America the Horrendous?

Mostly not, perhaps.  But there’s no ignoring certain blatant facts that are all too clear—certainly to the rest of the world if not the ignorant, unthinking, in-denial masses blithering away their lives in America.  Spiegel Online has a (typically) well-written, if depressing, article:

America, Land of Extremes: An Enigmatic Country Elects a New President

America? A horrendous country that betrays its own values every few years, thus forfeiting its moral right to lead the Western world. It elects presidents who know nothing about the world, and have no interest in learning more, which explains why they readily succumb to errors and illusions, only to reveal their utter amazement when they finally—and usually too late—admit their mistakes. Since 1945, America has been fighting wars in countries that it knows very little about, and under premises that have almost nothing to do with reality.

America is a superpower around the globe, but a Third World country at home, with an infrastructure that defies description. There are collapsing bridges, power failures along the entire East Coast, and homes in places like Florida, North Carolina and Texas are regularly destroyed every year by hurricanes that flatten houses as if they were beach bungalows in Haiti.

There is also the obscene contrast between rich and poor, which has hardy interested or shocked any administration since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What is even more obscene is the ignorance of a government that allows millions of people, in the richest country in the world, to live without health insurance. This is a government that stands by idly as the (primarily black) city of New Orleans disappears under floodwaters. Yes, the most obscene aspect of all remains the unacknowledged racism in this country of pragmatic enlightenment—the ongoing prejudices of whites against blacks.

America is an extreme country, and no one feels indifferent about it.