I have been trying not to riff on politics lately — so many others are so much better — but this is too ironic not to share. Who will be first with a Ché style iconograph with W’s head under the trademark beret?
TomDispatch – Tomgram: Nick Miroff on How George Bush Unified a Continent:
Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure?
At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional independence and self-determination. He’s helped forge new trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that’s sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next.
Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? Bolivia’s coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales?
¡Epa! It’s George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary.
In the past five years, the swaggering Texan has inspired a leftward surge that is uniting Latin America and threatening to knock Che Guevara right off all those natty t-shirts.
I have been mulling over the idea of the constraints associated with being a superpower and the freedom that comes with engaging your peers as equals, not as your lessers. I’m not sure being the Only Remaining Superpower is all it’s cracked up to be.
Of course, it’s not as if the US is as independent as supposed: it spends an awful lot of money and political energy in a co-dependent relationship with Israel.