Keening for USA

There is nothing more heartwarming for a Guardian scribe than to bemoan this or another misstep of USA, no matter big or small. When an opportunity like the latest financial crisis turns up, it really gets them going. Like Mr John Gray here:

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over. You can see it in the way America's dominion has slipped away in its own backyard, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez taunting and ridiculing the superpower with impunity. Yet the setback of America's standing at the global level is even more striking.

And more, much more of the same.

I don't know what will be the eventual outcome of the crisis. It may take years for the US economy to recover, it may take less. Americans are resilient people, they know what work is. And I hope for the best for them. But this is not the point of this post.

Watch them what know how it really feels to be a "has been". Watch them drool. It's a good incentive to get back into the saddle.

It's kind of handier to spit from that saddle down, if you know what I mean...