America and Bush, they go together
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...
