Jerusalem Post: Is God punishing the United States of America?
Good question ..... and if so, what next?
Is God punishing the United States of America?
By SHERWIN POMERANTZ - Wednesday
Iam certainly not one to dare assume to know what goes on in the mind of the God I believe in, and consider it a bit arrogant to go down that path. Nevertheless, at the risk of being labeled an old fool, it is a challenge for me to believe that the series of “plagues” that have befallen the United States of America of late are not part of some heavenly master plan.
From the end of World War II and for 70 years thereafter, America “worked.” The triumph of democracy and freedom over fascism and national land grabs energized the American body politic to take responsibility and rebuild the world after the devastating losses in the war. The world was put back in order, nations devastated by battle were rebuilt (much of that through US programs like the Marshall Plan), while people felt secure enough to plan for careers, family, education and retirement.
America’s role as the world’s police officer, resentful as that made some nations feel (everyone remembers the term “ugly American”), kept the world in check. For sure there were devastating skirmishes (Korea, Vietnam, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and Rwanda, to name a few), but a nuclear crisis never actually materialized, and the world overall was a relatively safe place.
Domestically, politicians in opposing parties actually reached across the aisle and compromised on what was best for the country; elections were generally not contested; and the experiment in democracy set out by the founders of the US in the late 18th century proved to be sustainable. Or so we all thought.
Why has America and its role as the world's police begun to fall apart?
However, 77 years after the end of the war, it all seems to be falling apart. Why? What happened? For sure, US foreign policy changed beginning in the Obama years, when it started to move away from the country’s self-defined role as the world’s police officer. Yes, countries do alter their foreign policies without their cultures going downhill. Yet over these past 13 years, with the advent of the smartphone and the exponential rise of social networking, hardly a day goes by that we don’t see some catastrophic event or trend that does not augur well for the continued success of the world’s greatest democracy.
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