Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s not the message we get from leaders around the world, all of whom are eager to work with us. That’s not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they’ve been in years.
U.S. President Obama’s State of the Union address, January 24, 2012
You know, I almost blew it a few years ago. I become so engaged in the political passion play that was unfolding in America that I very nearly applied for a Social Security Number, just so I could register to donate to Obama’s campaign and to vote in the general election – something I had never done in my life, or even considered doing. How I thank my lucky stars I never went through with it, as I would have destroyed any hope of presenting an airtight relinquishment case a few years later. I really don’t know what got into me – I have considered myself 100% Canadian for so many years and never really paid that much attention to U.S. politics – but that campaign was just so different, so important; with so much at stake. Like some dormant recessive gene now expressing itself, I suddenly felt this weird urge to participate in the big show.
Well, times have changed in more ways than one, haven’t they? Those rose-tinted glasses have now faded to a rather dull gray.
Don’t get me wrong – I still respect Obama greatly, and if I were voting in the upcoming election (which most assuredly I am not) it would still be for the same man who represented so much Hope in 2008. Once again, there really is no credible alternative from the not so G.O.P., and so Obama will not likely have to pack up the family for another four years.
Of course, I now look upon this year’s campaign with a completely different perspective than the last one. This time I feel so betrayed on so many levels. The brief thrill of participation in the American political process that held me in its sway for a few months back then has long since turned into a deepening suspicion and fear that the good I thought was perhaps returning to the United States might just have been a mirage. Now, everything about America to me is inevitably about the IRS and the virtual Berlin Wall of draconian, Orwellian tax laws and penalties it has erected to punish those citizens who would dare to leave the motherland. I simply can no longer accept any political statements or gestures emanating from anyone representing the US government without first refracting them through the prism of our growing collective experience as de facto outcasts from our country of birth. There really are over six million of us out here, and we shouldn’t be forgotten.
Obama, naturally, is playing to the domestic audience. I fear, however, that he really does believe the world is once again ready to sing Kumbaya with America and therefore concludes that there can’t really be anything wrong with America’s foreign policy, tax policy or the way America treats its diaspora. Of course we know that nothing could be further from the truth.
FATCA is coming; a corrosive tidal wave that will sweep away what little goodwill the world actually still retains for the U.S. It will ultimately force all nations on earth to decide once and for all what roles they are truly destined to play on the world stage, and whether or not they will continue to acquiesce to America’s imperial overreach without any meaningful protest. If it so chooses, the world holds a stick worth over 10 trillion U.S. dollars in direct foreign investment in the heartland of America and more than another 10 trillion dollars in U.S. securities. The U.S., on the other hand, holds a punitive threat of a 30% withholding tax on a currency that may soon be worthless as foreign investors begin to flee it in droves. We, in the rest of the world, have far more power than we give ourselves credit for – it’s time to figure out how to harness it – and push back with everything we’ve got. That’s how we can participate in this year’s election.
Great post.
Very very good post.
What planet is Obama living on? He’s read Zakaria’s book and he surely cannot be oblivious to the “rise of the rest.” This isn’t his fault, it just is. There are other power centers in the world and, of course, everyone is interested in talking with the U.S. just as everyone wants to talk to China or the EU or the BRIC’s. If that makes some Americans uncomfortable, that’s unfortunate but it doesn’t change things. FATCA is going to be a diplomatic mess and an economic tragedy for the US. The renunciations could quite possibly make for a fine talking point for the opposition. This isn’t going to end well.
And now the American Diaspora is roaring and my impression is that they are going to do what’s necessary to shut it up. I’ve sent off my request for an absentee ballot, I’m talking to Democrats Abroad (actually got an answer back), wrote to some of the other less known candidates (no answers) and now I’m working on seeing what can be done here in the EU. The time for hiding has come and gone, my friends, and now we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being persistent and loud.
And yet I got a mail the other day from someone I know who is active in GOP politics and this person suggested that I write a memo about this issue and send it along to the GOP leadership. I find that I am a bit hesitant to do it – do I really want to do something (even something very minor) that might help the GOP win? Quite a conundrum but I did say that I was willing to fight dirty…
It doesn’t sound like the Big O has George Soros on his list of leaders …
George Soros predicts riots, police state and class war for America (25 Jan 2011)
http://rt.com/usa/news/george-soros-class-war-619/
The leaders of the world may be telling Obama to his face that they will continue to submit to his hegemony, but they are now all negotiating bilateral trade agreements which will circumvent world markets that trade in US dollars. This is the importance of Zero Hedge. Obviously, Obama is not reading Zerohedge, and that’s why he doesn’t know about these side deals that are taking place–between nations of billions of people who will no longer need the dollar to conduct business with one another. Sort of contradicts what your quote of Obama said.
Whether the next president is republican or democrat, the United States faces an extremely difficult time in the next presidency. It may not matter who the president is. The debt-death spiral is coming its ultimate conclusion: an insolvent government that can only continue its overspending by debasing the currency.
In fact, you’re wrong. The GOP does have a good candidate but the war mongering wing of the party is bending over backwards to make sure he never comes close to being nominated.
@Agent_Meatball. The name is too funny 🙂
@Petros – I bet this is what the US wants. If India and other countries pay in gold to Iran, then the US has more gold to steal when they take over Iran. I find it kind of funny too, since even gold is priced in US Dollars, so it doesn’t make much of a difference.
I stick to my theory: If anyone ever tries to “reprice” commodities in a different currency, the US blows up their country and tosses out their leader.
@Agent_Meatball If you mean Ron Paul, who is also my favorite, I think that it will be a case of too little too late if he won the election. I have too little hope that anyone can right this ship–it can only default and rebuild anew.
@geeeez Such a plan to take Iran’s gold is too counter-intuitive. If they need gold, they will confiscate it at home first. I don’t think any of the articles at Zerohedge suggest that gold would become the currency of exchange, but other foreign currencies.
@peter, what does the US do that is intuitive? If they confiscated gold at home that would send a message that things are very bad! They may not want the actual gold, but any threat to US Dollar hedgemony is not tolerated!
America is a religion and the President is the high priest.
Deckard1138
I identified so much with your post. The betrayal has been so much more wounding for me at least, because it comes during the term of a leader whose election (fraught with such heavy US historical and social baggage) seemed so unlikely to prevail – and seemed to me to be more hopeful than not. Even with a cautious eye, it seemed to me that the US had turned some kind of new corner. I had been voting from abroad for several years (once I figured out the labyrinthine process and rules with the help of the Overseas Vote Foundation). I already had to obtain an SSN long ago, – which became necessary to settle my mother’s US estate from ‘abroad’ – so it is far too late for me to regret having one.
As you said: “Now, everything about America to me is inevitably about the IRS and the virtual Berlin Wall of draconian, Orwellian tax laws and penalties….”. I despair, and renouncing seems my only alternative, but the thought brings me only more sadness – although perhaps my only relief. US citizenship for me is inextricably entwined with family narrative, love for my parents, and by extension – respect for what they loved.
My father brought us to Canada in 1961 (when I was very young) to work here at the request of a Canadian company, but he refused to compromise his US citizenship (as US law stood then) by taking the oath of citizenship and swearing allegiance to a monarch (however symbolic). Sadly, he didn’t live to see Obama elected, but thankfully, I don’t have to explain to him as a vulnerable senior, why he would now be a potential target of the IRS and persecuted with FBAR and FATCA requirements applied to his paltry and hard won savings, and his daily chequing accounts here… (in spite of filing his US tax returns from ‘abroad’). That would have meant even more pain, dread and fear for me – and not only would he be panicked to learn of OVDI and FBARs, but it would represent one more huge challenge for me – to deal with his ‘offshore accounts’ (as well as my own) – as signatory with power of attorney for his finances due to his disability. If my adult sister (with developmental and physical disabilities) had survived longer, I would also be fending off the IRS on her behalf as well.
That is in addition to my dread at the current threat to the ‘commingled’ assets of my Canadian born spouse and family members on accounts where I am a ‘toxic’ signatory ..That would be about the current State of the Union from the perspective of this US ‘person’……..
@Brock:
I renounced.
It was not an easy decision to make. I wrestled with it for several years. My elderly mother cried when I told her what I had done.
And renouncing did not help my anger. Thats why I am on this blog. The ideology of freedom that was given birth during the American Revolution has been completely betrayed. The abused (American colonists) have now become the abusers (US imperialists).
All empires eventually eat their own children.
Americans abroad are now on the menu and its gonna be an “all you can eat buffet” for the USG.
Spartacus
Great post. The thing is, Obama and every other president knows only what the State Department tells him about the world. (I guess I was expecting more from Obama as a president because he’d lived abroad, but I guess that’s part of that fake “hope” and “change”). State has absolutely no idea what “American influence” is. They literally think a dive bar called “Texas” and an American bumper sticker in a crappy Russian Far East border town is something to write home about and constitutes evidence that American influence is “prevalent”: http://www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09VLADIVOSTOK106
The sad fact is that in most parts of Asia, even small countries like South Korea have more “soft power” than the US: they have just as many people watching their television shows, they have more of their citizens actually on the ground (#1 source of expatriates in China, Philippines, Japan, Mongolia, and Vietnam), and they aren’t trying to push their tax laws on everyone. South Korea encourages its small businesspeople to expand into overseas markets. The U.S. makes it impossible with FATCA, FBAR, Form 5471, and all the associated garbage.
“The next step is a currency crisis because there will be a rejection of the dollar, the rejection of the dollar is a big, big event, and then your personal liberties are going to be severely threatened.”
– Ron Paul