The financial machine has been ignited. The United States is now onto an unprecedented rescue plan to salvage its troubled financial system. Many believe, amongst them the most sarcastic journalists and critics who in one way or the other view the world in the lenses of division, that this is analogous to a short descent to socialism. Detractors of democracy are celebrating down south. The likes of Hugo Chavez and the ailing Fidel Castro will declare victory as their chief ideological adversary is on its knees before the god of Socialism.
For the US, the decisiveness of the situation disregarded any symbolic representations of the economic bail-out. For many decades democracy has been treated as “good” and socialism, as a way of Communists, “evil.” The US is known to have imposed very strenuous measures against any signs of socialist appearance. But now that nationalization of select financial institutions has taken place (even though we can describe it as temporary), critics are one that finally laissez faire democracy has proven itself fallible for once in a while.
Indeed there is no perpetual system of government. At any point in history one is ought to deteriorate, cease, and then resume, or if not, be dead forever under the weakness of its administration or the inevitability of the situation, if such situation cannot be solved at all. Resurgence of such principle may be a sign of the country’s political might, and therefore right now the time is not ripe to conclude that the Stars and Stripes has really fallen down into the abyss of democratic reneging. Thank God there is no malicious McCarthy who will take advantage of the catastrophe.
If I have been a critic of the United States before, it is not that I wish it to break under financial pressures and hurt its people. My spite is not aimed towards its citizens, but rather towards a tyrant of foreign policy under whom nations have suffered. Right then, even before all this Wall Street mess began I have treated the George Herbert Warlord Bush administration a USSR-incarnate, and his seating indifferently while the greedy higher class is munching at the enthusiasm of the homeless two years ago reminds me of Bourbon-style governance. And the $700 billion bail-out package from the pockets of the taxpayers to pay for the abuses of gigantic firms is like saying, “dammit, they gotta eat cake in their own expenses.”
I have no idea whatever scenario analysts have predicted in the ensuing bail-out period, whether it will cost the US so dearly or whether it will not; on second thought the fact that it has afforded a $600 billion war in Iraq makes me doubt that it will not get back to economic normalcy so quickly, should I be wrong then much has been lost and the present generation will carry the burden to their graves. In case it happens, the Red ideologues will again sound their victory. Any negative repercussion of the massive economic rescue plan will send the US into a crumbling state especially when trust in the credit concept dwindles down to the abnormal.
The silent little Communists, nationalists and authoritarians are watching. God lend Imperial America grace otherwise the hostile nations will contest for power in the ebbing of the bald eagle’s supremacy. If the US has made use of soft power in achieving its spheres of influence, who knows that they may frustratingly go with the opposite?
this articles was written by “My Stung Republic”, a 4th year student, AB-Political Science Major, Wesleyan University-Philippines. He blogs at The Pelican Spectator
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yeah, we may be all socialists now but then again the beauty of the American experiment is that it constantly reinvents itself. What do Americans look for in a President?
reinvention might be something Filipinos might want to look into.
With regards to the above, shouldn’t the contrast be between capitalism and socialism? Capitalism is not synonymous with democracy. As concepts, the proper contrast with [varying degrees of] democracy is with [varying degrees of] dictatorship.