Winner Takes Nothing

Like it or not, whatever strides the U.S. has made since WWII has had a tremendous impact on the rest of the world. In every way, America has defined the standard of modernity. Every success, every setback, receives huge coverage in the foreign press. Often our political travails influence the policies set by governments around the globe.

It is normal for us - even regarded as inconsequential - when our political parties bad-mouth each other. Republican administrations are regularly attacked by Democrats who have been known to say anything they think they can get away with. We pretty much expect as much: Bush accused of favoring the rich; Bush labeled as war-monger; Bush blamed for Katrina; Bush blamed for the World Trade Center bombing. We take it all in stride, even if The New York Times, standard bearer for the Democrat Party, presents it as truth and then retracts it on page 47 a month later. Then there is ‘global warming’, a clever send-up to label America as excessively wasteful, even to the detriment of the planet. There’s the perennial issue of the poor, the homeless, the hungry (never mentioned during Democrat administrations) and, now, the overtly greedy that are said to deny the rest of the planet its daily bread.

Every bit of such claptrap originates from within our own borders. We can identify it as an effort to score points against the opposing party. Much of it is eventually discredited as pure rhetoric. But once its out there in print or on the net, others pick it up and build their case against America.

A prevalent notion abroad, for instance, is that America is a racist country. In fact, any opposition to Obama’s policies, for whatever reason, is liberally portrayed as racist sentiment against a black president. The fact that we elected a black president in the first place is conveniently forgotten.

You hear it everywhere - in India, in South America, in Africa - that America is a racist nation. They get it from reading the likes of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, whose opinion columns are read widely throughout the world. It is only those who have actually traveled and lived here who know that race is not an issue for ordinary Americans; that England and Russia are far worse when it comes to that.

We’ve been accused often enough to understand it’s just a political ploy. We no longer take it seriously and tend to ignore it completely. It’s simply our own political operatives attempting to score points, points that are then picked up overseas to serve more sinister purposes.

It might have been good if we had nipped our tendency for engaging in some of our more extreme rhetoric in the bud sooner. Democrats, now turned Fabian socialists, in particular have succeeded in turning the domestic propaganda wars into a worldwide crusade. What started as domestic political rhetoric has grown hotter and is now threatening to topple the very foundations of our way of life. They have recruited allies among the ranks of our enemies; and, now, we are finding our nation in peril.

To a large extent, what we are experiencing today has been self-inflicted. The poison wells up from within our own institutions which have been infiltrated (by ourselves) and corrupted. Our present troubles are a consequence of our two-party system being at war rather than cooperating. It’s a repeat of Sherman’s (march to the sea) scorched earth policy. Winner takes nothing.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/