Innocents Abroad?

"Do you like me? Do you really like me?"

Well the country lies in ruins. Really, it’s just amazing what is allowed and what has happened. Well, I guess it isn’t amazing, it’s just tragic. When you’re a kid you grow up with such an idealized version of the US (well, perhaps that’s just me and an optimistic, although realistic, nature). But to see such graft and corruption finally bought to account and someone held accountable, or at least charged, with such corruption, really gives it some immediacy and some sense of reality. And it’s not as though I haven’t been following this case. I have. I’ve been reading Hullaballoo by Digby and firedoglake and Body and Soul and Alternet and Raw Story etc. religiously; I’m a confirmed Plameologist (BA, MA, PhD firedoglake 2005) but yet sheesh, is this really America? Seems to me that really, while this is happening in the United States, again, this doesn't mean that people in other countries hate individual Americans. Maybe they hate the policies of the US and think that Monkey Boy is full of doo doo, and yes, perhaps there are more cases of Americans being given a hard time in other countries than there were. I don't know but I know I've read at least a couple instances where Americans were given a hard time because they were Americans. However, most folks in other countries will not hold you directly accountable for the actions of your government (unlike the US government in so many instances, as featured recently in a great post by Patriot Boy about a film called Persons of Interest. That being said, the longer the perpetuation of policies in the form of electing people who would approve such policies goes on, the more and more accountable We The People are and the less generous people will be to us in other countries.