As seen by the German magazine Der Spiegel (translation courtesy Harper Magazine’s Scott Horton; bold emphasis mine):
“Africa is a country. The Taliban rule in Libya. Muslims are terrorists. Immigrants are mostly criminals, Occupy Wall Street protesters are always dirty. And women who claim to have been sexually molested should kindly keep quiet.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of the Republican Party. Or rather: to the distorted world of its presidential campaign. For months it has coiled through the country like a traveling circus, from debate to debate, from scandal to scandal, contesting the mightiest office in the world — and nothing is ever too unfathomable for them… These eight presidential wannabes are happy enough not only to demolish their own reputations but also that of their party, the once worthy party of Abraham Lincoln. They are also ruining the reputation of the United States.
They lie, deceive, scuffle and speak every manner of idiocy. And they expose a political, economic, geographic and historical ignorance compared to which George W. Bush sounds like a scholar. Even the party’s boosters are horrified by the spectacle…
Platitudes in lieu of programs: in serious times that demand the smartest, these clowns offer blather that is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans. But as with all freak shows, it would be impossible without a stage, the U.S. media, which has been neutered by the demands of political correctness, and a welcoming audience, a party base that seems to have been lobotomized overnight. Notwithstanding the subterranean depths of the primary process, the press and broadcasters proclaim one clown after the next to be the new frontrunner, in predictable news cycles of forty-five days.
As Horton notes, the real takeaway from this is what the Republican primary circus is doing to seriously damage America’s reputation abroad. One of Barack Obama’s biggest accomplishments has been the normalization of US foreign policy and bilateral relationships after eight years of the profoundly alienating ignorance and arrogance of the Bush administration. (It hasn’t made US policy much less bloody on the ground, however.) Now, without even holding high office, eight clowns are dragging the US back into that Bush-era image morass, and actually doubling down on it, with the eager complicity of a stenographic US media that would never, ever, ever lay it out like this.
