However much better than George W. Bush Barack Obama may be, there are many on the Latin American left that have yet to be sold on the idea that President Obama is anything more than a palatable new face for the same old bad ‘Empire’. They don’t exactly reject Obama – but their views are expressed with the tinge of a sinking feeling.
One recent example of this narrative is this editorial from Colombia’s El Mundo, which reads in:
“The inaugural address of the so-called ‘Obama Era’ left us with the impression that the 44th President of the United States is a combination of two rather strange personalities for our times: the leader of the greatest world power, selected to confront, from this moment forward, two wars and an economic crisis almost as serious as the Depression of the 1930s; the other, a charismatic pastor who invokes God’s help time and again, while calling on his people to take up again, the values of “honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty,’ and patriotism.”
“Another notable characteristic of Barack Obama’s speech is its glorification of the past of the United States, his absolute vote of confidence in the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, and his conviction that the Empire should continue being the Empire – only a good Empire … there will no fundamental change, but rather a change in style and nuance.”
EDITORIAL
Translated By ‘Douglas Myles Rasmussen’
January 21, 2009
Colombia – El Mundo – Original Article (Spanish)
The inaugural address of the so-called “Obama Era” left us with the impression that the 44th President of the United States is a combination of two rather strange personalities for our times: the leader of the greatest world power, selected to confront, from this moment forward, two wars and an economic crisis almost as serious as the Depression of the 1930s; the other, a charismatic pastor who invokes God’s help time and again, while calling on his people to take up again, the values of “honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty,” and patriotism. And to assume, as a kind of Manifest Destiny, that “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world.”
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