Uncle S(h)am Wants You (For His Next Scam)!

Just Make Sure You Ask For A Gift Receipt

"Since Sept. 11, 2001, the world’s opinion of the United States has plummeted, with the largest short-term drop in American history. The United States now garners as much international esteem as Russia. "

--Lt. Gen. William E. Odom (Ret.), Foreign Policy, May/June 2006

"Not for a long time will people listen to US officials lecture on the virtues of free financial markets with a straight face."

--Martin Wolf, The Financial Times, 12/12/2007

"It hurts to see our national pastime ripped apart by allegations and scandals. I am seeing former teammates and opponents go under the HGH/steroid crosshairs, and it makes me wonder what else was happening in the 15 seasons I was part of [Major League Baseball.]"

--Doug Glanville, ESPN.com, 12/20/2007

As the Bush Administration counts down its final months, we Americans can look forward to picking ourselves up and shaking off a bit of the dust. It has been a rough few years for our country; a period of self-examination is in order. And what we find on the threshold of 2008 is the following: a foreign policy that inspires revulsion across the globe (witness the string of electoral defeats suffered by key Bush allies such as the sitting governments of Spain, Poland and Australia, as well as the retirement of Britain's Tony Blair); a financial system that will face dozens if not hundreds of lawsuits over the coming months for fraudulently presenting packages of subprime mortgages as "investment grade" to international clients; and a national pastime -- baseball -- whose fans literally cannot believe their eyes because so many players have been artifically pumped up on steroids. Even for a nation where the snake oil salesman has thrived for centuries, and where millions believe that a New York farmer named Joseph Smith found gold tablets left on his farm by God, this is a lot to take.

Yet one can assert that there is no reason to be pessimistic. The US has put its disheveled house in order countless times before, following the Civil War; the Great Depression; Vietnam; Watergate; and the S&L crisis. Next up for resolution are the grotesque aftermath of the housing bubble and the morally (and financially) disastrous occupation of Iraq. As the country goes about tackling these issues, it seems the best advice for the citizenry is to be reticent to trust its self-anointed "leaders," and instead insist that humane and intelligent policies percolate from the enlightened grassroots upward. Because when Uncle Sam comes strolling down the sidewalk, eager to tout a needless war or to sell a bundle of worthless paper, the best thing is to grab the kids, check the wallet, and cross over to the other side of the road to join your neighbors.

Minnesota's Own Version of "Verjudung," or How Somali Refugees Threaten Christmas In The Upper Midwest

Germany's Pro-Christian, Anti-Semitic Adolf Stoecker:

Would He Win Votes in Present-Day Minnesota?

A substantial number of Minnesotans have developed an hysterical fear of Muslims. The main Minneapolis newspaper regularly reports on the purported social infractions engaged in by the local Somali community, who arrived in the city in the early 1990's as refugees fleeing civil war in their home country. The latest outrage to rile the native population involves the creation by a local community college of a designated place for Somali-origin students to observe their daily prayer ritual.

In a blog discussion about the prayer site, one participant asserted the following:

“This is just another step in the Islamification of our country. This will be the civil war of our lifetime. America vs. internal and home-grown Muslims.”

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Apart from evincing paranoia, the commentary -- not at all unique in the blogosphere, or in the nation's capital-- is also reminiscent of a sinister belief from Germany's past: Verjudung.

Verjudung held that 19th century German culture was being corrupted by the newly-emancipated Jews. One of its foremost proponents was Adolf Stoecker, who -- according to Wikipedia -- was "upset with the dislocating social effects brought on by rapid industrialization" and so "called for German society to rededicate itself to Christian faith and return to Germanic rule in law and business." Stoecker founded the Christian Social Party, designed at once to beat back socialism and deprive Jews of their civil rights. The CSP found that the more it attacked German Jewry, the greater its success at the ballot box.

Along with increasing xenophobia in Minnesota, directed not only at Somali Muslims but also at Mexican immigrants, the US Congress has swung into action to revive explicitly a principal part of the CSP philosophy, last week passing House Resolution 847: "Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith." While the Iraq situation festers and a global financial crisis unfolds, our House of "Representatives" found time to assert officially by a vote of 372-9 that "on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ." Stoecker would have been proud.

Another major piece of the context that helped spawn the German CSP also is on the rise in present-day America: economic anxiety. The subprime mortgage crisis threatens not only to throw millions of people out of their homes and cause the US economy to contract, but also to provoke a worldwide financial meltdown. The blame for this, according to Martin Wolf of "The Financial Times," ultimately falls on the shoulders of the financiers of London and New York who are guilty of poisoning international markets with a "mixture of crony capitalism and gross incompetence." Even so, substitute "liberal" for "socialist" and "Muslim/Mexican" for "Jew" and my money is on our nation's latter-day Adolf Stoeckers to continue diverting anger from worthy targets onto bogeymen.