Could you elaborate?
If you’ll excuse a nit-pick, I think this is an unfortunate choice of words. What we need here is more Janus-faced people. Janus’ faces look forward and back, to the future and the past. To be Janus-faced is to be mindful of the past and to consciously adjust your posture for the future.
A Janus-faced person would never advocate blind nationalism, and certainly not blind allegiance to a mere person for form’s sake. That kind of thing rarely turns out well.
I’m perplexed, magelllan01, about why you would take it as axiomatic that it’s desirable for American citizens and people of other nations to support a sitting U.S. president simply because he holds the office.
Naturally it’s better for nations to work in concert with each other for their mutual benefit. How does supporting Bush on principle further anyone? To be frank, he’s not the greatest president y’all have ever elected. As you would expect, foreign interest in your politics centers around foreign policy concerns. When Bush was running, he got a lot of press pretty much as the joke candidate – manifestly unsuited for the job, with a knowledge of foreign affairs that would make most high school students blush. Imagine our surprise and chagrin when it made it through the primaries and eventually into the Oval Office.
Nobody is particularly surprised that his foreign policy has been disastrous. Okay, maybe there’s a little surprise at the sheer scale of it, but it’s wearing off. We’re numb.
There is some concern over how domestic economic policy is working out for y’all, too – because hits to your economy ripple through ours.
If, as you seem to think would be best, Americans presented a united front behind your president, the rest of the world would have every reason to believe that the course that has been set for the U.S. is a long-term, fixed course – and the rest of the world would necessarily adjust itself based on that belief. You might think that’s a triviality, but it’s not.
The rest of the world is simply not going to bank on Bush’s vision. A few rough years we can get through.
Point taken. And here I thought I’d been using a clever way of saying two-faced. Ah well, live and learn. Thanks for pointing out my ignorance.
D’oh! Just to nitpick my response to your nitpick, I wasn’t ignorant of who Janus was, but I was unaware that it could easily be viewed as a positive rather than a negative descriptor.
Eh, I’m sure everybody knew what you meant. The tendency to play the “insufferable know-it-all” card is my personal flaw. Just usin’ you as a straight man, really. 
FinnAgain and magellen01, will you two stop picking on poor Miller. Give the guy a break for fuck’s sake.
Certainly. I am not an American. You believe that, whether or not an American supports the president, to the outside world they should present a face of support and trust in that president.
I am of the outside world, am I not? So, i’m sure you’ve been acting along with your ideals and hidden any criticism you might have of Bush from me?
I’d like to point out yet again, as a non-American, in Europe, at least, we generally feel there is a strong link between Bush and America - but that it is a negative link. You criticise Bush? Good. That makes us dislike Bush more. It makes us** like** Americans more.
Yeh, the Millers of the Gods grind slow (but they grind exceeding fine).
Update: Our beloved Terrorist in Chief has once again gone out of his way to prove Belafonte right. See this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=354104
Damn, I gotta give you and Harry this one. Still not number one, but one more reason for him to step down and go before the World Court.
Jim
It seems that as tightly linked as Chavez and Venezuela are, denigrating one is also a sign of shitting on the other, or at least some people think so.
You might want to revisit post 322 again. You never actually responded to my request for an alternate identifier for those who have similar stances regarding the issues surriounding homosexuals. So there wasn’t a second, third, or fourth time. Hell, there wasn’t even a first. This is a hijack, so feel free to continue it in the other thread if you so desire. It only came up here because it was the same type of dodge.
Game, set, and math goes to DMC.
That was a thing of beauty.
I swear to OG that that was matCh.
That was not a thing of beauty.
Bah.
No worries, I do the same. Not every portion of every post needs to be specifically rebutted. I’ll be sure to shriek and whine if I feel you’ve taken something out of context.
Yes, well, obviously. Bush is hugely unpopular abroad. If Bush is seen as representative of American attitudes, people are going to think less of America as a whole. I’m not arguing against there being no correlation, I’m arguing against there being a positive correlation. For the vast majority of thinking people out there, Americans criticizing Bush makes them like America more. At this point, I think this has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt by FinnAgain’s links.
There is, of course, a price to paid for any course of action, including non-action. There isn’t any one thing we can do that will make everyone everywhere love us forever. Some people in other countries are going to be turned away by vocal disagreement with Bush. Sam Stone, for one, would no doubt be crushed with disappointment. There are, however, not a whole lot of Sam Stones out there in other countries who actually think Bush is doing a good job. Folks like him are vastly outnumbered by those who detest Bush. If we’re concerned about international opinion, are we better served by catering to the small minority of foreigners who like Bush, or the vast majority who think he’s a miserable sack of shit?
I’m a liberal democrat who thinks George Bush is just about the worst thing to happen to this country since the Great Depression. Why on Earth would I want anyone to support him, foreign or domestic?
The problematic statment is bringing up the entire concept of “speaking ill of America” in the first place, as no one in this thread, or in the original article that started it, has done any such thing. The basic argument here is wether Bellafonte, by criticizing Bush, is also criticizing America. By “simplifying” things as you tried to do, you’re attempting to treat the central disagreement here as resolved in your favor. We’ve done no such thing: your basic premise, that Bellafonte was playing to the “anti-American” crowd with his remarks about Bush, have not come anywhere near to being proven. In fact, they started as remarkably thin, and have since been torn to shreds, repeatedly.
If the strength is undetermined, than it is incorrect to say that it is a “strong link.”
Which puts you in the position of arguing that Americans should not criticize Bush, even if it means making more people dislike America.
And you still haven’t addressed the fundamental disconnect in your position between defaming Bush to a domestic audience and defaming him to a foreign one, when the reality of global communications has all but entirely erased the distinction between the two.
I’m a little confused, here. From the structure of this paragraph, it seems you’re trying to present two possible outcomes of things like Belafonte’s speech. Except you’ve just listed the same outcome twice: if someone goes to a foreign nation and bad-mouths Bush, either he’ll convince his adience to dislike Bush… or he’ll convince his audience to dislike Bush.
Frankly, I’m cool with either outcome.
No, not at all.
Bush, obvously, is worse.
That’s my fear, too. Which is why it’s important to make it clear that Bush is not the American government: the people are the American government. The clearest way to communicate this is through open disagreement with the policies of the Bush administration.
Out of curioisity, what sort of specific behavior would be necessary for you to not support a sitting president? If you feel that Bush’s gross malfeasnace or Clinton’s unethical behavior was insufficient to terminate your support, what precisely would it take?
How can you “hound them on policy and decisions” without undermining the person?
I believe it is better for the president to actually be strong and honorable. If he is neither (and I believe Bush fails on both accounts) then it is incumbent on anyone who posseses either of those qualities to speak out against him.
Now that I agree with. Bush’s many errors and moral failings are more than sufficient to destroy his credibility without embellishment or hyperbole.
That entirely avoids the question I was asking.
Maybe I’m being whooshed, here, but I don’t feel that either of them are picking on me.
Regardless, thanks for speaking up for me, even if it wasn’t necessary.
Yeah. You’ve been whoooshed.
I’d just like to point out that the question about the “overseas” obfuscation still remains dodged; so the position must rationally be taken as meaning that any dissent which is conveyed to a global audience is wrong. Which means pretty much any dissent which involves the media, at all.
And, as I mentiond before, the internet. Why, there’s foreigners on this very message board, reading the filthy US liberal traitors bash Bush (a.k.a The Living, Throbbing Embodiment Of America)!
It’s a wonder people like magellen01 haven’t petitioned the SDMB to make criticism of Bush against board rules. Hell, maybe they have.
I think he probably has. 
Jim
Point.
I’d meant to be clearer, but I’d definitely say that the 'net has become part of “the media”.
Hmmm…