As a Bruneian thousands of miles away from Uncle Sam, doubtless, I cannot understand the cultural forces behind american politics. But please don’t get me wrong, I have been to the USA and I love the country and I love the people (well not exactly everyone). I love the way democracy works in that country which shows that we dont have to resort to violence or anarchy like what happen in most other countries to exercise your freedom of thought and your voice. But as an outsider here is what I see the current situation in the US and its people.
Most Americans do not travel outside the country. In fact they see that the USA is the world. They can call the “world series” like the baseball world series even though no other countries are participating. Many of them think that only America is effective and that the rest of the world should unquestioningly follow her lead. To them America is, without question, the best country in the world, despite that these people very often have never even visited another country. I find that most of them are shockingly ignorant of the world and because of this they are very gullible. when their leaders say something negative of other countries, they take everything "as is". When Bush said that Saddam was building a nuke bomb and had WMD, most of them believed him.
Many Americans think only in the yin and yang pattern. Black or white, good or evil, right or wrong. you are “with me or against me”. Too them, an action is either right or wrong, you are either a liberal or a conservative. But the world, on the other hand, does not necessarily fit neatly into that pattern. Switzerland or even my country always prefer to be neutral. You can be a conservative on certain issues and sometimes you can be liberal about certain issues and sometimes you can be neutral on certain issues. It cannot be that if I differ from you, I am against you.
The US government is surprisingly very open to corruption but somehow it appears to be legal by way of campaign financing, lobbying, and “ I scratch your back and you scratch mine” cronyism. The jewish lobby for instance is so powerful and none of the Dems or GOP dare enough to make political snipes on Israel for fear of upsetting the fund flows. So we cannot see them as a neutral broker for the peace process in the middle east.
Your President used outright lies to pass legislations to curtail your freedom. He used the 911 fear and the al-Qaeda fear factor as a smokescreen to pass a series of Acts increasing executive power, to deny access to ever increasing amounts of information about his government and to forbid examination of controversial policies having nothing to do with the war.
I see McCain, the GOP presidential candidate as an opportunist who became wealthy by having an affair and subsequently marrying a woman from a very wealthy family after his 1st wife had an accident. He is no war hero. He got caught by the Viet-cong for not taking orders from his superior. I think his 5 years in the “vietnam hilton” made him an impulsive war mongering hawk simply to get even with everyone . This is a man who has an inexperienced running mate who used her beauty as a purely political ploy. This is a man, during an election campaign, refused media interviews on the flimsiest of excuses and now he wanted to postpone the debate. (I’m still waiting for the news of his appearance at the time of writing this blog)
So to me if you voted for this man, you are basically will be giving Bush a third term in office. and pray tell..if this happens I say God please help us!
