As a Whole World Watches...the Incredible Shrinking America

By Mort Rosenblum, Reader Supported News

13 October 13

nce upon a time I felt fairly safe when hard-eyed goons grilled me as one did the other day, toying with his service sidearm and an ominous bunch of keys. I'd pat the blue passport in my left Levis pocket. Goons thought twice before messing with us good guys.

Now the imposing eagle embossed on my passport might as well be a chicken hawk. Wherever I go, it is dead plain: that good-guys sentiment is a distant memory. Forget Machiavelli; we are neither feared nor loved.

Smart as we are, we forget the Internet is an open window on our lunacy. Families from Ulan Bator to Ushuaia watch in rapt disbelief each new episode of the Washington reality show. In idyllic towns they know from sitcoms, they see cops beat the crap out of citizens for doing no more than expressing themselves.

The Comoros, three flyspecks off Mozambique in the Indian Ocean, is as banana as republics get. After 20 coups and two murdered presidents since 1975, it is now peaceably mired in corruption. But at least it has a government.

"You can walk anywhere late at night with cameras around your neck, and no one will bother you," a friend there told me. Comorans are Muslim, respectful of strangers in their midst. "Just don't tell them you're American."

Far more people hate us today than before 9/11, bitter at wars we can't justify, torture we won't admit, and contemptuous treatment of "aliens" who stir our suspicions. Others simply watch our follies and laugh their ass off.

In nearby Madagascar, my driver guffawed as we passed Old Glory flapping atop a Fort-Apache embassy in hardened concrete with towering iron pickets around a vast open field of fire. "Like we're a threat," he said, and then he chuckled to himself for the next mile.

Don't we understand anything? Forbidding embassy walls signal our fear and protect diplomats only while they are inside. Terrorists need only terrorize. A few zealots in a pickup can rain hell on shopping malls and luxury hotels. The more discreet our essential security measures, the less we will need them.

U.S. policymakers forget that a big stick impresses people only until you swing it. Then, as they remain standing, and pissed off, you look ludicrous. Just as Teddy Roosevelt cautioned, they tune out when you speak too loudly.

Of course, America is still great, with its multiple millions of big-hearted people, generous spirits eager to do the right thing. That's the point. Why, our remaining friends ask, don't we sound off, organize, and vote?

From the Ukraine to Chile, people storm into the streets when their elected leaders abuse power. Americans sit in placid silence when shown proof their government spies outrageously on them as if sacrificing their freedoms somehow makes them safer.

Our health-care "debate" - blackmail, really -- baffles non-Americans. Even Comoros recognizes health as a basic human right. Its pathetic 450-bed hospital is known as the death house, but European aid is helping. The country is desperately poor. What's our excuse?

Intelligent people everywhere ask me the same question: How can so many rich Americans be mean-spirited and self-serving enough to let poor people suffer needlessly because medicine isn't, as the law phrases it, affordable?

Since before the Vietnam War, critics differentiated between individual Americans and their government. That is changing fast as elected representatives ignore their oaths for their own narrow purposes. Friends who shrugged off our foibles now fulminate at their own brushes with a country they don't recognize.

This incredible shrinking America impacts everyone. As European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi says, our shutdown imperils the global economy. In close focus, seemingly petty details show this is about far more than money.

At the airport in Madagascar, a uniformed policeman at the gate hefted my underweight carryon and declared it too heavy. "Give me something for a Coke," he demanded, with breath reeking of beer. He smirked, knowing I would not miss my flight to object to a boss who'd expect his own cut. He pawed at my pocket and snatched the biggest bill, barely worth $2.

(Note to Madagascar: Air France flight, 1:30 a.m. Sept. 30; I can identify a mug shot.)

I mentioned this to a duty-free shopkeeper, who replied ruefully. "It's shameful, but that's how it is." Back in Paris, I pondered pursuing the guy on principle. Then I reflected. Corruption is malfeasance that prevents a system from functioning as designed. I'm American. Talk about people in glass houses...

Samuel Jackson put it simply enough: Let's wake the fuck up! In places like Comoros and Madagascar, citizens have to put up with whomever maneuvers into power. We don't.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Giving Republicans a Bloody Nose Isn't Enough

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

13 October 13

ow is the time to lance the boil of Republican extremism once and for all.

Since Barack Obama became president, the extremists who have taken over the Republican Party have escalated their demands every time he's caved, using the entire government of the United States as their bargaining chit.

In 2010 he agreed to extend all of the Bush tax cuts through the end of 2012. Were they satisfied? Of course not.

In the summer of 2011, goaded by an influx of Tea Partiers, they demanded huge spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling. In response, the President offered an overly-generous $4 trillion "Grand Bargain," including cuts in Social Security and Medicare and whopping cuts in domestic spending (bringing it to its lowest level as a share of gross domestic product in over half a century).

Were Republicans content? No. When they demanded more, Obama agreed to a Super Committee to find bigger cuts, and if the Super Committee failed, a "sequester" that would automatically and indiscriminately slice everything in the federal budget except Social Security and Medicare.

Not even Obama's re-election put a damper on their increasing demands. By the end of 2012, they insisted that the Bush tax cuts be permanently extended or the nation would go over the "fiscal cliff." Once again, Obama caved, agreeing to permanently extend the Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000.

Early this year, after the sequester went into effect, Republicans demanded even bigger spending cuts. Obama offered more cuts in Medicare and a "chained CPI" to reduce Social Security payments, in exchange for Republican concessions on taxes.

Refusing the offer, and seemingly delirious with their power to hold the nation hostage, they demanded that the Affordable Care Act be repealed as a condition for funding the government and again raising the debt ceiling.

This time, though, Obama didn't cave - at least, not yet.

The government is shuttered and the nation is on the verge of defaulting on its debts. But public opinion has turned sharply against the Republican Party. And the GOP's corporate and Wall Street backers are threatening to de-fund it.

Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They're in shock. They're humiliated. They're trying to come up with ways of saving face.

With bloodied nose, House Republicans are running home. They've abruptly turned negotiations over to their Senate colleagues.

And just as suddenly, their demand to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act has vanished. (An email from the group Tea Party Express says: "Are you like us wondering where the fight against Obamacare went?") At a lunch meeting in the Capitol, Senator John McCain asked a roomful of Republican senators if they still believed it was possible to reverse parts of the program. According to someone briefed on the meeting, no one raised a hand - not even Ted Cruz.

It appears that negotiations over the federal budget deficit are about to begin once again, and presumably Senate Republicans will insist that Obama and the Democrats give way on taxes and spending in exchange for reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling for at least another year.

But keeping the government running and paying the nation's bills should never have been bargaining chits in the first place, and the President and Democrats shouldn't begin to negotiate over future budgets until they're taken off the table.

The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.