On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:34:03 +0100, "riverman" wrote:


I'm not so sure we can 'take care of ourselves', Tim, especially when we
import so much stuff, and consume so much more than we generate. As long as
we need furrin friends, furrin oil, furrin trade, furrin investment and rely
on friendly furrin markets for our goods we can't really 'take care of
ourselves'. We need international goodwill and cooperation in many arenas,
which depends a lot on being percieved as a goodwilled and cooperative
nation outselves.

And I'm even less sure that Americans are 'going about their daily lives'.
We just allowed a ton of personal freedoms to get compromised, we are
standing in lines for airplanes for 3-4 hours, we justify having a president
who is alienating our country to many other parts of the world because he
'makes us feel safer at home' (and a lot of evidence shows that he is, in
acuality doing the opposite), we are rushing out to buy duct tape and window
plastic, we are casting suspicious glances at any Arabs in our midst, we no
longer travel around the world as freely as we used to, our economy is being
dragged down by the largest military budget and the largest federal deficit
in history, our country is being polarized worse than it ever has in our
countries history....exactly what about your 'daily life' is the same now as
it was 5 years ago??

Just about everything...and I thought you now spent all (or most) of
your life in the Congo, England, wherever - not that there's anything
WRONG with that...seriously, though, being essentially an expat, all the
"we" and "our" stuff is perhaps not as meaningful as from someone in the
US on a day-to-day basis. For example, friends from Switzerland (with
relatives in the US who keep them "in the loop," as it were) recently
here for a month or so, and for the first time since 9/11, were truly
surprised at what they found. They said they had half-expected a police
state under siege from within, based on what they had heard in the Euro
press. And even though they are worldly, sophisticated people, they
said they now look with some suspicion at (unknown-to-them) Arabs,
paraphrasing Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, because not all Muslims are
terrorists, but it seems that most terrorists are Muslim.

And as to the polarization, IMO, you can put the majority of
responsibility for that solidly at the feet of the Clintons and company,
including esp. Terry McAuliffe.

TC,
R

Maybe our country does need a collective shrink!

--riverman