King "O" the World

I’m so bummed out.

It looks like the rest of the world is not going to be too happy with us Americans if we vote McCain Palin into the White House in the fall.

And world opinion of America is the stuff that keeps me up at nights, really.

Panicked by the recent reversal of fortune in the presidential campaign some brit named Jonathan is warning us not to make the same mistake again:

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger.

And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift. Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

I’m just a dumb refugee, but didn’t Americans stop drinking tea and switch to coffee back in 1776? Wasn’t the whole point of the tea party and the ensuing rebellion to cut ties with the royalists?

I understand that Senator Obama is the world’s candidate and that he’s loved more abroad than aparently he is at home. (Maybe he should have a heart to heart with Jerry Lewis.) But Jonathan should be happy that in the rest of the world Obama is still the beloved:

All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.

In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

But still, Jonathan's a warning is a little hysterical.

Perhaps Jonathan should switch to herbal tea, after all, even Jonathan’s wise and enlightened PM, Gordon Brown, has broken protocol and thrown his support behind Senator Obama. Classy.

And once middle America finds out that the English PM is throwing his tremendous world-wide influence behind Barrack, the polls will rebound and the planet will start to heal and the oceans will begin to recede once again.

We colonials may be provincial and simplistic, but when we realize that its not in our more enlightened and civilized earth-mates abroad, and especially in England, best wishes for us to vote for McCain, we’ll mend our ways and try to please our foreign friends because that’s what we’re here for.

I mean, foreigners, and especially Europeans, have shown in the last 100 years that if anyone can make the right decisions is them. Even in simple things like soccer games, they demonstrate a sophistication that we Americans could never ever even come close to.

For example, our foreign hand ringing American critics are so enlightened that they’re not buying what the US is government is selling about the 9-11 attacks :

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday.

The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

….Shows you how much I know. I just figured that Bin Laden’s al Qaeda was responsible since they took credit. But that just makes me a primitive and incapable of making sophisticated nuansed decisions like voting for Fidel Castro's favorite candidate who just happens to have a first cousin named Fidel Castro Odinga.