Posted on 10/16/2008 1:00:59 PM PDT by pissant
From my observation perch in Stanford, and as an English European turned 24/7-cable news-Webcast junkie, I notice that many Americans still suffer from a touching delusion that this is their election. How curious. Don't they understand? This is our election. The world's election. Our future depends on it, and we live it as intensely as Americans do. All we lack is the vote.
The world may not have a vote, but it has a candidate. A BBC World Service poll, conducted across 22 countries this summer, found Barack Obama was preferred to John McCain by a ratio of 4 to 1. Nearly half those asked said an Obama victory would "fundamentally change" their perception of the United States. And it certainly needs changing. Over the two terms of President Bush, the Pew Global Attitudes Project, a series of worldwide public opinion surveys, has documented what anyone who travels around the world knows: a substantial fall in the standing, credibility, attractiveness, and therefore power of the United States.
In the American context, Obama is black or African American. His candidacy exposes yet again how that thing anachronistically called race - meaning the legacy of slavery and segregation - is the hidden warp and woof of American politics. In the international context, Obama is three other things. First, he's one of us - the child of an increasingly mixed-up world, now aspiring to be the most powerful man in it. A true cosmopolitan: not just African American but also a little bit each of Hawaiian, Kenyan, Kansan, Indonesian.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I think P. J. O’Rourke penned the perfect retort for this in “Holidays in Hell” when he replied to very similar Drivel when acosted by a whiner in London:
“That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie - with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something, Mister Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD.
We’re the baddest-a**ed sons of b’s that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on your mother’s side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt-kickers of all time. When we snort cocaine in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your p*ss-annt metric numbers go. . . .
We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying “Cheerio”. Hell can’t hold our sock hops. We walk taller, talk loouder, spit further, . . . and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and s**t them out before lunch”.
“Americans still suffer from a touching delusion that this is their election. How curious. Don’t they understand?”
Euroweenies, varieties:
“English”, Racial Characteristics: Cold-blooded queers with nasty complexions and terrible teeth who once conquered half the world but still haven’t figured out central heating. They warm their beers and chill their baths and boil all their food, including bread. An intensely snobbish group, but who exactly they’re snubbing is an international mystery. Lately they’ve been getting their comeuppance world power-wise, as their shabby, antiquated, and bankrupt little back alley of a country slowly winds down like the ill-crafted clockwork playthings of which their undersized children are so fond...
`Foreigners Across the World’, PJ O’Rourke
Do us a favor and give up on us now.
Incidentally I thought the Hoover Institution was an islet of sanity in the sea of Socialist academia. Has that stronghold fallen also ?
[Above is inspired by Anglo-lefties; no offense intended, Anglo-FRiends. Eh wot?]
Glad to meet another who appreciates “The World According to PJ”.
Nice to meet you as well!
Ooops - too late - they already have. British judges have OK’d the rule of sharia law in England and Scotland.
Yeah, ya see, a couple of hundred years ago, we kinda had the issue reversed: y’all were trying to tell us what to do, but wouldn’t give us a vote. I know ya think we got kinda uppity about it, but frankly it cheesed us off enough that we said “if we can’t vote in your elections, you can’t tell us what to do”; this sorta made a whole lotta sense to us. Youse guys were so keen on telling us what to do while denying us a vote, a whole lotta us ended up casualties. NOW you wanna vote in OUR elections? sorry bubba, don’t think so. We kinda went over this in detail back then, and aren’t keen on even coming close to it again.
This is our election. The world's election. Our future depends on it, and we live it as intensely as Americans do. All we lack is the vote.
No, it isn't. I admire the Taj Mahal but wishing I owned it doesn't make it mine. Nor is the election of an American president all that vital a thing from the point of view of a farmer in Gabon or an Aborigine looking for water in the Outback. It is, to be sure, grist for the livings of the international chattering class, but believe it or not they're not all that important either.
An exaggerated sense of the importance of this election is explicable by an exaggerated sense of importance of U.S. foreign policy, which is the signal characteristic of the concerned Left at the moment. The "America as the root of all evil" approach does not depend on Mr. Bush and never has; it is as silly as the "America is the root of all good" meme promulgated by certain of us with more patriotic sense than historical but with a far more malign intent. It leads to an easy, instant scapegoat because it is far easier to point out evil in the world than good. Well, more popular, anyway.
Actually, the "world," meaning that class of journalists, entertainers, and academics who feel entitled to run it, lacks quite a bit more than the vote. It lacks the obligation to pay for the programs initiated by the new President and it lacks the necessity to live with the results. It is the political equivalent of saying "Life would be great if you'd only cut off your arm," and later saying "Oh, well, I guess I was wrong." To the uninvolved and unaccountable anything is possible.
Similarly, it is difficult to credit the point of view that dismisses race as a concept but at the same time feels that some watershed in morality will be crossed if only America elects a black President. You really can't have it both ways. But for those Europeans who do feel the latter there is a much more immediate solution in a place where they do have the vote - elect one. Then lecture. Or shut up.
het Tim, KISS MY A**
“Perhaps the best reason to crush Osama Hussein is to dash the hopes of the globalist, leftist pricks like this guy”
Well said!.....all libs are globalists and care ssssoooooo much what the rest of the world thinks of us. Piss on ‘em!
What an insufferable, arrogant twit. Bugger off, limey!
Timothy Garton Ash, I offer to you my sincere condolences for your having been born in the wrong country.
I hope in time you may become more at peace with where you were born, and help that nation emulate the USA, so it can be a better place to live.
I’m happy you are not allowed to vote here, though. You evidently don’t understand this place very well.
Why do they always say Obama’a mom is from Kansas? She never lived there. She grew up in Washington and Hawaii states...not Kansas.
wait till all the foreign money that went into his campaign comes out and people get subpoenae
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