Rumors of the passing of the United States of America into the annals of history are flying all over the globe but may be a tad premature and overstated.
Those rumors, innuendos, and outright declarations that the American Century is over have been the fodder of America-haters both here and abroad in the past and have always been shown to be the fabricated wishful thinking of our domestic and foreign enemies and empire wannabes.
They were circulated after Watergate and the failure of the Viet Nam War, during the debacle that was the Jimmy Carter Years of Malaise, and they have grown to a fevered pitch in recent weeks and months with American bank failures, credit crunches, government bailouts, and rising unemployment figures.
I can understand Russians, Arabs, a certain megalomaniacal Venezuelan, and an ancient, stogie-puffing, addled Cuban bad mouthing us; after all, slamming the USA is their virtual raison d’être, along with their visions of grandiosity.
And they have been so slamming.
Russia, ever eager to re-gain the European dominance it enjoyed when it was still the U.S.S.R. running roughshod over Eastern Europe and causing severe angina and incontinence in Western Europe, believes we are on the verge of collapse and disintegration, into six parts, no less: http://drudgereport.com/flashrur.htm.
Arab nations, muffling their delight in President-elect Barack Hussein Obama and rolling in oil monies, believe vengeance for the Crusades is at hand and that Muslims will re-gain the preeminence in the world that they enjoyed thirteen centuries ago.
President Tinhorn Chavez continues his delusions of grandeur by lambasting the evil giant to the north and laying down a waterproof red carpet for the Russian navy, http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081125/D94M8Q700.html.
And Fidel? Well, Fidel is Fidel and before he shuffles off this mortal coil would dearly love to see America become a banana republic just like Cuba is today.
Those, (Russia, Arabs, Chavez, and Castro), are our known foes. What bothers me is our ostensible allies lining up to bash the United States and hoping the European Union will supplant us as the world’s only super power.
Talk about wishful thinking!
We Americans are indeed in dire straits right now, though not more dire than we were in 1980. By then, Carter had decimated our military and looked on impotently as our economy slid down the toilet with almost unprecedented interest rates and rampant unemployment. His fellow citizens who were demoralized by his incompetence were not even encouraged by his fighting off an attack rabbit.
The neo-socialist nations of the E.U. would be delighted with their own version of the Carter years. Their economies, their unemployment stats, their miserable excuse for health care, their disenchanted, hope-deprived citizenry must make those years seem like Nirvana.
If the teaching of their national histories is as pathetic as ours is in America, which it probably is, that ignorance can be forgiven, but only temporarily.
When the international relations push comes to shove, which it no doubt will, it would behoove them to crack open an outdated history book and turn to the chapters on World Wars I and II, and to the chapter on the Cold War, circa 1945-1990.
They may discover which country saved them all from speaking German between 1919 and 1945 and which nation saved them all from speaking Russian after that.
How soon people forget.
To be more specific, (and do commit this to memory, Europeans), the United States of America preserved you thrice now within less than a century. If we go down, who will save you next time? Russia?
Foolish me. I forgot. President Obama will save your sorry arses next time, right after Hillary Clinton is installed as Secretary of State and right after he fends off a Carterian attack rabbit.
