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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 5/13/09

Will Democracy Forever Remain an Illusion?

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Message Siv O'Neall
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The country that was

The United States is sinking deeper and deeper into the poisoned slough of their own making. Moral turpitude goes hand-in-hand with naivete' and arrogance. And nothing seems to have changed if it's not that there is now a president with acute intellectual abilities rather than an insensitive and illiterate clown who couldn't hold a book right side up.

Both men are devoted to the belief that the United States is the savior of the planet and anything goes in the interest of keeping their country number one, including invasions of countries harboring supposed or invented enemies and cold-blooded support of dictatorships that are willing to do the bidding of Washington.

Rather than doing something productive to get out of the impasse that we are presently in, the new President has been a big disappointment. He is digging the nation - and thus the world - deeper and deeper into an increasingly insoluble situation where the United States is never willingly going to give up on its presumed status as a world leader. As the U.S. is sinking, it is most likely going to drag the rest of the world along, or the parts of it that are not clever enough to take steps to assure their independence.

As far as the environment goes, there is no escaping the ecological disaster that was created by the Big Corporations, the pharmaceutical and chemical giants in the first place. Industrialized farming is wreaking havoc on small farmers and on the environment. So far the government agencies that are supposed to deal with anti-trust laws, financial regulation and environmental safety are turning their attention to Big Instant Money rather than to lasting benefits for the people and for the nation. And for the world.

Looking at the situation from my side of the Ocean, I see Europe getting increasingly anxious to do Washington's bidding, from Gordon Brown, to Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, even though Angela Merkel often wants to have her own way. The Western world is going more and more neoliberal and anti-democratic. But there are countries and even continents where attention is being paid to the oncoming downfall of the presumed superpower. It is both the richest and the most breathtakingly mean and narcissistic country in the world with a people and an administration who go on firmly believing that they are the saviors, the moral strength of the planet.

The previous administration managed, as nobody ever before, to make enemies out of a huge portion of the rest of the world, and not just the Muslim countries. Some things have changed with the new administration's taking the reins. Europe now seems desperately eager to think well of the new President, but they are nevertheless putting stops to many attempts by U.S. and multinational corporations to heavy-foot it through the world, poisoning the environment in the process. European countries are all more than willing to play the game when it comes to the free market and neoliberalism, since it's the politicians who make the rules and they and their corporate buddies are the ones who make fortunes out of the neoliberal system. But enough is enough and the people take to the streets to show their opposition to cold-blooded profiteering and cutting back on job security and social spending - the welfare safety net that is more badly needed than ever in times of economic crisis such as we are seeing today. In Europe people at least make their voices heard, which, not amazingly, in view of the thorough brainwashing through non-stop propaganda, is not the case in the United States. News is entertainment and the people never really get to see the truth from the media of what is going on in the world.

The approval figures of the European leaders are falling into the sewers. The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, can well go on hopping around the globe believing that he's the savior of the rich world. People don't even laugh any more. He is not just a clown, he is an ill omen, a foreboding of what is to come if the world leaders are left alone in their destruction of a civilized world.

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Siv O'Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y. and traveled extensively throughout the U.S, Europe, and other continents, including several trips to (more...)
 

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