Winning

It is a sad fact that opinion defines reality. Not so much about measurements and the like -- rather, the realities of civilization. A wide and contradictory set of behaviours has been defined as normative, witness religion or the various manifestations of atheism. (Karl Marx, at the end of his life, donned a prayer shawl and recited prayers learned in childhood.) The particular reality that I'm currently addressing is the state of the United States in world opinion.

Even I, recalcitrant reactionary obscurantist, have been forced to notice that Mr. Bush has used up a good deal of the good will, such as it has been, toward America as expressed through its foreign policy. Cowboy diplomacy, in Hillary's term. The major European players, France and Germany, have been actively hostile to our aims. Russia is no friend. The Anglophone world, even Pink Canada, has been an ally faithful and true, and that's all well and good. Breeding will tell. But only a quarter of the world's population has some fluency in English. That leaves a lot of, um, enemies? Do we deserve so few friends? When we're so good? Opinion seems to make it so.

Not.

Cuz things are changing. New Europe stands up under terrific Russian pressure by supporting our missile defense programs. Japan is reversing its long-time policy against military operations. Germany has sloughed off the moribund Schroeder and taken the thrilling Frau Merkel to its bosom now. She just finished up with a trip to Washington that was warm enough to melt Greenland. Maybe it's the backrubs. In France, the robust Sarkozy has signaled that he is reversing the anti-American role France has played for the past half century. Last week Sarkozy, addressing Congress, said that America is "the greatest nation in the world." He promised support for US policy on nuclear nonproliferation (Iran), Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Middle East in general. Isn't that great?

As Charles Krauthammer points out, even the ambivalent British PM Gordon Brown has told Sky News that a "great change ... is taking place, [namely] that France and Germany and the European Union are also moving more closely with America." And no sooner do we lose a Blair than we get him back across the channel in Sarkozy. And given the specter of a nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and even Libya -- all are working toward a closer US alliance. Isn't that great?

Public opinion follows the news. If news it good, opinion is favorable. It is my belief that the United States has the most corrupt Media of any industrialized nation. Corrupt not in the sense of bribes and pay-offs, although that will certainly occur, but in the imbalance and self-deception of it bias. Alas, public opinion follows the news, which in the US is leftist.

Leftists have their own bushy trouble with pronunciations. The polysyllabic words aren't so hard for them. As with simple ideas, like duty and self-sacrifice, they get all tongue-tied over some pretty simple words. They can't tell the differences between winning and whining.

We lost Vietnam -- the country, not the war -- because of a cowardly and treacherous press. Lo these four decades later they would reprise their greatest victory-through-defeat, and lose Iraq. But we're winning.

That's news they don't want to hear, or say. The rest of the world seems to be hearing it. So much clamour, then. The war is lost lost lost. The echo chamber of horrors. Well? What are you going to believe then -- me or your lying ears?


J