Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

One of the books I picked up last weekend and am currently reading is The Eagle’s Shadow. The author, Mark Hertsgaard, has written five books, and articles for several periodicals including Time, The Nation, and The Guardian. He is also a contributor to NPR. With that resume, you would assume he has a left-of-center outlook on things.

This article, “Why we still don’t get it one year on” was written for The Guardian. It follows the tone of his book, and is, basically, a preface to it.

The money quote of the article, in my view, is:

But the world doesn’t hate us, the American people. It is our government, our military, and our corporations that are resented. To anyone living outside the US, this may seem an obvious point.

This is an assumption made by many people. What they don’t grasp is that the American people are all those things. It is different in other countries, where the class you are born into determines what you will do for your entire life. Nowhere else can you climb from the lowest rung of the social ladder to the very top in a single generation. Nowhere. Australia comes closest, with England and Canada behind.

Hertsgaard’s view of the world is in direct conflict with those of Ralph Peters. I will leave it to readers to draw their own conclusions, but I think it is important to read both before deciding. Keep this paragraph in mind as you decide whether Mark has a clue:

Americans are ignorant about the outside world mainly because most of what we’re told about it is little more than semi-official propaganda. Our political leaders portray the acts of our government, military and corporations in the best possible light, and our news media do little to challenge these self-serving declarations.

I wonder if that opinion has changed any during this election year.

UPDATE: Check the Trackback link to Sarah’s site. She has much better analysis of this than I do. In particular, she remembered where SDB put this. Thank you smart lady!