The World Has Been Watching

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_world_has_been_watching_20110802/?ln

Few Americans know, or much care, about the opinions foreigners hold of the United States. This was displayed during the ignorant and solipsistic debate over when or whether the United States will pay its debts, which concluded Tuesday with a promise that it will soon be renewed. The debate was conducted as if foreign lenders had no role in the affair, and as if “the full faith and credit” of the United States were not a guarantee freely offered to those who in the past chose to purchase American bonds and other obligations.

The belief held by members of the House of Representatives and the Senate that the U.S. is the greatest country in history is good enough for them, and in their view ought to be good enough for everyone else. They take for granted American invulnerability and domination of the international scene—ephemeral as those qualities have recently proven to be in American economic performance, as well as by American military failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, its tortured present relationship with Pakistan, and the uncertainties presented and conflicts provoked by the Libyan intervention and the Arab awakening.

The general outlook of ordinary Americans, even (or especially) when they are elected to Congress, is to ignore the interests of the rest of the world and any threat from abroad, such as the threat of foreigners stopping purchase of U.S. bonds, after collapsing confidence in the U.S.—or when the threat knocks down skyscrapers in New York and attacks the Pentagon. The test of honor in the halls of Congress is whether one does or does not still affirm “American exceptionalism,” which is to say that the nation is better than any other in every respect.

There is an important issue that was not included in the deficit debate in Congress. It concerns exactly the present dysfunctions and long-term validity of the American economy, and in that respect, the future of the “American way of life” in this dollar-based international economy that the United States has created and globalized, at the instigation and with the collaboration of Wall Street.

More at the link --

And that quote is years old.

Interesting read