If you want to know why America is doing so badly on the
international stage, you only need to study the kind of vision its leaders
develop when trying to interpret what the foreigners are saying and doing. Because
we live in an age of abundant information, the political leaders and opinion
makers have the option of letting themselves be overwhelmed by what is
happening, or that of relying on aids to review the mass of incoming
information, choose what they determine are essential, and brief their bosses
on them.
If the leaders take the first option, they will be confused;
if they take the second, they will acquire a vision that's in line with the
biases of the aids – neither of which will do the country any good when acted
upon. On the surface, this seems a conundrum that is faced only by the
so-called democracies. To check it out, you dig deep into the subject, and
discover that the appearance is indeed correct. It turns out that the systems
in other countries – whatever they call themselves – do not have the same
problem; and the leaders over there do not have to choose between bad options.
They know exactly what they see, and they respond accordingly.
So the question: What is the difference between those who
pretend to be democrats (whether or not they are) and those who do not pretend
to practice democracy (whether or not they do)? To answer the question in two
words; it is the double standard. Yes, the difference between the two is none
other than the practice of the double standard. Because it is difficult to live
up to the ideals of a true democracy, the people who pretend to be of the
democratic stripe have set up two sets of rules, and a list of talking points
to buttress them. They apply one set to themselves and their friends; and apply
the other set to everyone else.
As history continually writes itself, the sets must
continually be refreshed which means that new opinions must continually be
generated to serve as a basis for the making of new rules and new talking
points. This is where the opinion makers come in handy, whatever their stripe.
They generate a mass of opinions spanning the spectrum from one end to the
other. This gives the aids of political leaders all sorts of material to work
with. They formulate an argument to describe their stance on the issues of the
day, and formulate an opposite argument to describe the stance of the
opponents.
In America ,
the opinion makers, the political leaders and their staff learn to play the
game with domestic issues before playing it on the international stage. For
example, if a Democrat is in the White House and he opts for deficit spending,
those of the stripe will say that deficit spending is good for the economy, and
will unleash a list of talking points to justify their stance. In the meantime,
those who profess to be of the Republican stripe will say that deficit spending
is bad, and use a contrarian set of talking points to buttress their argument.
This situation remains the order of the day till a Republican gets elected to
the White House, and the roles are reversed.
A similar game is played on the international stage by more
seasoned operators, but they play it with a slight difference. Since the
chances are slim that today's foes will be tomorrow's friends, the foes will be
so labeled for life, and the friends will be so labeled for life. There will be
a set of rules and talking points to apply with the friends, and there will be
a set to apply with the foes. The Americans see nothing wrong dealing with the
world in such manner; the world sees a double standard, and deeply resents it.
This should tell you why America
is doing so badly on the international scene.
A recent article you can look at has the title: “Egypt 's
New Strongman, Sisi knows Best.” It was written by David D. Kirkpatrick and
published in the New York Times on May 25, 2014. It is a remarkable article
because the journalist is making a genuine effort to dampen his stereotyping
impulses in order to write a normal article, not one of those propaganda pieces
which the New York Times uses to distort the image of Egypt . However,
you can tell that the title of the article, being the only passage that is
savagely stereotypical, must have been written by the editors of the Times who
still live in the Dark Ages.
Despite his effort to get away from this kind flimsy
reporting, Kirkpatrick could not overcome the tendency to write the following:
“His [Sisi's] move into the presidential palace will return Egypt to the
rule of a paternalistic military strongman.” What on Earth gives this
journalist the right to speculate on something that has not happened, writing
an article that is not an opinion piece?
And where he could have helped the readers understand the
meaning of what he was reporting, he failed to do so because it would have
entailed the association of Sisi's temperament with that of Margaret Thatcher,
the late Prime Minister of Britain who dared her people to start working hard
so as to make their country a first-class nation again. Here is the passage
that Kirkpatrick reported on but left without explanation: “You want to be a
first-class nation?” he asked of Egyptians. “Will you bear it if I make you
walk on your feet? When I wake you up at 5 in the morning every day? Will you
bear cutting back on food, cutting back on air-conditioners?”
Nor was this the only time that Sisi spoke of working hard
and making sacrifices to build a better country. He did so when he shouted at a
group of young doctors urging them “to work harder for less.” And did it again
in a television interview when he promised Egyptians: “I will not sleep and
neither will you. We must work, night and day, without rest.” And he
encapsulated his temperament with the following: “People think I'm a soft man.
Sisi is torture and suffering.”
Where Kirkpatrick could not have done better than he did
because he is too young to remember the Nasser era, and because he is too
misinformed by the torrent of toxic propaganda that has been unleashed on Egypt
over a period of six decades – is where he writes about the current plan to
deal with the vast desert areas of the country. He describes the Nasser economy as having been state dominated, which is
what “set the stage for six decades of stagnation,” he says.
He goes on: “He [Sisi] has proposed … to irrigate and give
away vast areas of desert.” What Kirkpatrick does not realize is that building
the Aswan dam, and the agrarian reforms that followed were the glory of the
Nasser era, and the engine of growth that propelled Egypt into the industrial
age where, despite all the negatives that befell the country, Egypt managed to
build an economy so diversified and so resilient, it kept registering positive
growth during a two-year revolutionary period that also coincided with times so
bad, most of the world was going into negative territory. That's a 60 years
achievement almost unparalleled in history thanks to the foundation that was
put down by a man called Kaissouni, a minister in the Nasser
cabinet.
Oblivious of that history and of the current realities,
Kirkpatrick says that the Egyptian economy now teeters close to the brink
without explaining what that means because he cannot. It is that the economy is
neither on the brink nor teetering around anything. The author also reports on
the ongoing debate in the country regarding the subsidies employed to keep the
price of energy low. He does that without telling of the measures that have
been taken, and are improving the situation already. And he tells of the
package of loans and grants that Egypt has received from the Arab
countries ($12 billion in total which he exaggerated to $20 billion) without
putting that in perspective. It is that America borrows not only from
friends but also from rivals $12 billion dollars every 6 days.
In short, contrary to what Kirkpatrick is insinuating, Sisi
wants to maximize the efficiency of the state bureaucracy by reducing it, not
by expanding it. He was drafted by the Egyptian people whom he calls the
“ultimate authority” to serve them; and they see him, according to a political
scientist, as being “soft and sweet, as if he is flirting with a beautiful
woman.”