Maybe this is good. Maybe it's good that among the countless, unforeseen consequences of the last Bush administration's swaggering blunders in the Middle East is that scholars and activists there now perceive the U.S. as "irrelevant." That's how American University of Beirut's director of the Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs put it, right after telling the Washington Post that "Nobody's listening to America anymore."
Were it not for that administration's seven years of international bullying and autocratic role-modeling, maybe the Obama administration could have been bolder in its transoceanic proddings; having less of a preceding record in foreign regime-changing, it would have had far less reason to be so excessively gentle in its praise of Egypt's anti-Mubarak forces.
But "nobody's listening to America anymore," because we've cultivated "the perception ... of a superpower with few friends beyond Israel and a coterie of authoritarian Arab rulers," observed the Post. Had Barack Obama Franklin Roosevelt's four terms behind him by now to have worked in turning that perception around, maybe the perception would not be. But let's face it, George W. Bush's two terms of friendless authoritarianism and human-rights-violating brutality were an impossible legacy to overcome in the span of two years.
"Nobody's listening to America anymore." Well, perhaps they've also been tuning into America's cable networks and scanning our political blogs, only to be shocked, horrified and then permanently disaffected by our seeming descent into ideological madness and a polarized paralysis that makes things here look as though contemporary Iraq really has copied our "democratic" traditions.
Of course most Americans are not aligned participants in these broadcast- or cyber-lunacies, nonetheless we must strike the outside world as a lobotomized freakshow.
The far right ... well, what can one say? It's gone totally nuts, blasting the most demented alarms about an impendingly successful, worldwide-domination scheme hatched by a handful of Egypt's poor or imprisoned Muslim Brothers -- when, that is, it's not blasting equally diseased alarms about a former Constitutional law professor who's staging either a Stalinist or Hitlerian takeover of all we humbly cherish.
And the activist left? As it sits in the world's most stable as well as peacefully changeable democracy, it radiates a profoundly envious glee over other activists taking to the streets and getting their heads bashed in and having to bash others' (and on the heels of Tucson, no less).
It drools, I suspect, at archival film footage of those good old days of Vietnam war protests, what with the tear gas billowing and bloodied heads staggering, which it generationally missed. Ah, if only America's activist left could reassert same on the Street of Wall or on that other global symbol of ruthless government-corporate oppression, Pennsylvania Avenue.
What children, what utterly naive and irresponsible children -- who've access to network cameras and digitalized keyboards, as do their mirror doppelgangers on the far right.
So nobody in the Middle East is listening to America anymore, huh? Is that so surprising? Given our recent insufferability and today's more visible voices, why in God's name would they?
Here is an incredible evidence for 31 natural disasters less than 11-month away starting on 7th January 2012 to 7th November 2012 each encircling the globe for 4 days exactly along specified latitudes.
http://www.heliwave.com/Quran.and.2012_Latest.pdf
Please warn people now!
Posted by: Ali Adams | February 04, 2011 at 06:56 AM
Ssshhhh. Don't tell Tommy Friedman. He might decide the U.S. needs to go shock and awe on everybody and that anybody who says nobody listens to America anymore will have to suck.on.this.
Posted by: Bulworth | February 04, 2011 at 02:05 PM
Insanity sells. Reason goes into the remainder bin. The media and bloggerdom have all taken note of this.
If you've never read Neil Postman's 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, I recommend it. What he said there about the effect of television on our culture goes double for the Internet Age.
Posted by: janicket | February 04, 2011 at 06:58 PM
Sorry pm, I have to call a MAJOR false equivalency on you here.
"SEAN HANNITY, HOST: As the protest against Hosni Mubarak's regime and Egypt continue to rage, observers of the region are issuing a dire warning that Mubarak's down fall could usher in a much more dangerous regime one led by the Muslim Brotherhood.. look, it's very clear from 1928 when they were created. Their goal is to establish an Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law and their commitment is to Jihad. It hasn't changed."
"Not surprisingly (RUSH) LIMBAUGH did not approve of the actions of the Obama administration, saying that "Pharoah" Obama is inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to take over the country. Limbaugh's attitude seems to match up with other conservatives like JOHN BOLTON, who have argued the fall of Mubarak dictatorship could be a bad thing for the United States. Many conservatives claim democracy in Egypt will only invite the Muslim Brotherhood into power."
And Glenn Beck of course has been "the boy who cried Caliphate" for months, if not years.
Now I'm aware that there's a division among the mainstream conservatives between Islamophobes and Freedom Warriors, but there's plenty of notable conservatives fanning the Muslim Brotherhood flames to go around.
Please list some equivalent examples of people on the professional left (not random people posting comments at DailyKos) who "radiate a profoundly envious glee over other activists taking to the streets and getting their heads bashed in and having to bash others".
Absent evidence to the contrary, the only thing I find profound is the false equivalence on your part.
(I'd agree if you said there are notable voices on the left who are dramatically overlooking the strategic ramifications of how our response to Egypt affects other Middle East alliances with people rather similar to Mubarak. - but that's not how you put it.)
Posted by: JS | February 04, 2011 at 08:08 PM
JS me thinks you protest too much, perhaps because P M Carpenter rubbed some raw nerve by speaking the truth. Surely the left has been relentlessly hammering the President not only on Egypt but also for not being like FDR or LBJ. Never mind the fact during the presidency of these two "progressive" icons masses of the people were in the streets pushing these Presidents, and the country, to pass more progressive laws. Why in the world is LBJ held up as such a hero when he really had to respond to the masses of the people in the streets during the Civil Rights Movement? Sadly, today's "Professional leftist" are waging the revolution, not in the streets, but in cyberspace in the comfort of their homes, using their keyboards. I would respect the left bashers of President Obama if they were out in the streets, sacrificing their lives, to push for more progressive policies. While the left bashers of President Obama are not as delusional as Glenn Beck, they are just as comfortably smug as are those on the right.
Posted by: nathkatun7 | February 05, 2011 at 02:06 AM
Nobody litens to America because our conservative leadership (republican and democrat) are no longer behaving with morality. America does not follow our constitution or our stated priciples. Americas leadership only cares about profit, Israel and continued power and control for the conservative ruling power elite.
Posted by: Charlie | February 05, 2011 at 09:06 AM
Nobody listens to us anymore because we have become a society that worships a whole bunch of stupid instead of science. The plutocrats have co-opted our government, our media, our entire discourse.
Who the fuck wants to listen to a bunch of indignantly and willfully ignorant, overweight fascist assholes that seem to be the only voices that are loud enough to be heard?
Did anyone really care what the aristocracy had to say in the 18th century?
Until the boomers are out to pasture, we will never see any true change because as long as they have any say; our dialogue will be all about individualism over group think. After all aren't they the "me" generation?
Posted by: Charlie3 | February 05, 2011 at 10:44 AM
Irrelevance must certainly be one logical step in the decline of empire.
Posted by: Dave Price | February 05, 2011 at 12:45 PM
Charlie3,
I'm one of those boomers, but I would definitely say my politics are more in line with yours than what you attribute to the boomers who need to be "put out to pasture." Not all boomers are anal retentive azzzholes, only the selfish ones that believe they have the God given right to rule the world and not respect anyone else. It's not my style to live in fear of anything, whether it be scientific innovation, changing demographics, and/or fear of those who practice a religion other than Christianity. I think that the boomers who fear these things cling to that fear and work hard to impede progress in a rapidly changing world in which they see themselves as becoming less powerful and influential. Having power and being able to influence and control the lives of others have never appealed to me because I'm too much of a free spirit with a live and let live way of viewing the world.
Posted by: majii | February 05, 2011 at 02:06 PM
nathkatun7: Put. Down. the Strawman.
If you have a specific "refudiation" of my specific complaint, by all means feel free to introduce some evidence to counter the examples I gave in my previous comment.
I feel part of the reason that FOX and conservative talkers get away with lies is that instead of independent media calling them out for the slanted coverage and over-the-top rhetoric, media plays the David Broder/beltway insider 'pox on both their houses' card. (This is my criticism with pm's post here, which I otherwise agree with.)
There just aren't comparative voices on the left to compete with the right, and there's also no comparison for their relative ability to impact the national conversation. If we had a balanced media, would we really have spent two months debating a canard like "death panels"??
Posted by: JS | February 05, 2011 at 08:39 PM