I would imagine a British government would have less trust in a Republican administration given the unprecedented attacks on the British healthcare system, and comparisons to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

I would not worry that much if I were you. Other countries already learned to live with a powerful and sometimes irrational (to them) US.

Doesn't America's perceived irrationality and it being perceived as a messianic power, also determines its friendships?

Doesn't it take other universalists to be friends with one?

== http://westphalianpost.wordpress.com ==

Well, during the Bush years I pretty much saw the US as a little kid holding a very large magnifying glass (we foreign nations being the ants). So yeah, the US seemed pretty irrational at the time. Luckily that is starting to change a little bit under Obama, at least in terms of foreign-policy.

Although, while nowadays we may not have Bush, it is just as fun to watch Fox News and listen to them say how the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child will most likely end up with the UN prohibiting parents from spanking their childs in the US. I mean, come on... I dont see a debacle in my country right now and we've ratified it! and please, the US can disobey the UN when it comes to invading a sovereign nation, yet it can't disobey it when it comes to child spanking?? Sean Hannity and his bunch are just so funny to watch...

Yet, I must admit, that us third worlders can be just as irrational sometimes (or even more irrational) than the US has been (I mean just watch Venezuela and Bolivia).

What impression do people in other countries get when they observe the divorced-from-reality nature of contemporary American political discourse?

How much of it do they actually see on a regular basis? The impression I get, at least from reading British newspapers for example, is that it's usually only some major political things in the US that get serious media coverage over there, like the election last year, or the major digs at the NHS. Otherwise, it's mostly minor stuff unless it specifically talks about something that affects that country.

And I don't just mean the buffoons on talk radio and Fox News; I'm talking about Senators, Congresspersons, and other prominent politicos. When I see some of these folks in action, even a realist like me begins to question the validity of the "rational actor" assumption.

I remember a Canadian on a forum I browse saying that one of the things that bothered him about American politicians was how they would make speeches that touched on other countries in the US, and speeches saying different things when they were out of country, as if non-Americans had no chance of picking up the contradiction.

What is interesting about studying one Jewish community in one part of the world [My field-study was conducted in Denmark], is that essentially the same core beliefs are shared in similar communities all over the world. The Jews have throughout history been good at helping themselves through social networks and charities - this was before any state-schemes were in place anywhere, and they were often harassed and if they didn't help themselves, nobody would. This is so engrained in them, so they usually are opposed to big state-schemes [and actually the opposition to state-schemes is - on the face of it - quite sound and make good economic sense for those who are unaware that Britain,France and Denmark can do state-schemes for less than 10 % of GDP (Denmark 6 %), while the US spends 15-16 %.], and it is my postulate, that such schemes runs contrary to Jewish ethics.

High degree of sophistication in equipment - for the wealthy

That is why I fathom that Jews in the United States mostly are opposed to an enhanced state-role in health-care. They are, viewed collectively, above average in income, and it is undeniable that the present scheme favours various high-tech solutions that benefits the wealthy and that simply will not be available to all in a state-scheme) The Jews have been very succesfull in business in the Unites States - the archtypical capitalistic system. And given that many of them naturally have been attracted to any business that generates money, it is my estimate that many of them are in pharmaceutical industries or in insurance businesses that thrives on the existing non-state way of doing health-business in The Unites States.

And seeing that change is underway, they very likely mobilise some of their considerable political clout, but are careful to disguise any direct link, and instead let various noisy figures, like the ones Walt mentions, do the dirty business of defending the present scheme.

We see a lot of it. Glenn Becks message about Obama having a deep hatred for white people reached all major norwegian newspapers. All the major papers have covered the Town Hells, as well as TV.

Over here, Glenn Beck would have been fired in ten seconds flat. Thats the main difference, Fox is more similar to various extreme-right blogs in its rhewtoric than it is a actual television channel.

Most of the times, I agree with this blog. But this time I don't. The fact that something looks paranoid or irrational to us does not make it subjectively so, and I am not making constructivist propaganda. I am just saying that when actors, and especially groups, rely on messages, languages and symbols that look completely absurd to us, then it is very likely that they are rationally pursuing some goals.

What is rational, that some extremist religion groups support pro-choise policies, secularism and pluralism?

The image of a self-righteous crusading and ignorant America, a kind of murderous Don Quixote, has been around for a while. It waxes and wanes, but I would trace the most recent image back to Ronald Reagan, when the U.S. National Security elite became apparently convinced that they would destroy the schemes of Moscow through laser weapons and promoting civil wars in irrelevant peasant countries in Latin America and Africa. Bush, and the Conservative movement, have been channeling that particular "Reagan" ever since (not the 2nd term Reagan of conciliation and negotiation, mind you).

To Europeans, those are the only I can spoke for, it leads us to be rather bemused. There's nothing Europeans can do about it. If the Americans want to launch some military adventure or ambitious project somewhere, basically screwing around in the Third World, then that's what they're going to do. They'll even get our own governments to go along, at least symbolically, despite massive public opposition (the case of Spain, Italy and the U.K. regarding Iraq). It is hard to exactly be 'afraid'. The Americans are the 'least immoral' of the hegemons we've known and its quite clear their heady messianism won't lead to anywhere but their own financial and human catastrophe and a few destroyed Third World countries. One can feel for the tragedy for the Third World hapless victims of American adventurism, but we don't fear it ourselves.

As to the future, no one can say. I can say categorically that, on this side of the pond, Republican politics with their McCarthyism, Red Scaremongering, market fundamentalism, creationism, Christian fundamentalism, "Lewinski-gate", birtherism and so forth, are basically considered insane.

Obama elicited a lot of enthusiasm and 'hope' etc. But I did read one French defense blog that speculated that the United States - with the costs of over-dependence on oil, trapped by militarism and oil in the Middle East, its consumerism and debt, its collapsing infrastructure, its massive prison-industrial complex, its inefficient healthcare system and its political system characterized by both permanent sensational elections and permanent political sclerosis - was at a kind of 'tipping point' where its power abroad, apparently at its zenith, could no longer mask the unsustainable costs of its empire and decades-long internal dysfunctions and inefficiencies. In short, that the U.S. was in a situation not unlike that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. This blogger then speculated that Obama, in attempting to reform the system into something sustainable, might actually destroy it.

I don't subscribe to this view, but Americans should certainly stop letting their pre-eminence in the world, chiefly the product of being the only developed country with 300,000,000 citizens, blind them to the severe dysfunctions in their society.

I've been watching the debates on and off and the whole time I may have completely missed the point as I don't know all the ins and outs of the proposed plan but I can't help but conclude that big insurers are running scared at the prospect of competing with a public health care provider.

Right now I'm watching Obama's interview on ABC (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7922187&page=1). At 06:16 Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, suggests that it would be difficult for insurers to compete with a government subsidised health plan when the government is also "refereeing the game." Williams also suggests that it would be better for insurers to identify the problems the government is trying to solve and to work, collaboratively, with hospitals and health care professionals to solve those problems - as opposed to introducing a new competitor (the government) in to the market who has the rule-making ability the government would have.

We've had public health care in the UK for decades now - the NHS. Though it's not perfect, it provides free health care to all. We also have private health care providers, such as BUPA, who market a superior product than that of the NHS, running their own private hospitals with private health care professionals.

So, like I said, it seems to me that insurers in the US are worried about profits. Reformed health care will most likely dent their wallets, but surely health care for all - including the poorest - is more important than profits. The insurers will need to make their products equally or more attractive than the government's in order to compete.

Dr. Nexon is right: you really should put facts before conjecture. Know something about the Jewish community in the US before speculating about it.

Angry people speaking up to their elected officials? How many countries allow such things without the government calling out the cops or army to beat them? How did it play when the left had their Bush = Hitler demos?

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their politics (and you obviously disagree), a people with the rights and courage to speak what they see as truth to the powerful is something we should never be ashamed of.

Canadians - like the British - are absolutely dumbfounded by Republican vilification of our health care systems. Health care systems so beloved that they’re political taboos even for the right of center parties (one of which is now in power here).

And don’t forget that the internet has made the accessibility of video – videos of your town halls, commentary news shows, and partisan commercials – allow the world to get a good glimpse at the depth of the ignorance. As Prof. Walt notes, there are irrational political agents in every country, but in the developed world few countries promote the voices of those who fabricate outright lies for irrational, partisan gain as much as the United States.

slip slidin' away

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Orly Taitz: Obama policies are 'clear and present danger to Israel'

The driving force behind the 'birther' movement has found her star is rising in Israel.

haaretz

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"orly taitz" "queen esther"

"sarah palin" "queen esther"

"monica lewinsky" "queen esther"

Actually, illegit, intolerant regimes, militias, facebook and girl fearing creepy, corrupt royalty in Ray Bans, Supreme Leaders and Presidents for Life should worry about how goofy and irrational they appear to us.