The Same Shilling and One Penny?

In The Decline of American Power, the book that he authored in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the continuing crisis which the world capitalist economic system slipped into in the 1970s will not easily be resolved because of several reasons. One such reason is that everywhere and in all ideological spheres, the state, which has been the system’s age-old stabilizer, has continued to loose legitimacy in the eyes of the people. The erosion of faith in the state is the push factor responsible for the upsurge in non-governmental organizations, NGOs. But mark you, it's not all the time that those NGOs will operate according to the expectations of all. Some of them, as we've seen already are bound to be deviants. Society must therefore accept the responsibility of creating the void that enabled the emergence of deviant NGOs whenever they emerge.

People no longer sustain faith in the state and the actors who assume power on its auspices and fail to meet the expectations of the former. The upsurge in political corruption and dwindling trend in leadership responsiveness evident in western Europe and North America in the present time has placed societies in those areas almost at per with African, Asian, and Middle Eastern societies that are often seen as the traditional bastions of political corruption and zero leadership responsiveness.

Assessment of reports and analysis in most US media indicates that Americans strongly see the Bush White House as an institution that refuses to acknowledge wrongs and mistakes by its operatives, and prefers to reward them instead, and by so-doing, puts them in the stead to make fortunes and careers out of their dismal record of public service when they leave office.

The other day, on his campaign trail for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2008, former New York City Mayor, Rudolf Guiliani praised and disclosed that former US Defense Secretary was busy writing his own book. Even though he has been described as “the most comprehensively excoriated man in America” because of his obvious failures as a public servant, former CIA director, George Tenet racked in four million dollars from his. Mr. Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for policy who is implicated as a major actor in the Iraq war is writing his own book too. There is no doubt that Mr. Paul D. Wolfowitz will embark on writing his own book now that he has failed to retain his job as World Bank president.

Someone indicated the other day during a conversation that people in public positions in the US seem to have perfected the art of going out of their ways to embark on disastrous policies all in the bid to enhance their chances of landing multi-million book deals when they are done. If that is the case, the only difference between them and their counterparts in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East is that the latter use their positions to feather their nests even as they occupy them. Is it then not the same one shilling and one penny?