Respect As It's Due
There's just something about the top dog that elicits both admiration and condemnation. We admire the strength and power of accomplishment, but condemn the only too-human evidence that so often accompanies that reality in swagger and implacable entitlements as world leader. It comes with the territory. The big guy on the block demands respect by his very presence, towering over those who cower under him.In a sense, the United States of America is the world's benevolent dictator. The country acts in its own self interest first, but it also acts out of a sense of collective obligation as a balance for fairness within the world at large. That great country has taken on its obligations as a duty. If it had a choice it would gather itself into itself and let world affairs unfurl as they would.
Events of potentially catastrophic significance that shatter the balance of the world conspire to bring it into the fray, however unwillingly.
Every country, along with its people, believes itself to be superior to others. This is a manifestation of primordial survival; to believe in oneself as superior and entitled to exist. Others are simply others, they survive or they do not; it is an affair of their own. And when territory and the imperative to attain it to ensure survival is involved there is no question that the champion in the conquest of attainment survives.
We've come a long way as a human race since first practising those elementary steps in survival. Despite which, vestiges of that elemental need still persist in shaping borders, boundaries and nations. Desired resources and the ongoing quest for ownership keeps nations on their toes, challenging one another for supremacy and primacy in geographic ownership. The singular source of conflict in the world.
In North America, the three countries that share the continent have been fortunate in certain resources. Canada and the United States will always be at loggerheads about transference of resources and trade; Mexico is less well endowed in natural resources, the constant illegal flood of economic migrants testament to that. But the two upper-located countries have managed to live in squabbling peace with one another.
Not so the rest of the world, where on one continent after another wars of greater or lesser dimensions have degraded the civil discourse and decimated civilian populations. When those militant disagreements erupt in brutal and violent warfare, the United States has always, despite reluctance, become involved as mediator.
Well, no ignoring her poor political choices in aligning herself with despots and dictators on the hard right when it served her own disgraceful purposes.
On balance, though, the U.S. is more of a force for good in the world than not. Again, that collective conscience, well honed over the centuries, aware of disequilibrium and the utility and fairness of a just outcome putting itself forward to achieve balance. A country is a reflection, on a huge scale, of all that a single human being is capable of demonstrating and achieving, the good and the bad.
We love to criticize and even to detest the United States and its often stumbling, sometimes criminal forays into world affairs. But it still remains a world stabilizer, a world conscience, a world example of the best a democratic system can aspire to. With all her warts, she remains a beauty in a world of uglies.
Not all countries can aspire to the status of the best among us - most notably the Scandinavian countries. But they are insular, small countries with small populations. They have the heft of conscience by example and they have also demonstrated great valour during dread times of conflict - Denmark particularly comes to mind - but they lack the power to do more than inspire us to emulate them.
In an often brutal world delivering misery to millions upon millions of unfortunates living in thrall to the private ambitions of violently unscrupulous and self-availing dictators, the unfortunate truth is that we need a world-class bully to keep the other, truly nasty bullies in line.
Labels: Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, December 19, 2007
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