ROBERT KUTTNER: "A more democratic world rejects Bush's globalism"

[Hand]

THE GOOD NEWS: Democracy is breaking out all over. The awkward news: The more that people freely vote, the more fervently they reject the global designs of George W. Bush and the America he projects.

In the Middle East, the people have freely chosen two governments that could not be more a repudiation of Bush's vision for the region, nor more alarming to broader hopes of peace and stability -- Hamas in Palestine and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran. Even in Iraq, whose election was held under direct American tutelage, our preferred henchmen were decisively ousted.

In Latin America, voters in Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and most recently Chile, have chosen governments that are social-democratic at best and caudillo-populist at worst. Mexico, where a popular radical, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leads all polls, is probably next. Some, like Chile's new president, Michelle Bachelet, are admirable, others less so. But none supports Bush's vision of corporate globalism.

America was once a universal beacon. Ever since America asserted global leadership in the mid-20th century, people around the world have expressed nothing so much as ambivalence.

It gets better from there--Kuttner's analysis is completely spot on and refreshingly unsparing.

Link

[eppur_se_muova]

1. That's the funny thing about democracy -- there's more than one version.

I don't remember being around when ** was chosen to be the sole arbiter of what constitutes "democracy". Evidently I'm not the only one.

[twenty4blackbirds]

2. a self-evident truth...

"That's the funny thing about democracy -- there's more than one version."

:hi: