Wednesday

Having missed last week’s blog due to a heck of a lot of work, I find myself this weekend in a city half way around the world. It is cold here, foggy, but festive, and everyone is winding down for the end of the year festivities.

I’ve been traveling in Asia during the past three weeks and interestingly, across the breadth of this continent, whenever people learn where I am from – where I live and work, they accost me with versions of the same question: “Why do Americans support Bush so overwhelmingly?” I try to explain the nature of the political equation, and make the case that there is opposition to Bush’s foreign (especially Iraq) policy – but thus far have been unable to really sound convincing to anyone. The overwhelming perception is that Americans as a unit have just gone off the rocker, so to speak, and that they have embarked upon a path that will destroy them and every good thing in the world. Today’s Steve Bell cartoon makes a similar case, for Britain, where, about a month ago, I encountered similar sentiments.

What is becoming increasingly clear to me is that the United States is increasingly isolated in much of this world – to the point that it is perceived as a rouge state. The tragedy is that with the perception of the US as a country that promotes the use of might rather than right as the normative principle in international politics, many of the issues on which it has legitimately intervened, such as human rights, might be dismissed, at least by some regimes, as nothing but empty rhetorical posturing. Having rendered the idea of human rights redundant by its excesses in Guantanamo Bay, and having elected a regime under dubious circumstances in the previous elections, the two traditional post war platforms of the US’s international rhetoric – human rights and democracy, are now seen, by many around the world, as diluted by the United States itself.

It appears to me that regardless of the outcome of the 2004 election, it is extremely important for Americans to join with freedom and democracy loving people around the world in other parts of the world – to somehow make these concepts alive, important, and critical once again. Perhaps, if we can’t influence the outcome of the election, we can at least ensure that grass-roots movements that promote such causes survive. One way to do this is to contribute to and support any good human rights, environmental, or such organization in the United States. Every organization is now feeling the pinch, and this season might be a good place to start upholding their importance – especially, the critical role they play in shaping public debate, and on occasion, fighting for the very freedom of individuals and peoples around the world. So, if you are considering writing out checks to buy gifts for your relatives and friends, consider writing another for any organization of your choice that promotes that values you’d like to see America represent.

Comments

[Saoirse]

It's interesting to note that the warning claxions during the Reagan Era about the increasingly-imperial presidency now seem almost quaint. The Caesars called themselves "imperator" - or "commander" - rather than "rex" not ONLY because of the danger of a rebellion of the Romans against the institutionalization of a hereditary monarchy, but to emphasize - as Napoleon did, putting the laurel crown on his head with one hand, grasping his sword-hilt with the other - that it was above all command of the forces of violence that was the source and focus of their power. The reverence which (maybe rightly, in this narrow sense) was felt for the original GW was due to his making the American Commander-in-Chief role seem quite distant from the sort of Cromwellian nightmare it might have become. But now, ever more, the President is cast (and, in these War On Terrorism times, uncritically accepted as) as the Commander-in-Chief above all, and the very idea that there could be abstract ideals with capital letters - Democracy, Human Rights, Civic Virtue - which demand the allegiance even of the Commander-in-Chief is everywhere discredited. America has ALWAYS been on the road to Empire, and therefore has ALWAYS been turning to ideology what should have been ideals (those capitalized nouns above), but in the past, there was a MIXTURE of the ideological and the genuinely ideal-focused in the public presentation of policy. Now, realpolitik has been sanctified, and in ANY split between the abstract ideal and the Commander, not only is there considered to be no obligation to hold the Commander (and the apparatus of the State that flows on down from there) to a real allegiance to Democracy and to internationally-recognized Human Rights, but even to state that the ideological mainstays of the Commander's authority - Defender of the Fai... oh, sorry: of Democracy and of Human Rights - is called treason.

Given the massive isolationism of the majority of the country, calling on America to live up to its obligations to Carry The Torch seems absurd.

So what then?