When Everybody Looks Like a Scumbag

Like most of us, I got mildly immersed in the WikiLeaks/New York Times - Guardian - Der Spiegel disclosure of American diplomatic missives.  At first it was like peeking into the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy but, before long, I found it just saddening.

I guess that's how America's powers-that-be see the rest of the world - duplicitous, venal, craven, utterly unfaithful.  The WikiLeaks diplo-dump was mildly interesting - at first - but as it droned on and on, the sheer weight of it became a bit oppressive, even suffocating.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the very best, the American diplomatic communiques seem to depict a world in which other nations rank anywhere from a mid-five to a one-minus.   The American vision, to the extent these memos reflect that accurately, is profoundly bleak and well beyond simply cautious or even negative.

I'm left wondering whether the Americans aren't seeing the rest of the world very much as that world has come to see them.   Ever since the Bush/Cheney cancer set in and metastasized, America's standing in the world has taken a hit from which it has shown little interest in recovering.   Sure we greeted Obama and prayed his election would even America's keel but the American right, political and media, heeled over even harder, further.

The tone I discerned that was relatively constant through these documents was of a country that feels itself besieged, betrayed and unappreciated.

Maybe, just maybe, America has more to learn, stands to gain more than anyone else from the WikiLeaks scandal.  Maybe America badly needs to take a brutally honest look at what's wrong with the way it sees the world.  It could just be that America could be the big winner.