The Flaw in the American System

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http://watchingamerica.com/News/189852/the-flaw-in-the-american-system/

The Flaw in the American System
Die Welt, Germany
By Olaf Gersemann
Translated By Sandra Alexander
29 December 2012
Edited by Lydia Dallett

Every friendship ends at money — above all in politics. Ultimately, the fight over the new budget plan in the U.S. Congress shows the weaknesses of the political system.

A political system that promotes an ideological polarization of the population, or at least does not prevent it; a political system that in the best case yields parliamentary majorities capable of action only as an exception; a political system that even then does not force compromises, at the exact moment when they are urgently necessary: that’s how it is in the U.S.

These days, America is suffering under it — and soon perhaps the whole world with it. Namely, a recession threatens the U.S. if President Obama, his Democratic friends in Congress and the Republican opposition do not rapidly — very rapidly — succeed jointly in avoiding the fiscal cliff.

America is suffering — and the rest of the world, at least the European world, wavers once again between sheer lack of comprehension and appreciative horror: These stupid Yankees! Jump into the abyss and carry us with them once again.