Bahrain's Unrest

**Dayuhan** · 02-23-2012

Originally Posted by KingJaja

Americans tend to assume that when they speak, all the World listens because their words carry moral authority and their cause is right. That could have been true in the past, but I am not sure it is true today.

Who assumes that? People listen when the US speaks (or at least pretend to listen) because the US wields financial and military power, period. Moral authority has nothing to do with it. There might have been some semblance of moral authority during the Cold War, based purely on being arguably less immoral than the other guys, but even that was shaky at best and could hardly be seen as a significant source of influence.

Sanctimony is by no mean the exclusive province of the US... the Europeans are much devoted to it, the Chinese drip with it, etc. All nations pretend to be morally elevated. It's mainly devoted to the domestic audience. Nobody believes them (except a few naive members of the domestic audience), and nobody should. People listen to power, not sanctimony.

**ganulv** · 02-24-2012

Originally Posted by KingJaja

Americans tend to assume that when they speak, all the World listens because their words carry moral authority and their cause is right.

The first night of my visit to Cuba in 1997 a group of young people struck up a conversation with me as a I walked by. At one point someone started making some loud–enough–for–me–to–hear nasty comments about all of the things Americans were doing to Cuba. The young man I was talking to shot him a look and said to me (and him, of course), “Most of us in my country can tell the difference between you and your government.”