The Eagle`s Shadow by Mark Hertsgaard

Running Head : The Eagle 's Shadow by Mark Hertsgaard

The Eagle 's Shadow by Mark Hertsgaard

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America : a place that is very rich and shoots lots of guns . It is not the most sophisticated analysis , but it is a fair short hand for how the United States is seen by many people around the world . Friend or Foe rich or poor , foreigners tend to fear America for its awesome military power even as they are dazzled by its shimmering wealth

The tragedy of 11 September

2001 maybe imprinted on everyone 's reminiscence , but for Mark Hertsgaard , a more significant date is October 26 , 2001 , the day President Bush signed the iniquitous "USA Patriot Act . The new decree defined "terrorism " in such extensive stipulations that an American citizen who , for example , made a contribution to an overseas antiabortion group possibly will be found blameworthy of supporting terrorism . It provided sweeping power to the police and defense organizations to investigate the homes of citizens tap their phones , verify their bank accounts , and even inspect public library records to see what they were reading . It dispossessed approximately 20 million non-citizens of all their civil rights some found themselves under arrest for an indefinite period on a sheer suggestion of doubt

He sets out to travel the world to find out why people abhor America . He speaks to miners in Cape Town , businessmen in Beijing , scholars in Paris and cab drivers in London , and deduces that globalization is a euphemism for Americanization . The more he travels further away from Europe , the more distinct the detestation grows to be . The American parlance is the language of international business , tourism and communiquy . American conduct , fast food , jeans , television and eating habits are in fashion the world over . More and more states have been coerced into taking on a laissez faire , pro-commercial philosophy that is making the wealthy more wealthy and the poor poorer . But customary society , local traditions and customs are under intimidation

What kind of government would disallow such fundamental public liberties ? A country where debate of domestic and foreign rule is obvious by its dearth , where disapproval is seen as treason , and where the typical artistic behavior are shopping , fixation with pop idols and watching useless television . Not startlingly , Hertsgaard is apprehensive at what is happening to his dearly loved America

Ubiquitously , he is a queried more or less identical question . How can America put a man on the moon and complete libraries on to computer chips , but still feel apprehension concerned with the deliberation about evolution in its public schools ? How can Americans be so substantially wealthy and so deficient in family and societal binds ? So swamped with timesaving plans , yet unendingly strained and rushed

Hertsgaard has no authentic answers to these questions . He puts a group of marks on the background , but is unsuccessful in joining them into a logical scrutiny of US foreign strategy , or America 's part in the IMF World Bank or World Trade Organization , or US military involvement in far-off lands . He tells us naught about how the US dominance of commodities , international fashionable way of life eradicate the room for other cultures to subsist and articulate themselves , and let their thoughts bloom . In its place , he prefers to look at America itself and inspect what is truly erroneous about the first hyper supremacy in history

As a journalist and broadcaster , Hertsgaard is well versed with America and he does extremely well with demarcating its inherent errors . The US financial system and political system , he tells us , are partial in support of the wealthy . One in three Americans earns 8 , or less , an hour 40 per cent of American children live below or near the poverty line . Although half of all Americans invest in the stock market , around 90 per cent of all stock is in fact possessed by the wealthiest 10 per cent of family units . By 1999 , Bill Gates single-handedly owned as much affluence as the substructure 40 per cent of Americans . When Enron buckled , its employees and regular stockholders lost a projected 25- 50 million value of retirement funds , but the corporation management had by now walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars . So to show America as a territory of equivalent chance and bounty for all is a nasty deception . In actuality , America is divided by class and race

The US press , Hertsgaard suggests , is "stenographer to American power (Hertsgaard , 2003 ) It advocates misinformation and ersatz-news that at once hypnotize and humiliate the public , encouraging it to be uninformed and unintelligent

Hertsgaard proposes his writing style at the echelon of his American spectators . This is a simple book , simply written . But his assumptions will make severe reading for most Americans "Our foreign policy , he states unambiguously , is "arrogant and cruel "our consumerist definition of prosperity is killing us and the planet (Hertsgaard 2003 ) US egalitarianism is an upsetting warren of commercial campaigners , unshakable pen pushers , self-centered multimillionaires and lawful corruption . The US financial system is accumulating wealth in fewer and fewer hands . Yet , to top it all "Our business and political elite are insisting that our model should also be the world 's model (Hertsgaard , 2003

The only justification Hertsgaard has is a lack of knowledge . Americans he emphasizes repetitively , are fair-minded people . The dilemma is that of Hertsgaard 's research is new they are made at recurrent interludes by ever-increasing numbers of American authors . William J Lederer and Eugene Burdick 's novel The Ugly American , a lacerating depiction of US foreign policy , was first published in 1958 , and became a bestseller . Michael Moore 's Stupid White Men , including most of the same proof as Hertsgaard , topped the bestseller lists in America this summer . Lack of knowledge is a frayed justification

The genuine query is why plentiful substantiation unsuccessful in rousing the American public awareness , why Americans say no to questioning their way of life and to acknowledge liability for how their government functions in their name . The answer lies not in facts , but analysis . Hertsgaard is important proof , yet again , that being critical of America is neither a non-American activity nor outright anti-Americanism . He merely begs the question of why criticism fails to dent US policy and shape public discussion of it , let alone prompt change . This is the real enigma that Americans should be pondering -- for their own sake

Hertsgaard , is a literary hero (if not exactly a lion ) all over Europe for portraying George W . as a naive , bumbling cowboy who shoots from the hip , governing a nation of the fat and the privileged (the Europeans think Americans all look like Michael Moore and Al Franken , prosperous for having exploited slaves and Red Indians . But he , like so many frustrated critics of America , asks the question that proves a point - but not the point he thinks he makes "If America is as flawed as detractors say , if it is a self-centered gluttonous bully with a racist past and a soul-less center " he wonders "why are millions of people from around the world willing to do nearly anything to immigrate here (Hertsgaard , 2003

References

Hertsgaard , Mark (2003 . The Eagle 's Shadow : Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World , Picador USA

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