God Bless America

The Republicans, with their absurd propensity to blockade, suggest that they still do not understand why the presidential election was lost.

One still remembers quite well how U.S. politicians looked condescendingly at the European continent heading toward a crisis and demanded determined action in order to finally gain control over the international fiscal crisis. A global economic fiasco must not grow out of this situation, the U.S. demanded. Thus, it causes all the more astonishment that senators and congressmen continue with their Christmas holidays while the federal boat is sailing toward a huge reef — which is less avoidable the nearer one comes.

Obviously, leading Republicans, who usually draw attention to themselves as ardent patriots and sing “God bless America,” indicate by their behavior that snubbing President Obama is more important than the nation’s fate. To date, the leadership of the Republican establishment neither wants to understand, nor come to terms with, the lost presidential election. It still acts according to this principle: Everything that harms the Democrat Obama is of service to us. This is a lethal, if not to say insane, consideration, which will most certainly not provide November’s losers with any impetus, though it is good for thoroughly discrediting the country’s entire political activity during a critical period.

Long-time Scandal

Responsible action in the name of a world power looks different. Must look different! The addiction to blockading the political opponent at any cost is an indicator of the decadence of a political culture that has often offered itself boisterously as a model to many other nations and societies outside North America. For centuries, accepting this model voluntarily meant possibly evading violent indoctrination. The United States was so convinced of its might that it willingly hammered its ideas into those who were alien to such convictions.

In this sense, what we experience now shows how a world power capitulates to itself — or, expressed another way, how a world power no longer understands how to cope. The politics and political system of the United States remain guilty, which requires an economic emergency of them. Presumably, there must be a military state of emergency and thus the outbreak of a war to correct — or cover up — this failure.

What does this mean for bourgeois democracy in its American version? It is incapable of protecting itself against abuses of power or political interest — it is not immune to perversion. Not even the U.S. president, as its chief patron saint, can free it from this dilemma.

No matter how the budget dispute, which is by now a budget scandal, ends, this incident offers much material for learning that prevailing political conditions, again and again, prove the U.S. guilty.