Jovel Queirolo
Managing Editor
Eighty-three percent of countries in 2002 had a plurality of citizens judging the United States favorably, but by 2006 only 23 percent of countries had a plurality saying that United States influence is positive, according to a 2008 report by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The United States is a country of workaholics with soaring obesity levels. Other stereotypes that citizens from other nations associate with “We the People” include flashy Hollywood an aggressive bipartisan elite. Overseas, the United States is labeled as a bully in international politics with 82 percent in Arab countries and 86 percent of Latin American elites now rate United States relations negatively, according to the same report.
That sometimes rude cockiness might have other nations questioning our integrity and legitimacy as one of the world’s most powerful states.
It doesn’t help that the United States of America are growing increasingly less “United.” In the past few weeks, the president was accused of being a liar during an address to Congress and of indoctrinating the youth with a speech to America’s children on education.
America needs to calm it down. Any hopes of maintaining its dignity should not involve discouraging a president the world’s nations are waiting to mess up. President Obama promised change, but change is gradual and slow. The wooden-headedness of Congress isn’t allowing for much progress. And the movement is just too slow for a population that expects the world to move as fast as its drive-thrus, e-mail and instant this or that.
America prides itself with its inclusion of the ordinary citizens to offer constructive criticism about the imperfect systems we call government. But radio talk show hosts, political commentators and bloggers can’t get enough of the president’s flaws to poke fun at. The hype isn’t encouraging well-informed opinions in citizens.
In a political debate chat room on AOL, one chatter called Obama “a master snake oil salesman and lying self-serving big time racist anti-American communist-loving scum bag.”
This is not the American that put a man on the moon. This is not the America united against the spread of communism and embraced their patriotism in the face of war. This is not the America that inspired and encouraged the Wright Brothers.
That America loved its flag and its people.
Obama’s speech on the importance of education and trying one’s hardest as well as his address to Congress should remind Americans of the values of hard work and rewards the country was built on. If Americans want to avoid Obama’s “socialist” tendencies he is being accused of in his nation-wide health plan, maybe they should move to another country.
Other nations know us for our values of liberty, freedom and tolerance. But increasingly, they see our current inability to fulfill those values. Let us not be defined by outbursts by rude congressmen or the manners of Kanye West.
