Still on the wrong side? What gives 99ers?

President Barack Obama's popularity is dropping, and if you're an "American" you may not have noticed any real difference with exception to the usual red-baiting teabagger rhetoric. Obama's popularity is not actually dropping in the United States, at least not significantly, and though he's tied with Mitt Romney in a number of states in his race for reelection, his popularity around the globe has diminished quite dramatically, especially in the Muslim majorities of the world, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center. The reason for this dramatic drop in popularity is clear when considering the signal Obama sent around the globe meant to mark the end of the extreme policies of George W. Bush, and denoting the coming change that has still not happened, and probably won't unfortunately. The signal was his plea for a "new beginning" of U.S.-Islam relations during a speech in Cairo, Egypt, for which he may be more commonly remembered as having uttered the most common of greetings in Islamic culture, "As’salaamu alaykum."

The event was received as a Godsend by a society almost openly, but undeniably in the institutional sense, demonized by the Bush administration. Unfortunately only four years later Obama's policy has cost him that popularity immensely, and it is being argued that this dramatic drop is due to his full support for expansion of the drone program.



The purpose of this blog entry is not only that his global popularity has dropped so dramatically, that could have been predicted, but rather to examine, just briefly, the contrast between his domestic approval rating, his popularity in the U.S. namely, and his approval rating around the globe. Just look at the above graphic and notice how the U.S.A.'s population shows to be a majority in contrast with the attitudes of the rest of the globe. The only country polled by Pew that shows an actual majority (50%+1) of support for Obama is the United States, and every other country polled registers at less than half. The question begged is obvious, namely why is the U.S. population yet again out of touch with the attitudes and opinions of the rest of the world, and yet again appearing to be popularly on the wrong side of a world revolution for actual democracy?

The Tea Party opposition to Obama may have something to do with the outcome of the poll but after the Occupy Together movement it is baffling as to why his approval rating is as high in the U.S. as it is compared to the rest of the world. Who are the imperialists in the U.S.A., just the "1%"? I don't think so. The 99% of the U.S.A. is not showing itself to be a solidified set of consistent attitudes and beliefs in opposition to the U.S. empire, and instead is appearing to be a confused, disoriented and obscure-attitude holding population. Was it the many gaffes of the Occupy uprising, the failures in leadership and information sharing, or was it the lack of militancy? Why are the 'Americans' still on the wrong side of justice worldwide? Is it due to the old U.S. political tradition of supporting the executive popularly elected regardless of his apparent hypocrisy? This is not a rhetorical question, after all I'm a U.S. citizen and I live in one of the recently defined "swing states." Is it fear of the "other," the opposite pole, which in the U.S.A. has become a common but divisive perspective between Democrat and Republican voters, in other words that old catch-22 logic behind voting for the lesser of two evils? Do American liberals think that opposition to Obama worldwide somehow translates to support for Romney in the U.S.A.? Will they impose that dichotomous guilt-trip delusion upon the rest of the world and expect it to have the same sway as it does amongst voting U.S. citizens, even though people impacted in other countries by U.S. policy can't vote in U.S. elections (yet another obvious clue that the U.S.A. believes in anything but actually spreading democracy)? Why does the U.S.A.'s population of voters conflict and contrast with the rest of the world's population of would-be, in fact should-be, voters? So you tell me, so-called 99%, what gives? You're not letting Obama co-opt the Occupy movement, are you? Now, door-to-door campaigner, you tell us why we should trust anything you say, in fact why do you trust what you're told to say for $11-$15/hour? Unemployment for which you have no insurance? Please explain, the world is quite curious as to what is wrong with our perspective.