(AFP/File/Tim Sloan)
Posted on 10/15/2003 1:02:48 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The era of the sensitive man is officially coming to an end. From Sacramento to Jerusalem, from Bogotá to Baghdad, across all latitudes and longitudes, the masses are flocking toward the strong, choosing the tough over the thoughtful, the swaggering over the serene.
The international political arena increasingly resembles the old Saturday Night Live game show "Quién es mas Macho?" Contestants tried to guess who was more macho, deciding if, for example, John Wayne had more testosterone than Charles Bronson.
Already Israel's Shimon Peres has declared that Israel has its own Arnold Schwarzenegger in office with the redoubtable Ariel Sharon as prime minister. Peres, the opposition's elder statesman, did not intend the comment as a compliment. But clearly, Israeli voters have flocked to the former general who presents himself as their relentless warrior and protector. You can almost see the cape fluttering behind him.
Remember the old appeal of the man who was in touch with his feminine side? It sounds like a quaint memory of another millennium. It is. The last hurrah of the sensitive man was Bill Clinton's presidency. The man who told us "I feel your pain" was replaced by the president who vows to make others feel their pain ever more sharply, unless they behave. President Bush even walks as if making room for a pair of six-shooters hanging low on his hips.
The walk is not unlike that of another muy macho president, Vladimir Putin of Russia. The former judo champion, implacable foe of Chechen separatists, appears to accommodate an imaginary sword at his side when he strides with reassuring self-confidence.
As far away as Colombia, voters have said they've had enough of politicians who offer compromise and dialogue, in the end having little, if anything, to show for their sensitivity. After decades of a low-intensity civil war, and after electing a president who promised to talk with leftists insurgents until achieving peace, the Colombian people tired of endless talk in the face of relentless bombings and kidnappings by anti-government guerrillas. The time for the warrior president, Alvaro Uribe, was at hand. The tough-talking Uribe was elected after promising to increase military spending and win the war by sheer force.
All politics may indeed be local, but there is no denying that the pendulum swings widely, casting its shadow over the political stages of nations all over the globe. Political soul mates Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher shared the global political stage at the same time. So did a pair of liberals who sought to revitalize their parties, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Blair, of course, remains in office, trying mightily to morph into a leader for our time. The embattled Blair may have out-machoed the British public when he threw his support behind the war in Iraq. Voters fault Blair for being "Bush's poodle." In fact, he does not seem tough enough. There is little chance that a leader more in touch with his feminine side will replace Blair.
A few months ago, on a flight to the Middle East, a British man sitting next to me asked if it is true that Blair is enormously popular in the United States. The young entrepreneur, returning to his home in the United Arab Emirates, told me he's no fan of Blair's. But he added, "I wish my country would protect me with as much determination as the U.S. government protects Americans." Regardless of views on the Iraq war, there is a pervasive sense of insecurity throughout the world. Everyone yearns to feel protected.
Ironically, if the actions of the muscular leaders make the security situation worse, the voters will feel even more inclined to seek shelter in the shadows cast by their muscle-bound leaders. Thoughtfulness has gone out of style.
That is, of course, until the pendulum swings again.
Frida Ghitis of Decatur writes about world affairs. She is the author of "The End of Revolution: a Changing World in the Age of Live Television."
Ba-rother
Frida's idea of "sensitive".
This hurts my feelings...
Sensitive? Lip biting does it for Frida, huh? I wonder if that's during a speech or when he's raping her.
The author's name appears to sound like a disease.
Frida Don't Ghitis it.
Silly us. But wait, isn't that the idea behind being a nation?
Leaders, thank God.
When I "feel" this, I am protected. Grow up, Frida.
The debate was not just an intellectual, philosophical exercise. It spilled far beyond, into every day life, and into history. It sparked wars and built alliances; it guided governments and fueled uprisings. It focused on one of the most important questions a society must answer: Which road leads to a better future? What is the way to the greater good?
In the United States, the Great Debate that had framed political discussions in much of the world never got very far. The question had been answered almost before it was asked. But for the 20 year-veteran CNN correspondent, Frida Ghitis, the debate is not over yet. "In Moscow," she writes, "working for CNN's coverage of those remarkable days, I visited the Patrice Lumumba University just at the time the Soviet Union collapsed. Students from Third World countries seemed to be walking around in a daze. Many of them had come to Moscow to learn about Communism, to learn how to replicate the Soviet model in their countries. Now the plan for their lives had suddenly evaporated."
But the plight of leftist students was almost trivial compared to that of armed revolutionaries whose side had surrendered in mid-battle. In the Amazon jungle, for instance, Marxist guerrillas didn't follow the news moment by moment. But the news arrived like a crushing enemy ambush -- a defeat of the worst kind. And the extent of the carnage was almost incomprehensible. The source of their inspiration, Moscow, was conceding ideological defeat. What next?
End of Revolution takes us further into the world drama, where CNN images were cut off from the viewers. From Latin America's troubled social volcanoes (the author herself was born and grew up in Colombia) the strife in South America and East Asian, from Eastern European experimentation with shock-therapy and ethnic definitions to the Marxist guerrillas and Leftist intellectuals, this was a rude awakening. In her Swindler's List, Frida Ghitis records her firsthand observations from ground zero. She's been there, she's seen it. She tells us how the new world order smells close up and depicts the faces of globalization -- without makeup . She has an eye for the cynical MREs -- Morally Repugnant Elites as they are called in Haiti -- as well for the ordinary documentary material which is called "people."
The End of History? No, the End of the Workers' Revolution.***
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