Sigh. I hate to admit it, but we Americans are notorious for our cock-eyed optimism, which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't linked to our depressing tendency to see everything revolving around US. Worse yet, we even believe God is ALWAYS on our side, regardless, and we have a president who's willing, nay, EAGER to prove that we can do anything we want, nyah, nyah. Yes, I know this kind of delusional thinking didn't start with Dubya, but he's become the epitome of American Hubris ever since his self-righteous rantings over 9/11. His annoying I-know-everything-so-shut-up attitude seemed to blossom into full-blown I-am-the-instrument-of-Divine-will mode after he finally allowed himself to be FOUND following the attacks that day; seems our Fearless Leader went incommunicado for 24hrs, flying hither and yon while Cheney did the President-thing in D.C. until he calmed down. Whether or not he knew in advance about the planned attack is moot at this point. What matters is that he went ballistic, literally, and took the whole Congress with him. So we bombed Afghanistan, and for what? Osama "escaped" in the end. The 9/11 terrorists were almost to a man Saudis, but with our dependence on oil we couldn't bomb THEM, chas v'sholom. Where Osama is now, I can make a guess at, as probably the only safe place in the region is Saudi Arabia. Sigh. So, failing to capture HIM, Dubya fell back on Saddam and so on...
Sorry, but I'm sick of this we-know-what's-best-for-the-world attitude. I'm old enough to remember JFK's famous "Ask Not..." Speech, and how we failed at being "world policemen" the FIRST time around. We at least had the TROOP strength back then to back up that rhetoric, but now? And American news is a disgrace. It's not just Fox, cheering on Dubya mindlessly, but ALL our "news" outlets, I'm afraid. How much of our news is devoted to NON-American events? Not much at all, and when it is the events are at least RELATED to American concerns. I would guess that a good 80% of world news is simply IGNORED by American reporters and their editors, simply because they assume we'd get bored with it. And you know what? They're probably right. We, for the most part, DON'T want to know what's going on elsewhere, because we believe IT'S ALL ABOUT US! Are we brain-washed or just brain-DEAD? Sigh.
Okay, so Tocqueville warned about this shortly after the Revolutionary War, so what? Up until WWI we pretty much hadn't the means to do a lot of global damage, and even by WWII we lagged behind many of the other industrialized nations, but after we emerged unscathed (remember, almost all of Europe was destroyed by bombing, and Japan as well) we suddenly "saw the light". God WAS our "co-pilot", Americans seemed to conclude, and WE had to protect the world against "God-less Communism", ad nauseum. So began almost 60 years of what was dubbed The Cold War, when we embarked on an insane campaign to "contain" Communism and we and the USSR nearly nuked the planet. Under Reagan, it got suicidal; nuclear war was not only declared "do-able" but downright respectable, with the morally repugnant doctrine of "strike first" being embraced enthusiastically by Pentagon and Congress alike. Thank God the USSR fell apart before our Hollywood Warrior (already showing the first signs of incipient Alzheimers) had a chance to push "that little red button". And then? Remember that "Peace Dividend" we were all supposed to enjoy now that "God-less Communism" would become capitalist and democratic? Uh huh, we did our "father knows best" arm-twisting routine on the former Soviet bloc, and did more harm than good. Some of the former Soviet states succeeded, but most did not. Russia became "democratic", for a while, then elected Putin, who's reputed to be curtailing these "democratic" tendencies quite well.
So go ahead---accuse me of hating America. It's the usual response when any of us questions the current political dogma, especially when the Republicans are running the country, it seems. Unfortunately, I'm not. If you'll recall the Bill of Rights, we still have Freedom of Speech---not much anymore, but some, thank God. And I DO thank God, too. Of course, HE seems to have been appropriated by the GOP (dubbed "God's Own Party) since Reagan, along with morality in general. But then, when you have God as your co-pilot, I guess it means He not only forgives you in advance but APPROVES of everything you do, regardless. Must be a nice feeling, knowing that--- sort of like what those Muslim fanatics must feel as they blow themselves up.
And that, my friend, is hubris-in-a-nutshell. Think about it.
