The sun sets on America the beautiful

April 14, 2007 on 6:55 pm | In Uncategorized |

I’m sure the author of this post thinks it’s hilarious. Me, I think it’s a depressing illustration of the mentality that afflicts a significant proportion of Americans. It reeks of their paranoia, their monumental disdain for any culture but their own, and explains their obsession with interfering in everybody else’s business while expressing outrage if other nations try the same thing.

Question: “If you could wipe one country off the planet with a snap of your fingers, which country would it be and why?” — D-Vega

Answer: “Wipe one country off the planet” seems so harsh. Let’s say, if, with one snap of my fingers, I could move everyone in a country to a lovely planet elsewhere, where they could live in harmony with the land while their neighbors stole their land back on earth, which one would it be?

 

Honorable Mentions: Pakistan, Mexico, France, Syria, Russia, & Somalia.

 

#5) Saudi Arabia: The intellectual wellspring of radical Islam is in Saudi Arabia. Anywhere you find radical imams or terrorists, you’ll usually find some Saudi or Iranian money not far behind.

 

#4) North Korea: A backwards country run by a tyrant with nukes. North Korea adds nothing to the world and is extremely dangerous. We’d be better off without them.

 

#3) Iran: The world’s foremost terrorist supporting state and currently the biggest threat to world stability. Not only would getting rid of Iran be a great step forward in the war on terror, it would make the nuke question irrelevant.

#2) China: Long-term, the Chinese are the next great threat to world stability. Plus, they support rogue regimes across the globe, they’re ramping up their military spending, and they’re greedily eyeing Taiwan.

#1) The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories: Well, at least they’d finally have their own state, right? The Palestinians are the most violent, quarrelsome, and degenerate people on earth and as a bonus, removing them would create peace in the Middle-East for a few weeks until Israel’s other neighbors could figure out another pretext to start a fight over.

I should explain that this bloke is not some obscure blogger with delusions of importance; he writes for one of the most widely-read right-wing (self-described) blogs in the USA and is a professional adviser to a declared Republican candidate in next year’s presidential elections.

His deranged rant about China is the most troubling aspect. The irony of an apologist for the Bushistas’ invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq calling another country ‘a threat to world stability’ is obviously lost on him. Likewise his whine about a nation with five times the population of the USA ‘ramping up its military spending’ to about 10% of what America spends each year. And the bit about ‘greedily eyeing’ Taiwan simply ignores the fact that until recently Taiwan was part of China. Once again, the irony is rich coming from an American who I’m sure would be the first to defend the Monroe Doctrine that declares the whole of South America a subservient region where the USA reserves the right to do whatever it bloody well likes without explaining or apologising to anyone, least of all the South Americans.

The writer, John Hawkins, is a deeply repellant creature but unfortunately he is typical of a group in the USA that isn’t going anywhere no matter who happens to win the next presidential election. They are incapable of self-knowledge, utterly convinced of their own rightness, contemptuous of the rest of the world including large swathes of their fellow-countrymen and absolutely dismissive of democratic principles or international co-operation. They regard global warming as a liberal myth and seriously believe that ‘Islamic extremism’ is the most important threat the USA has ever faced.

They are dangerous zealots and there are lots of them. No doubt I will be accused of exaggeration but I believe the days when we could call the USA a democratic country are over, and Australians urgently need to re-examine the nature of our relationship with America before we get sucked into the increasing ugliness that will characterise what was once a beacon and a model to the rest of the world.

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  1. […] Ken Lovell takes a look at the oft-times depressing American political blog scene; where posters - on both sides - tend to be far more forthy-mouthed than over here. Still on frothing at the mouth, Legal Eagle provides the definitive analysis of the whole Alan Jones/ACMA brouhaha. 11. SL: Highly recommended [↩] […]

    Pingback by Club Troppo » Missing Link — April 17, 2007 #

  2. Ken, I’ve read this stuff on non-political blogs as well, but last night I read those comments and listened to News Radio struggling with the reality of the Hokie massacre. It’s not so hard to see how a lone Korean kid can get that desperate. His race will ensure that Americans won’t have to look too close at themselves.

    (I’m surprised they didn’t vote to ship Gaia off to another planet.)

    Comment by theHippy — April 18, 2007 #

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