By MANIFESTO JOE
There was once a novel, and also a song, called something like, Been Down So Very Damn Long That It Looks Like Up To Me. This is one theory about George W. "Bushie" Bush's mysterious popularity in the European garden spot of Albania.
In America, his approval ratings have sunk into the toilet. Here in his home state, he's below 50 percent. In parts of Europe, he's in single digits. In Italy, while he was meeting with the pope, angry mobs took to the streets.
In Albania, he got a rock star's reception. "Bushie, Bushie," they chanted. Old women kissed him on both cheeks, and the rabble reached out to muss his gray hair. He was deemed by the prime minister the greatest guest the country ever had.
History must be considered. Among Europeans, Albanians are like someone who's been in a torture chamber so long that a stretch in a minimum-security prison must seem like utopia.
These are a long, long-suffering people, beset by empires and dictators of all sorts, starting with the Romans. They were dominated by the Ottoman Empire for centuries, which made them the only Muslim-majority populace in Europe. (Convert, or split).
Mussolini's Italian fascist army overran them just before World War II (although I read that they had a little trouble with the guys with the pitchforks). After the communists took over in 1944, they had a dictator, Enver Hoxha, who made Uncle Joe Stalin seem like a bud you could sit down and have a few chilled Stolis with.
In 1967 Hoxha declared the country the world's first official atheist country, closing all the mosques. Before he died and went to Hell in 1985, he somehow even managed to piss off communist China.
Even after Hoxha died and went to Hell, Albania's luck didn't get much better. In the 1990s the country started moving toward a market economy, but their first big taste of it was nasty. This from Wikipedia:
In 1997 widespread riots erupted after the International Monetary Fund forced the state to liberalize banking practices. Many citizens, naive to the workings of a market economy, put their entire savings into pyramid schemes. In a short while, $2 billion (80% of the country's GDP) had been moved into the hands of just a few pyramid scheme owners, causing severe economic troubles and civic unrest.
So, their first experience with capitalism was a vast Ponzi scheme, and they're still enthusiastic about it? Hell, they sound like Americans to me. Maybe Karl Rove can figure out a way to make them into the 51st state. They'd be a lock for the Republicans.
I guess when you been down so long, almost anything looks like up. Even Bush.
Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.
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4 comments:
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Even more mysterious than Albania (which at least has some excuse as they haven't actually lived under Bush) are the 28 percenters here in the U.S., who continue to approve of Bush's performance. Who ARE these people, who continue to fantatically support their beloved leader?
I know my share of them. Political indoctrination is a lot like religious indoctrination. If they've gotten to the person by the time they are 10 years old or so, 90 percent of those people will cling to that ideology or faith, no matter what experience or observation should be teaching them.
The Dems are arrogantly believing that they already have 2008 wrapped up and that it's just a matter of which candidate: Hilary, Obama or Gore.
The fact is, the GOP isn't going to give up the White House without a ferocious fight. From Swift-Boating to Black Box/Diebold vote theft, the Republicans are going to make damn sure that they don't give up the reins of power without a battle.
Personally, I believe that the Dems are too timid to win this fight.
We've already seen this with Gore in 2000. I mean, he won the god-damned election and yet he was too polite to fight for what was rightfully his. Gore and the Dems sat around, waiting for the phone to ring, while the GOP thugs stole the election.
I don't know if it's really specifically Bush that they love. America in general is pretty popular in Eastern Europe--and has been since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. for example is much more admired in Poland, for example, than Italy.
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