I fully appreciate why so many Americans winced at Russian President Vladimir Putin presuming to lecture the United States about the shortcomings of its democratic practices (in what had to have been a deliberately dated op-ed in the New York Times on 9/11). After all, with the notorious blunders of Iraq and Afghanistan still so raw in public consciousness, his chastising successive American presidents for trying to export what they presume are the virtues and benefits of American-style democracy (often at the barrel of a gun) smacked of pouring salt in an open wound.
Notwithstanding Putin’s brazen hypocrisy and insensitivity, however, there are far too many undeniable truths in what he wrote.
For, in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan, he could have cited the tragic blunders the United States made of efforts to remake many other countries in its own democratic image, including Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Cambodia, and Angola.
And how could he resist deflecting any criticism of his totalitarian, neo-Stalinist rule by citing America’s shameful and unresolved legacy of slavery and racial discrimination.
Yet the way the American system of governance worked was always as enviable as it was unassailable in this context.
Alas, even with the presaging event of Bush v. Gore 2000, not even Putin could have foreseen (or wished for) the dysfunction that now characterizes governance in the United States.
But leave it to a cartoon to synthesize what the current government shutdown says about American-style democracy and governance. And it seems fitting that a resident cartoonist for a foreign publication, The Economist, is the one who did it best:
Enough said?
Meanwhile, the Indonesians could be forgiven for thinking that anti-Muslim Republicans are deliberately manufacturing crises just to prevent Obama from ever defiling the presidency of the United States by visiting their country, which has the largest Muslim population in the world.
After all, this government shutdown is now the third crisis that has forced him to cancel a state visit to Indonesia, which he was scheduled to embark upon today….
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