Why Do They Hate Us?

from Blogdex, I find these tidbits:

Jonathan Freedland talks about why other countries should have a say in American elections. His point here is merely rhetorical, but he ends with a closer:

Besides, every good Republican knows the world is solid Kerry territory. A survey by pollsters HI Europe earlier this month found that, if Europeans had a vote, they would back Kerry over Bush by a 6 to 1 margin. Bush would win just 6% in Germany, 5% in Spain and a measly 4% in France. No Republican is going to cede turf like that to the enemy.

You would think those numbers would hurt Bush, making clear how unpopular he is in the world. But they don’t. If anything they hurt Kerry, suggesting he is the candidate of limp-wristed foreigners and therefore somehow less American. We may find that a sorry state of affairs. But there is little we can do about it. In the democratic contest that matters most to the world, the world is disenfranchised.

(Freedland is author of Bring Home the Revolution! )

Apparently the Guardian is printing lots of editorials against George W. Bush, even coordinating a correspondence campaign between British citizens and people in an Ohio county (along with letters by John Le Carre, Richard Dawkins and Antonia Fraser). It’s actually amazing that even an Anglophile nation would take such an interest in this country(although the existence of the Internet makes it easier to have transnational opinions and influence readers in other countries. The U.S. has an interesting political landscape, and the media reach of my country extends pretty far. And right now its aggressive foreign policy puts the US in center stage. But for once I wish that America would care more about the world than the world cares about the US.

Related: Last week I noticed that despite my catholic tastes in bloggers and alternative media sites and my commitment to an international perspective, many of my “daily reads” are still bloggers in the US. I surf across bloggers from everywhere (well, mainly English-speaking blogs, with the occasional German or Spanish), but I couldn’t name a good English language weblog coming from Europe. Not one (I know quite a few Canadians). Does anybody care to recommend non US bloggers in the literary/cultural/technology realm?