Brazil Welcomes Bush
Bush travels to Latin America and is greeted by this: (from BBC News)
In Brazil, more than 10,000 protesters (according to BBC news) turned out in the capital of Sao Paulo to protest the arrival of America's appointed President, Georgoe Bush. I wonder if our good friend, Francis Holland, is participating :-)
This is a time when world opinion is solidly against America. This is dramatically show by a recent poll that showed that people view America as marginally MORE destabilizing a force than North Korea and only slightly less destabilizing than Iran. To the world, America is part of the Axis of Evil.
This is played out in Latin America as well. In Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, strongly anti-American, socialist presidents have been elected by democratic vote and are extremely popular. Throughout Latin America, including in Brazil, Peru and Chile, leftist governments have been voted into office. In Nicaragua Daniel Ortega, the boogie man of the Reagan era, has been elected President.
We are not popular in the world, not even in our own backyard. Brazil President Lula's own party is protesting Bush's arrival!
But I am not so worried about this trip. Sure people hate us in Latin America thanks to Bush's stupid and insane foreign policy. But at least he isn't visiting Chile. The president of Chile is a women. And we know what kind of creepy groping Bush is known for when meeting a woman head of state:
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protests | Brazil | George Bush | President
Can't Celebrate That
Submitted by JJ Ross on 9 March 2007 - 12:48pm.
In our representative form of government, I just can't cheer the depths to which our world representative's image has sunk, nor help delegitimize our government and institutions generally. It is my very least favorite thing about hanging with progressives/liberals/whatever we are and about partisan politics in particular.
My definition of winning doesn't include anything that's happened lately in politics.
Who said I was celebrating?
Submitted by mole333 on 9 March 2007 - 2:00pm.
Where in my diary am I celebrating? I am expressing disgust at how our image has fallen. To think we could have had the very well respected and intelligent Gore in charge!
It is only your partisan anti-partisanship that would see this as celebrating.
Indignation
Submitted by JJ Ross on 9 March 2007 - 3:40pm.
is warranted if you were so completely misunderstood (in which case I do apologize) and if anyone really did say you WERE celebrating -- did I? I believe I said quite honestly and with great sorrow only that *I* could not, an opinion based on many things from many places over many months and voiced here for the first time ever, as a matter of fact. Where I felt it would in fact matter.
So trying to understand why the cumulative effect of creating such posts might seem that way online would be more personally charming AND politically practical for the managing editor of such discussions. (Imo and that's all it is, of course, my opinion -- whatever I am called for mentioning it.)
Just wanted to make clear
Submitted by mole333 on 9 March 2007 - 4:04pm.
Indignation not aimed at you (partisan anti-partisan comment was largely snark) though I did think you interpreted my post as celebrating the portrayal of our President as Hitler. Just wanted to make clear that no one was celebrating.
Such posts point out the disgust that is felt here and around the world at what is done by this administration. Celebration was never mentioned.
I Hope That's Right
Submitted by JJ Ross on 9 March 2007 - 5:06pm.
I hope that's right. I hope NO ONE is celebrating, including the most recent winners of either party. No Happy Days Are Here Again. No Morning in America. It's just all so awful and so dangerous.
Why is it we can be so pragmatic about the Palestinians and Israelis in one thread, or the tribes and factions in Iraq-Iran etc -- the need to make friends of our enemies, to accommodate and balance and understand and integrate and teach and inspire, all of that -- and at the same time be so damned dogmatic, and purposely derisive and divisive, at home? Apparently "we" as a nation can't even agree on the fundamental stuff anymore, the big stuff like life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The margins of presidential election have grown so thin that we don't even grudgingly accept the results anymore. Everything is being contested, all the time, everywhere, nothing is ever settled so nothing can move forward to the next level. We seem literally on the verge of not being able to govern ourselves as one nation anymore, to me.
UPDATE
Here's a great story on dKos about Mayan priests in Guatamala who plan to purify a sacred Mayan site after President Bush visits and are calling his visit an "offense for the Mayan people and their culture."
What deep revulsion Bush invokes worldwide!