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 It's hard to watch the vitriolic anti-Obama rhetoric and be a mere spectator to generally Republican or Tea-party pumped crowds' reactions or read commentary responses posted by readers of blogs or social networks and not feel amused and bemused by their feeble attempt to continually level non-sequiturial and visceral attacks and malicious criticism of President Obama or discredit his presidency.
It just seems that the politically under-educated herd has willingly pulled their own eyes out of their sockets lest they might be forced to see the truth that their biased, even bigoted analysis is hopelessly trying to deny afraid to admit or more so, less willing to confront.
Meanwhile the noise level is becoming louder to unbearable decibels and the screaming even more strident.
Take the daily Republican-led FOX Television right-wing (rather wrong-wing) comments immediately available on the airwaves, blogs and social medias the world over where writers and readers unleash their daily assault on the president's supposed lack of leadership, failure to create jobs, lack of assumption of responsibility over the ongoing American economic decline and their assertions on the president's supposed quickness to transfer blame.
Or that Barack Obama is furtively in cahoots with leftist South American governments or, as Glen Beck put forth on his innumerous rants. that Obama gave US$ 2 billion to Brazil's national Oil Giant Petrobras.
Without having to utter a single word in defense of the president (since Mr.Jonathan Alter, a Bloomberg View columnist, has done so more eloquently than even that president himself could) let's focus a fast minute on 'assuming blame and taking responsibility' issue and ask the anti-Obamanists and all self-proclaimed Obama haters out there if they can point out when and where you can find indisputable evidence that George W. Bush took responsibility and assumed blame for say; 9/11. Any takers? None?
As far I can remember they said 9/11 occurred because of Bill Clinton's failure to capture the perpetrators when he had a chance.
Ok, this was going to be tough so let's try something a little easier.
How about George W. Bush taking a 300 bi plus surplus economy from the hands of Bill Clinton and turning it into generational deficit even before the end of his first term in office? OK, I am making this a bit harder. Heck, during that period employment was so plentiful that US companies were begging for workers, trying to lure them with hefty salaries and juicy benefits even to part-time workers. Do you remember that time?
OK. So, let's ease the pressure some and focus the argument of acceptance of personal responsibility for the ills of the nation. See if you find Mr. Bush ever coming forward to accept BLAME and offer his resignation for the WMD fiasco and then see if you hear him proposing a solution as to how he was going to bring back the thousands of young women and men who died in the Bush/Cheney fiasco-inspired war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can't find anything here?
Alright! But did Mr. Bush and the Republicans have at least had gumption of assumption of responsibility to admit that their catastrophic military and economic failures are the very causes that exacerbated the deterioration of US economy and widened the deficit? Did you also see them step forward and shoulder the responsibility for designing and pushing a foreign policies in the Middle East that actually gave rise to angry, disfranchised young men to take up arms and point the barrel of their guns against the United States? Leaving president Obama with no choice but to go after them lest he'd be tagged as one of them if he tried to resolve the issue through more pacifist means of the courts?
Interestingly, however, the Republicans wasted no time in trying to take credit for the killing of Bin Laden. But do they, the Republicans want you to see that it was the Obama-inspired 'Yes We Can' that brought on the Arab Spring?
Fine! This may be making you dizzy. But it's how the Republicans hope you'll fall for it! But before you do, even if you choose to keep your eyes out of their sockets try to at least use your mind to think how the Bush/Cheney cronies led America to lose her prestige and respect and diminished her status as the world's sole superpower to the point where China could put itself in position to challenge the once mighty and feared United States of America.
Now, put at least one eye back on. Can you look back at the Clinton era fiscal policies and see how it exploded American prosperity to levels never before recorded in American history? So much so, that at some point then French president Jacques Chirac assembled an emergency cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace to discuss and develop strategies to counter American economic power and hegemony.
And that just the opposite happened when Bush and Company robbed the US election from the voters and then proceeded to steal the country from its hard-working middle class and gave it as reward to the 1% super-wealthy in the form of massive tax breaks instead of asking or telling them that they should have in fact pay more to sustain US prosperity at the time...or at least shoulder their fair share.
The result left the US with huge and chronic infection. So virulent that it has become virtually immune to whatever stimulus medicine the Fed - US Central Bank and the administration try to inject it with in their attempt to bring the country back to health.
Now, it's hard to point a finger at you, if you are a Republican reading this or if you are moderate, swing or independent voter since most US voters eventually fall victim to the Republican cleverly orchestrated misinformation machine. A misinformation and propaganda machinery they designed exclusively to keep the vast majority of the uninformed, uninformed, and keep you in a permanent state of ignorance and mystically-driven, ideological political stupor.
Yes. Keeping your eyes pulled off the sockets help further the bogus careers of the GOP'ers on track (as you've done so in the last, most recent mid-term elections) and preserves their grasp on power and maintains their jobs. In doing so they hope you might, come next election, put them back in the pilot seat of the plane they crashed not too long ago.
As compensation, you suck your thumb...blind at that.
Now put your eyes back in the socket. Rinse them with the strongest eye-drops and do it before you'll be forced to see the Republicans back inside their insulated cockpit while you witness the rest of the cabin turn into an economic wasteland of dead and wounded and the United States turned into or fallen to a Nation of third world status.
A status that once was reserved for the likes of Brazil, Russia, India and China and other basket case economies of the world. And now, while you were asleep or wondering blindly, courtesy of the GOP, you didn't notice these so-called BRIC nations rise to political, economic, cultural and military prominence even as the United States sees itself caught in a chronic and alarming rate of decline.
Consider this. Even in the worst case scenario, while battling pesky inflation, grappling with endemic corrupt politicians, struggling with a soaring currency and amid a global slowdown brought on by yet another global economic crisis, Brazil's economy is nonetheless slated to grow at least north of 3% in 2011. And eyeing a possible global slowdown, Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff, her finance minister, her central banker and even Brazil's erratic, cronyism-cultured, childish and raucous congress are taking steps to shield Brazil's economy from the effects of the credit crisis that's right devouring the livelihoods in Europe and the United States.
Now what do you make of a kindergarden-ish Brazilian Congress showing more sense of maturity and responsibility than the US politicians? I'd say it's funny, funny, funny!
Note I've laid emphasis on Brazil among the top BRIC nations. Let's not mention China's economy that in the worst case, will grow more than 9% in 2011 and yet China is already eating your lunch. In fact every born US citizen, Republican or Democrat owes China money. And China is getting nervous and wants it paid back.
Now since the Republicans (with your help) have pulled your eyes out so can't see what is they are doing, try using your inner vision and ponder the following:
Say the Republican political machinery succeeds once again in delivering another massive dose of crack-cocaine like, anti-Obama junk into your system and you zombirly walk into the voting booth in the next year's presidential Election and elect any of the 23 Republicans likely and not-so-likely contenders to unseat Barack Obama. Here's what you'll get.
With any Republican back in power, the US decline will but in all certainty accelerate. Its anemic economy will weaken further, the US dollar will further lose its value in rapid fashion and its trade gap and debt to China will widen. To the point where, in a not too distant future, you'll find yourself looking back, retorting angrily because you'll finally come to understand that it was actually under Bush that America lost its enviable productive capacity to the likes of Brazil, Russia, India and China. You'd find you hate yourself for knowing that it was George W. Bush that began destroying the nations' earning and buying power. But with the Republican help you lived in denial.
Even more painfully, you've finally learned that with the loss of purchasing power, people and their governments will naturally turn to much cheaper solutions of last resort - and that it often lowers quality and services their population produce; turning their society towards much cheaper and much lower quality products wherever they can find it. That it leaves American producers of high-value goods and services unable to compete, mass-produced products from countries like say, China.
And that, if America can't compete, can't sell its high-quality, world-respected products, it can't grow! Much less grow at anywhere near the rate of growth of the Brazilian economy...much less that of China.
That the most logical end result for America is trade deficit. And trade deficits, as you may be already experiencing, feeds high-unemployment. And high-unemployment lowers the quality of life for the majority of Americans. Declining quality of life opens the gates for potential social and cultural unrests, decreases the quality of education and Health Care - which sooner or later you'll need - while it promotes rise in poverty and the US inevitable loss of status as the biggest, most powerful and wealthiest nation the world has ever known. In turn it spurs the rise of extremist party systems like the US Republican and their symbiotic cousins on the rise around the globe.
Mathematically and paradoxically speaking, the equation is elementary: Greater purchasing power equals better quality of life and amplifies your desire and your ability to afford higher and higher quality products. Especially in the areas of health and well being!
And until now, when it comes to producing world-beating, high-quality products and services, few countries, if any, can match the prowess of the United States, Germany and Japan. (Brazil is just learning to produce must-have high quality industrial products like Embraer regional jets and there is a nascent software industry.)
But when it comes to the two biggest elephants dancing in the room, though dwarfed by the United States economically, China has just replaced America as the world's biggest industrialized nation. Why? Because like all sweet-toothed junk food lovers a vast number of Americans can't seem to get enough from consuming the Republican rhetoric junk.
And to get to or remain in power, the Republican and their Tea-party cohorts spare no expenses in unloading their low-end, dirt-cheap, instantly gratifying, and sometimes lead poison-laced misinformation to effectively foster their vile anti-Obama propaganda on you, like you were a landfill.
Of course, to understand all requires an appreciable degree of rational thinking and a measurable degree of advanced intellect. Which are attribute the Republicans hope you don't possess.
Conversely, let me put it this way. As you read this, think of the following: right now we find ourselves caught right in the middle of World War III.
Yes, you heard me right! But it's an economic war. A war that the US began to lose the minute you gave George W. Bush the keys to the White House.
If that doesn't scare the bejesus out of you, it should. Because the situation is as follows: at present the United States GDP is about twice as large as China's - 14 trillion to 6.5 trillion respectively. Yet, China - which recently replaced Japan as the world's second largest economy - finds itself emboldened to the degree that it can challenge, defy, dictate to - or within this decade - even threaten the United States and the rest of the world if we don't do its biddings.
Now, do have a seat so you can take this in. A growing number of economic, business analysts and thinkers believe that by 2030 to 2050 China's GDP will be as large as 73, 6 trillion dollars. If China, with its today's GDP which is less than half the size of the USA's can rub its nose on the face of Uncle Sam and bully the rest of the world; what do you think they'll be able to do with a national Growth Domestic Product and Purchasing Power Parity over seventy trillion US dollars?
Let me be clear. In no way is my intent to stereotype a whole nation. And no one is saying that a powerful China will be a pushover China. But if it comes to a stage where it has to defend its interests, it can and will assert itself.
Haven't you seen the red-alert lights flashing or heard the alarm bells ringing?
Not yet! Well here it goes. Just a few months ago, while you were blinded following the Glenn Becks of the world or moronically wasted your time watching the Sarah Palins and the Bill O'Reillys and company on FOX Network headed by the now discredited News Corp, chastising and demonizing the Obama administration, China boldly decided to introduce legislation that will force Western countries and companies to turn over all their sensitive, leading-edge technology and industrial innovations, business know how...and get this: military secrets to the Chinese authorities or else they won't be even considered a viable candidate to do business in China. At best you can hope for a chance in participating in the China's economic boom.
And talking about political and economic leverage, huh?
Can you blame China? I think not. It has the right to look out for its own interest like any other Western European nation has...and it should.
Rest assured we've seen nothing yet from the giant Asian Dragon. China has many, many aces up its sleeves. Wait until its military muscles start running purely homegrown, advanced technology. It's only a matter where you'll find yourself having to add the Chinese Communist symbol on the American flag and you will have to come to naturally accept at least two or three hand-picked Chinese officials permanently seated in Washington, presiding at the top with the heads of US Congress and the Senate.
That day is coming; the crest is breaking up and the hand-writing is on the wall.
Now, in spite of the indelible and near-irreversible damage caused to the US economy by the previous Bush administration, with the current course set by the Obama administration, at best you might be able to see the playing field leveled. But if you insist in keeping your eyes off the socket, you will miss the fact that instead of helping the president work out policies that better deal with the inevitable growth and swelling power of China; the Republicans are secretly conjuring a plan that will deal a bigger blow on president's Obama battered presidency, something more vehemently vile and far beyond destructive than their silly attempts to unseat him through racist-induced drive like forcing him to prove his national origin, his academic achievements or distort his outreaching approach in the Middle East as sympathy towards Muslims and the tried but failed quest to taint his Christian faith with tinged religious affiliations with the sulfurous and errant reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Do fasten your seatbelt because these ridiculous exercises in political futility to unseat an American elected president will pale by comparison with what the Republicans have up their sleeves. The upcoming fake scandal will morph into cleverly disguised criminal charges to the point where they will bring the president to near impeachment right before next year's presidential election.
For one, that they're right now are in no doubt postulating various and-in-the works theories that despite his obvious African roots, the president is - due to the tone of his skin - actually a Brazilian that may have entered unlawfully in the United States. And that somehow he cleverly devised a credible but fake evidence of his US birth, his nationality and that he has stolen the identity or coerced a decent and innocent American white woman to pose as his mother, isn't entirely out-of-the question. Worse still, they will venture that the president got to where he is now by being secretly funded and supported or the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party.
Of course, it will all be false. But they take you for a scufflebutt, thumb sucking moron to know any better.
Now can you see a better and more perfect scenario for what the Republicans will come with next? Well, don't be surprised if suddenly the Republicans, to solidify their position will turn to an unprecedented anti-Brazilian and anti-China drive the likes you've never seen since the heydays of the cold war.
For instance, sooner rather than later, Brazil will have to take action to weaken its soaring currency the REAL if it hopes to prevent the death of its industries and wean its economy dependency of commodities trade with China. But weakening the REAL will remove the advantage the US may have in the current currency war. Because lowering the REAL versus the Dollar will make Brazilian products competitive again and re-energize its already dynamic economy. And a stronger Brazilian economy translates into an even stronger and more influential Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere.
To Republican politicians there can only be one big shot in the region. Not two. Thus they will raise their pitch so high that they might convince you that the situation is against US interest in the region and that's time for the US to consider the situation a threat to US national security and the opportunity as good as any to flex a military solution of Brazilian containment and turn it into an excuse to amass US military forces near the oil-rich shores of Brazil.
Then the ever closer to Brazilian shore military exercises will escalate into subtle provocation and provocation will be used like a tightening noose on the Brazilian neck until it draws Brazil into drafting a military response. From which the Latin giant will be ill prepared to carry out and its military power will be of no match to put forth a decisive dissuasive response to the US Challenge.
If anything Brazil would have to rely on the help of its largest trading partner China; and China who will soon strengthen economic and military cooperation with Brazil, might voice at least some strong degree of solidarity with Brazil because of its needs for Brazilian oil and other plentiful Brazilian commodities. Reading that China backing of Brazil is a thumb up Washington's nose, the Republican driven leadership will feel they must respond forcefully to such Chinese insolence, thereby provoking a near and potentially devastating military crisis in two continents.
A wounded animal is a dangerous animal.
Thus, a new geopolitical reality will unfold and greater and greater social, economic and political instability in the South American and Asian region will occur. A perfect and a timely strategy to try to impede Brazil's as well as China's rise. Should Barack Obama oppose the Republican foreign policy consensus they, the Republicans will claim Obama was obviously in cahoots with the leftist, socialist governments of South America and that he is an emissary of communist China. What more evidence would you need given his warm-embracing tour of the region? Yes, it was his lack of backbone to keep Latin America as a subservient American backyard and his lack of leadership that brought on the current crisis. They will argue.
The whole Republican idea is to try to revert Brazil and South America, China and much of Asia back to the era of Washington leaning strongmen who keep their nations wealth at the hands of those perennial 1% ruling elite and their countries and their people stuck in the dark ages of under-economic achievement.
Because as present reality shows, the world is becoming increasingly dominated and controlled by tan, rich-toned and sun-blessed, skin people...some of them have differently shaped eyes. And the blue-eyed business and political leaders that brought the 2008 economic crisis and has just fueled another are beginning to find their roles reversed. From being past colonizers to present and future colonized.
So to reverse this trend, starting with the Republican Party in Washington, during the unfolding crisis they will demand that the president make public any and all of his financial transactions and bank accounts to see if somehow he may have received covert payments from the Chinese. After all, the president is 'black' and relatively wealthy. And that cannot be tolerated under Republican watch.
At that, IF they manage to avoid war, they'll pin their hopes on you falling for their grand trick and that you'll feasible, given the circumstances, to put your GOP benefactors back onto the pilot's seat. However, in doing so - and ironically - in the long run that will only re-enforce China's resolve and accelerate its already rapid rise and bring Brazil ever closer to the mighty Asian Dragon.
Result: you'll eventually someday find yourself declaring allegiance to a new, ultra-powerful Republic of China - and they will deserve you do it - while the rest of Americans will be trying to flee and relocate to Brazil - the newfound land of opportunity in the Americas.
Because, as there's a silver lining under every cloud, a stronger China and a more prosperous, socially just Brazil may be the very antidote the American economy needs and the ultimately solution in ostracizing the Republican Party and driving them back into the shadows of oblivion.
On the other hand, you may wish to keep your eyes pulled off their sockets and contribute to their drive to remove president Barack Obama.
All you need to do is vote for the GOP candidates in the 2012 presidential election and then have your children and grandchildren come back and read this article someday. With luck, they'll see with their own eyes that the one really to BLAME was YOU.
Sam Paris is a singer/songwriter, entertainer, actor and author. Sam's multicultural background allowed him to spent years touring around the world, working at his craft and perfecting a vast repertoire of artistic impersonations.
Beyond showbiz, Sam Paris is a natural observer of human behavior and individual evolution. He was born in Brazil, near the great city of São Paulo, to an evangelical family. In the early eighties, he moved to the US to study theology at Norwest Bible College in Seattle, Washington. However, before graduating, he received a scholarship to attend Christian School in Oslo, Norway. After that, he returned to the US and received a PhD in philosophy and religion and an Honorary Degree in counseling psychology from Universal Life Church University. Then, a family tragedy forced him to swift focus and he joined another line of work, providing financial services and support for members of NATO Military Personnel and US Armed Forces in Germany. There, he launched a flourishing entertainment career and public relations consulting. In the mid-90's he relocated to France. Sam speaks Portuguese, Spanish, German, English, and French.
Sam Paris, under the name Silvan Teodoro, is the author of Build Your Body for Live, Sex and Love. His book can be found online or at your local bookstore.
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