Two words no longer heard in this world: "American prestige".

[Critical Thinker]

While enjoying my wake-up cup of joe this morning, a distant memory struck me, a recollection of two words that I haven't seen in print nor heard spoken in many years now.

Whatever happened to the words "American prestige" ?

Well, it didn't take long for me to answer my own question.

Over and over, the current administration has displayed a disregard for world opinion and a reckless go-it-alone attitude that has cost our nation the position of world leadership that we once enjoyed. Under GWB, the US has actually become the grotesque caricature so often used to demonize us; we are alternately the belligerant gunslinger, the pushy American, and the black-hearted capitalist.

As examples, I could cite: Kyoto, Iraq, our tardy response to the tsunami in South Asia. We are now something closer to global pariah than global leader.

We seem to have misplaced our "American prestige" somewhere during the last four years, and the chances are prettly slim that we're gonna find it anytime during the next four years. I just hope that, one day, we'll be able to undo the damage.

I almost wish that the thought hadn't crossed my mind, because it's really beginning to piss me off...

[amber dog democrat]

1. When i go abroad, rather than put a paper sack over my head

I just tell people I am from Canada. I am so deeply ashamed of what we are doing both domestially and overseas. Wake me when its over

[jswordy]

2. We've been frittering it away....

...for decades. Made in America used to mean the best, too. All that is gone, or going fast. Pols of both parties have helped it in its demise.

You want to scare yourself, think of how RED CHINA is our second largest foreign buyer of our debt. And JAPAN is the first!

Uh, I seem to recall a lot of American blood was shed to defeat Japan in a lil war in the early '40s. And Red China...hmmm, I seem to recall U.S. grunts bleeding and facing horrors of capture in the '50s in a lil place called Korea to battle Chinese-backed troops. Technically, we are still at war there. Then there was Vietnam, where our boys died in droves, supposedly to combat growing Communism.

So tell me again, who is winning the global battles of today?

If you say us because of Iraq, go ahead and believe that, but we will be forced to learn Japanese and Chinese much sooner when they buy us up that we would have been to learn Farsi because of Saddam.

The real battles today are economic.

Uh, we're losing 'em.

[Old and In the Way]

3. We won in VietNam.......

and China! We defeated godless communism. They've replaced it with our godless capitalism.

Can't say that it is all bad, though. I think the rest of the world deserves their piece of the pie.....unfortunately, we don't have a government that has any vision for America except selling it out and conducting wars of corporate profit for Big Oil.

I think Kerry and the Democrats would have focused on rebuilding this country for the 21st century reality of post-Peak Oil. That would have provided new jobs and investment capital that would help sustain this country. Instead, we have a puppet of Big Oil doing everything he can to destroy the US of A and replace it with a fascist Banana Republic.