Moving On...
Just read an extract from Gideon Rachman's book Zero-Sum World in the FT and while the content is gloomy, he makes some powerful observations. The one below is very poignant in my mind. I always believed Bush destroyed the one emotional power of America that was compelling around the world - optimism. The culture of fear and America's relationship to the world - hard to be an optimist when you realize the world hates you - changed the psyche of America to such an extent that the America at the end of his term was completely different (deflated) to the one at the beginning.
Rachman's observation here highlights the enormity of the challenge ahead and why Obama hasn't been able to bring that optimism back. Many would suggest that this paragraph contradicts what I'm arguing above. You could say that it suggests world events dulled that optimism. I agree you can argue that but America of the past never let that stuff get in the way of their unbridled optimism. Great depression, war, Pearl Harbor, riots, racial hatred... The list goes on but Americans managed to move on and see the opportunities ahead.
Interestingly Rachman's extract talks about how the world dealt with these situations in the past - turning to radical new ideologies like Communism. Makes me wonder about the Tea Party movement. There was a deep level of intelligence behind Communism and of course idealism. Maybe the Tea Party movement is a reverse psychology - using stupid as the core strength of thinking and in place of idealism is a continual stoking of the fear that Bush injected in to the American psyche.
By the time Barack Obama took office, each of the five ideas that had underpinned American self-confidence during the Age of Optimism had taken a battering. The faith in the onward march of freedom had been shaken by the difficulties of exporting democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the rising confidence of authoritarian China. The belief in the power of free markets took a terrible blow with the economic and financial crisis of 2008. The technological revolution no longer seemed the magical cure-all that it had promised to be, as problems as diverse as climate change and the mechanics of military occupation proved impervious to a technological fix. The theory of the “democratic peace” looked less persuasive, as Russia flexed its military muscles, almost over-running democratic Georgia in August 2008 and China became more assertive in territorial disputes with Japan and India. Finally, the belief in the unstoppable nature of American power looked much shakier with US troops bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the American economy reeling.
Read the whole extract here http://bit.ly/9IDIPz
