... and the home of the brave

The following is an excerpt of an editorial that recently appeared in the Egyptian press. The full article can be read here. 

Something has changed in the land of the brave: everyone is miserable, writes Gamil Mattar

On the one hand, the "American dream" has burst. This is the opinion of the British Financial Times, a confirmedly upbeat periodical, virtually by definition. In July 2006 it wrote that, henceforward, the American dream would remain precisely that -- a dream. American society had long taken heart from the erroneous perception that high growth rates were proof of economic progress; but the palpably evident fact that the returns from this progress are garnered only by the privileged few has put paid to the vision of America as a "land of opportunity".

On the other hand, the American people discovered that their unique immunity as a nation protected from the east and the west by two vast oceans is no longer as absolute as they had thought it was. The events of 11 September 2001 drove this home dramatically, but incidents on the borders with Canada and Mexico continue to make the point on a daily basis. Add to this the losses suffered by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing erosion of American prestige around the world.

Meanwhile, some members of the clique surrounding the US president continue to subscribe to the tactic that stirring alarm against foreign ogres is a means of alleviating the pervasive sense of insecurity that arises from domestic threats such as economic decline, rising crime rates, violence in schools and slums, declining educational standards, and deteriorating health and remedial care systems. But whether that new generation of US leaders knows it or not, harping on foreign threats only aggravates existing anxieties and propels people towards heightened pessimism. Indeed, only two weeks ago, David Thomson, writing in The Guardian, cautioned against the policy of waging wars abroad to cover up for failures at home, predicting that the attendant climate of intimidation and fear would lead to the spread of domestic violence.

Of all the peoples in advanced industrial societies, Americans are the most vulnerable to the ills of the market economy and the declining role of the state in social welfare. According to the New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman, current economic conditions in the US threaten a crisis of the magnitude of those that occurred in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico again, Thailand, Indonesia and Argentina again. Merely by drawing this comparison, Krugman betrays a sense of pessimism unusual among American commentators.

by welshTerrier2 (7 articles, 3 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 105 comments) on Saturday, February 16, 2008 at 9:53:25 PM