How the Rest of the World Sees Us: the "Glass House of Hypocrisy"

[Edited 12/14/11]
Listening to the American media, like NPR and Fox News, or to Presidential candidates, and the like, who constantly berate the rest of the world, like Russia, or any country that defends their sovereignty from the parasitic demands of western capitalists, or who seriously defend the rights of Palestinians against the illegal murderous acts of the Zionist Israeli state, as Iran, Syria, Libya or pre-war Iraq have done, for example, you get the idea that we, the US, are the "Pillar of International Law" and "Democratic Freedoms" -- the ultimate arbiters of "moral authority."

We are God. We decide for the world what is moral or immoral, right or wrong. We don't subscribe to the International Court--we just tell them who to try for war crimes before or after we and NATO bomb target countries and their civilians into submission. You can hear our righteous role promoted in the media, some churches, and from Congress every day--we make the rules by virtue of our power and not to be questioned so-called moral authority--governed of course by who has the most money to influence elections and our most moral Congressional legislation. The fact that our government now consistently violates and trashes our Constitution, civil liberties, and traditional American democratic values is not worthy of notice, and in fact, many Americans realize that they dare not speak of it for fear of retribution.

We get government by the well off, imperial empire, drone killing of citizens without trial, indefinite detention, war without end, extreme inequality, increasing poverty, medical care we can't afford, foreclosures and homelessness, crumbling schools and infrastructure, and tear gas when we protest, but despite the reality of our lives, our government and media lecture us and the rest of the world on the virtues of American democracy.

Well, much of the world disagrees with the hypocrisy represented by the policies, wars and other actions of the US government, but you won't hear that from most of the American media or Congress.

Here are two infinitesimally small, but recent, examples of what much of the world really thinks:
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Heavy-Handed Police Weigh In To Tackle Thousands "Occupying" US


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December 05, 2011
Thousands March at U.N. Climate Summit in Durban to Demand Climate Justice

NNIMMO BASSEY: The U.S. delegation should understand that the citizens of the United States are not living on a separate planet. We have only one planet. And it’s important that the delegation from the U.S. should stop stopping global action against global warming. They have done this from 1997. They can’t keep on bullying the world. If they don’t want to act, they should get out of the convention. Simple message: we can’t allow this any further.

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Which nations are really responsible for climate change - interactive map
The Guardian, UK

There are many ways to view the world's carbon emissions: by national totals or emissions per person; by current carbon output or historical emissions; by production of greenhouse gases or consumption of goods and services; by absolute emissions or economic carbon intensity.

Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.

Our interactive map allows you to browse all of these different measurements, each of which provides a different insight. Together they highlight the complexity of divvying up responsibility for climate change and some of the tensions at the heart of the global climate negotiations.

See link above for interactive map.
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There are no magic answers

"There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change -- and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future." -- Noam Chomsky