Strongbow said:
Well I hate to break it to you that the United States impact on the rest of the world goes well beyond simply its military power for well over 60 years now.
No, of course it does. I'm sitting here wearing Nikes, I just drank a Coke and I work for a major US film studio. There is absolutely no doubting the US dominance of popular culture over the past 60 years, nor their dominance in international politics.
My comment was based on yours being a direct response to anitram. She's talking about the religious right using gay marriage as bait in the 2004 election, and your comment comes directly after that. It reads like you are saying that socially and/or via domestic policies, the world looks to the US for some sort of foundation or something. I am probably reading it wrong, but in that context, that's how it reads. If so, you couldn't be more wrong. I love the US, truly do. It is, however, very easy to sit there as I did last Friday night and watch about an hour of Fox News as they talk the most ignorant rubbish about the world and the people that inhabit it, interview someone like Mike Huckabee who somehow despite (you'd think) having absolutely every road block created by the common sense and mild average intelligence of the public in his way, is not just a serious contender for a major public office, but a serious contender for THE major public office, all while cutting over to LA for the latest updates on the Britney drama, and you just sit there wondering what the f*ck is in the water over there?
Anti-Americanism in some form is always going to exist while the US does have such dominance globally in various ways. If you're a dominant sports team in a competition, even if that team is loaded with good guys who got there purely by working hard for it, a third of people will admire you, a third will be respectfully competitive, and a third will just hate you. But if the team is perceived to be loaded with bad boys who play dirty, and do so simply because they believe it is their birthright to be # 1, well, you're going to lose loads of the respect and admiration, if not all of it.
Make no mistake - arguments over policies and doctrines aside - the Bush years and it's bringing of the conservative, religious, guns'n'jesus Republican right to front and centre on the global stage did (completely and totally unfairly) damage the image of the US greatly.
Of course the cultural dominance is still there, of course the political dominance is still there. However, for a couple of years there the image of some ignorant middle-American in a truck with a God Bless America bumpersticker, on his way to church, stopping to talk to someone with a camera, telling them that absolutely Iraq should be invaded because of 9/11 (before then not being able to find Iraq on a map), was, unfortunately, the image that US social/political beliefs had globally. It was wrong and unfair, but that was the easy beat up for a couple of years there. Anyone who paid any closer attention to the US, or travelled there since 9/11 (personally, I've made 4 US visits since then, love the place, will be back for nearly a month in Sept/Oct) would know that it wasn't reality, and now I think that is obvious to absolutely everyone.
It's why everyone is genuinely excited at the looming passing of the Bush years, and hence the massive interest in this election, and massive support for Obama globally. He seems to represent the US that people the world over honestly really do like a lot, rather than the last 8 years where it seems to have been represented by the US that people think is a little bit crazy, but mostly just woefully ignorant.
