Our Leaders' Success

Ronnie Raygun's big campaign mantra was "Are you better off now than four years ago?"

The fair question to ask now is "Is the world better off now than eight years ago"?

I'm sure any reasonable person would agree with me that the answer is a swift, certain No.

Exhibit-in-support for the day:

Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. Stymied by the government’s failure to provide adequate schooling and thwarted by an economy without jobs to match their abilities or aspirations, they are stuck in limbo between youth and adulthood.

“I can’t get a job, I have no money, I can’t get married, what can I say?” Mr. Sayyid said one day after becoming so overwhelmed that he refused to go to work, or to go home, and spent the day hiding at a friend’s apartment.

In their frustration, the young are turning to religion for solace and purpose, pulling their parents and their governments along with them.

With 60 percent of the region’s population under the age of 25, this youthful religious fervor has enormous implications for the Middle East. More than ever, Islam has become the cornerstone of identity, replacing other, failed ideologies: Arabism, socialism, nationalism.

The wave of religious identification has forced governments that are increasingly seen as corrupt or inept to seek their own public redemption through religion. In Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Algeria, leaders who once headed secular states or played down religion have struggled to reposition themselves as the guardians of Islamic values. More and more parents are sending their children to religious schools, and some countries have infused more religious content into their state educational systems.

Link.

And this is the bed from which grow Islamofascist terrorists: inept, corrupt governments that serve only their respective elites to the detriment of the majority, creating desperation, fanaticism, nihilism. Is this good for the world? No it is not.

This is the world brought by Our Leaders, and global capital, the world that John McCain would continue to enable.

Want to talk bubbles? This is a bubble that makes the so-called subprime crisis look like a sheet of bubble wrap.