WOW! Its Chavez mania.
For the first time ever, the whacky lefties, liberals, and anti-war people are joined by the general public in talking about Hugo Chavez. Everyone else finally got an earful of the response to US hegemony by the South American government with the biggest mouth: Venezuela (pic, taken by me, from Ave. Baralt in Caracas. The ladies selling fried pork laughed at me when I snapped it).
In America, the mood seems to swing from disdain (how dare he call our president the devil) to admiration (good speach!). I enjoyed the speach so much, I was pretty surprised to find some friends of mine railing against it as inflammatory and disparaging. Sometimes I forget that many Americans, for reasons nobody can explain, still virulently support President Bush. It seems to me that even those who don't heavily support the President, but also don't have a strong opinion about the war, found Chavez's words disparaging.
In any case, the world this week got to see something I was lucky enough to see from the ground level up starting in (for me) 2004. There is a globe-spanning anti-US movement, and its gaining ground fast, and its not built on extremism. Its frighteningly built on a calculated belief that the United States is bad: bad for business, bad for human rights, bad for peace, and bad for humanity. As an American, its fine to have a knee-jerk reaction against such accusations, and I can honestly say I did have that reaction in 2004.
As I travelled around, talked to people, read the news from the other side of things, and saw entire US-backed governments crumble under popular pressure, I realized the weight that anti-american speach has in the world outside the stars and stripes. All across South America, people were putting plans in action to wake up and take control of their destinies, and put a stop to US intervention and control of their governments, bank accounts, and lives. I'm not just talking about the peasant farmers from Bolivia, I'm also talking about the bankers in Argentina, industrialists in Brazil, and the entire government of Venezuela. The movement is strong, its well-funded, its varied, and its devoted to fairness and equality - at the expense of the USA. There is one other key note - its broad-based. Jordanian street-vendors sell "Che" t-shirts at a fast clip. Bolivian bus-drivers put Osama Bin Laden on their rides and cruise through town. 187 nations met in Cuba to complain about subjugation. This thing is gaining steam, its organized, and its worldwide.
Speaking broadly, the US is not in a no-win situation. However, our government, as Chavez warns, needs to wake up and smell the not so free trade coffee. American exceptionalism has gotten to such an astounding level that an organized anti-US movement is likely overdue. We can undermine such a movement, simply, by being civil with developing countries. For example, less forced aerial drug spraying and more mulilateral drug policy work. Less bilaterial free trade agreements where we dump chicken leg quarters on unsuspecting countries with lots of chickens (Colombia, Russia), and more bilaterally positive agreements.
In any case, all of this is unlikely under the Bush administration, which is so out of touch it doesn't realize how badly it lost the battle of 'hearts and minds' this week at the UN. The US is a nation of great people, but the world is tired of holding its breath waiting for our government to live up to that promise.
So, I'd like to join other pundits tonight and predict a very dangerous course for the US in the near-future, unless there is a significant policy shift. We've seen exactly who will be aligned against us, and even if they aren't threatening militarily, they certainly should be numerically.
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