so to speak). Or, as is true of many of America's diplomatic transactions, accepting advice could open the way to a better relationship and to additional assistance. In short, diplomacy - and US diplomacy, in particular - often involves money.

But what if there is no money to offer? What if Americans, tired of the budget cuts in their neighbourhoods, refuse to support funds even for "the long war"? At that point, senior US officials might well arrive in a country, offer advice, and find that nobody is bothering to listen.


Christopher R. Hill, a former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009. He is now Dean of the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.

A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.