You heard it here first, part XXVII

Raw Story | International poll shows world is turning against Americans, not just President Bush

In the past, while Europeans, Asians and Arabs might have disliked American policies or specific U.S. leaders, they liked and admired Americans themselves. Polls now show an ominous turn. Majorities around the world think Americans are greedy, violent and rude, and fewer than half in countries like Poland, Spain, Canada, China and Russia think Americans are honest.

Your humble scribe, November 2004:

Nov. 2, 2004 will reverberate the way Sept. 11 has. But as the rest of the world stood with us then, they will write us off now, jettisoning the benefit of the doubt they gave us, erasing the charitable distinction they made between Americans as people and the U.S.A. as global thug.

There was another line in that piece (which I called "The New Dark Ages") that, although I still think it is true, has taken on avery different meaning than originally intended.

I liked Kerry’s line about the politics hope vs. the politics of fear, but it encapsulates the problem—fear wins every time.

The reason Dubya is finally losing his grip is not that people have embraced the politics of hope. It is because they are finally realizing that there is something scarier than the terrorists -- the man who claims to protect us from them.

Which, in a rather horrifying way, is actually good news.