Posted on 12/21/2011 10:34:56 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Essay: Are we witnessing the U.S. empire head into its final decline? Obama is drifting. Republican candidates inspire little confidence. But viewed from Europe, which is more skeptical than ever, it’s worth taking a closer look at a nation with the Peter Pan gift of never growing up.
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BERLIN -- When it’s not busy with its own problems, Europe looks across the Atlantic and shakes its head. America would appear to be on an unstoppable downward spiral.
While neo-conservative dreams of the “unipolar moment” disperse, troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, the ups and the downs of the dollar depend on China, and Standard & Poor's has lowered its credit rating - and all the while, the country is politically paralyzed.
Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can!” now seems like a stale joke. Nothing can move the president, and Congress is busy blocking itself. Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on a savings program, while Republicans prepare to block an extension of tax cuts that Obama introduced to try and improve the economic situation.
Conservative hatred of the president is so great that they would rather choke the modest upturn than allow him to enjoy a modest success. Under George W. Bush, the U.S. was a source of great irritation for Europeans; under Obama, it just seems irrevelant. Seldom has America seemed so alien.
The sense of alienation becomes full-blown apprehension when one takes a look at the Republican candidates for president. An early favorite was the execution-happy governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who doesn’t believe in evolution, does believe in punishing gay intercourse, and thinks the economic crisis is a lesson from God.
Then came Herman Cain. The Baptist, a former manager of a pizza chain and proponent of a flat tax, would prohibit both immigration and abortion. Before allegations of sexual harassment took the steam out of his campaign, “The Hermanator” was a darling of the Tea-Party movement.
Another star is Michele Bachmann. She believes that “Intelligent Design“ should be taught in schools, calls climate change “voodoo,” thinks that the movie “The Lion King” is gay propaganda (because the music was written by Elton John) and that Obama is a Marxist.
But now it seems, only two candidates really stand a chance: Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. A Mormon, Romney belongs to a religion that not long ago believed blacks and Native Americans were inferior, and openly supported polygamy. (The Church of the Latter-Day Saints has since moved away from these positions.)
Gingrich, as Republican leader in the House of Representatives and the country’s “moral majority,” led the move to impeach Bill Clinton for his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. As has since been revealed, the thrice-married serial adulterer Gingrich was at the time having an affair with a 20-something staffer whom he has since married, and for whom he converted to Catholicism. To call his behavior hypocritical is understating the case.
So is this America? A declining, decadent empire that like late Rome is overrun by populists and fundamentalists telling uneducated masses what they want to hear as the barbarians gather along its borders?
Where "populist" is an honorable thing
Caution is advised here. America has often been written off, particularly when its president is in a weakened position: think of the great Lyndon B. Johnson’s last years, the paranoid end of Richard Nixon, the “malaise” diagnosed by Jimmy Carter, or Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression. And the country always managed to pull itself back together -- there was always a Franklin D. Roosevelt or a Ronald Reagan to give the U.S. a sense of its own identity and its place in the world.
As far as the Tea Party movement is concerned, it is part of a long tradition of anti-authoritarian revolts against Washington. Not for nothing does it take its name from the first Tea Party, when by way of protest against import duties imposed by the British parliament, citizens of Boston went aboard ships and dumped cargoes of tea into the harbor.
America was founded by people who were allergic to any concentration of power and it remains a country of countless small towns that mistrust the Big City, Big Business, and Big Government.
At the end of the 19th century, poor farmers formed the People's Party, aka, the Populists, that was hostile to banks, large property owners and other elites. Even today the word “populist” has an honorable ring to it. America remains an anti-authoritarian nation, and its reluctance to grow up is one of its strengths. College drop-out Steve Jobs would probably never have had a career in Germany.
And the Republicans? Without trying to gloss over their irresponsible policy of blocking measures in Congress, or their susceptibility to being seduced by people like Sarah Palin, one can’t help but be impressed by the new ideas emanating from the party following the demise of the Neocons – one thinks of Cain’s tax reform, or some of the ideas of libertarian Ron Paul.
Even if Newt Gingrich’s past or Mitt Romney’s religion cause some heads to shake, both are experienced center-right politicians. As Governor of Massachusetts, Romney introduced health care reforms that formed the basis for the “Obamacare” so despised by radical Republicans. And Gingrich has become a bona fide ideas man, rather than a hardened ideologue, who worked with Hillary Clinton on health reform.
Each one of them would be a good challenger for Barack Obama. Yes, the president is still very much there, and it would be a mistake to write him off. If he manages to win re-election in 2012, he just might provide the leadership that Europe – itself, deeply divided and drifting into recession – urgently needs.
Wishful thinking on the part of the Euros. If we become irrelevant, Europe becomes part of the caliphate (and irrelevant).
I was going to post a comment but decided it wasn’t worth my time.
I was then that I realized just how irrelevant THEY are.
Who cares what they think!!!
Of course not.
That future Caliphate called Europe is calling us irrelevant? I have great faith that the American people will get their act together and we will turn things around. That’s likely to start in about a year. Who in their right mind expects Europe to do so. Not me.
We are on the verge of irrelevance. Progressives have infiltrated and perverted all levels of American government and society, and are twisting and contorting everything they touch to make us more like Europe. The best, perhaps only hope that I can see is the Tea Party, which is filled with people who routinely ask the question “how did we get here”. And thankfully, there’s enough information available to easily answer that question. We Americans have always performed the best when we have had our backs up against the wall.
You’re-a-pee-on or European. You pick.
Hmmmm, I imagine it’s like it is with many of us. We have a view of Europe that is skewed and they have one of us that is skewed. True there are elements of truth in both points of view. But the whole truth? No, not even close.
If this writer’s point of view is typical of the common European it’s no wonder they are always surprised at what we do here in America. They just don’t get us... and that is probably a very good thing.
Irrelevant? Okay, tommorrow, All US NATO Forces are to return home, all subsidies abroad halted, all ICBMs and ABM’s will be recalled as well, and all import of European Goods shall be halted...
While this administration is a disaster, anyone who thinks the US is irrellevant in the world is flat out ignorant. The issue here is they want the US to bail out Europe, the ECB is too weak willed and impotent to do anything... The great EURO experement is failing, and the players with stability are being forced to bail out those without...
If there is a part of the world whos relevance is questionable, I don’t think its the US.
Typical leftist Eurotrash mindset. I would rather be irrelevant than extinct which is the inevitable course Western Europe has taken.
The fact that a European writer notices that America is becoming less influential is NOT diminished by a stream of posters that bray about Europe being more irrelevant. I, for one, do not care how irrelevant Europe is, and continues to be. I care FAR more about the fact that our decline continues, and that we need to do something about it.
Irritating piece because it’s so full of shallow misconceptions. Europeans understand America the way a 12 year old understands romance.
The gentleman that wrote this has a very simplistic view of America. Therefore anything he writes concerning America is intellectually flawed and not worth discussing.
Exactly what I was thinking as I read the piece.
The bottom line is this: It is better to be in a state of 'becoming' irrelevant than to already BE irrelevant. At least we still have opportunities to reverse our fortunes.
“...I realized how irrelevant THEY are.”
Exactly so.
We have more troops, tanks, fighter planes, bomber planes, aircraft carriers, submarines and nuclear missiles than all of Europe combined. Socialism has raped Europe of its wealth, power and relavence. If we are not careful, socialism will do the same to the USA as well.
Oh, and did I mention that our military is comprised of 100% volunteers? European and Asian nations still depend upon conscripts to fill their ranks. So, which nation(s) is truly weak?
Piss on Europe and Asia. The USA bailed them out of two world wars, sacrifed hundreds of thousands of our citizens, rebuilt their nations from the ground up and then defended them during the Cold War, and NOW they want to throw shiite at as like a bunch of monkeys in the zoo?
Again, piss on Europe, Asia and the Middle East! They are a bunch fugging, worthless freeloading grifters and they should be on their knees thanking the USA for defending them, along with providing them with toilets, electricity, movies, television, newspapers, computers, internet, GPS, Rock n Roll, automobiles, airplanes, microwaves, satellite communication, solar panels, Levi’s jeans, hot dogs, apple pie, Coca Cola and damn near everything else that they take for granted. WE CREATED ALL OF THAT STUFF! (French food sucks! Chinese products suck, too!)
FU to the rest of the world, because without the USA they would all still be running around barefoot, ignorant, poor and destitute while living in huts made from mud & straw with dirt floors.
May God continue to bless the USA!
May God damn BHO, George Soros, ACORN, the DNC, La Raza, the ACLU, CAIR, Islam, socialists, athiests, communists, marxists, liberal elites and every other form of human scum sucking bastards that want to make the USA a failed republic!
JMHO!
Ernie
(I feel much better now that I got that off my chest.)
Europeans now define their sophistication by how appallingly ignorant they can be about the United States.
I wonder what they’ll say if Mitt gets it...or Paul!!
I recall from a few years ago, if we pulled our troops out of Germany we could ballance the budget. Europe does not pay for its defense, the US does. If Europe paid for the cost of their defense, we would be OK
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