Did you see the unveiling of the emperor’s new clothes on television yesterday?

I caught only some of it, but I marvelled at the masses, awestruck and unable to see that their new emperor was as naked as they day he was born.

I was surprised that Jesus Christ himself didn’t put in an appearance. You’d almost have expected him to, given the level of rapture that was present. He probably didn’t want to be upstaged by the people’s new messiah.

The new saviour evidently brings salvation from a sordid history of slavery for the blacks and liberation from generations of hereditary guilt for the whites. Everyone’s a winner; except for Afghanistan, Palestine; and anyone else who stands in the way.

At the end of the day, when the rose-tinted spectacles are removed, there’s nothing but rhetoric and histrionics. Only this time, it’s met by blind faith and blinkers by the masses.

Desperate people want nothing more than something all-consuming to believe in, a sense that there’s something more to life than their own insignificant existence. That’s why prison inmates are susceptible to religious conversion and it’s why so many people are now entranced by the lure of an erudite man with half a brain. He represents hope, and for many people, the absence of hope is something with which they cannot cope.

The fact remains: the emperor has no clothes.

Neither Barack Obama nor Hilary Clinton have ever enjoyed much credibility in these quarters, but I do continue to be surprised by the extent to which their supporters exhibit selective blindness when performing critical analysis of their actions.

Obama is set to announce Clinton as his Minister of Foreign Affairs (or Secretary of State, as it’s called in the US). On the face of it, it’s a curious choice.

Obama previously criticised Clinton for her support of Bush’s illegal war in Iraq. Of course, she immediately withdrew her support once public opinion swung the other way, but back when the American public was still being led up the garden path with fairy tales of Iraq being an Al Qaida hotbed, she was as vocal as anyone about the absolute necessity of invading Iraq.

Clinton, on the other hand, whilst campaigning for the Democratic party presidential nomination, criticised Obama for being naive, inexperienced and generally not up to the job of president. She also condemned him for his willingness to sit down without preconditions and talk to the likes of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

So, you could conclude that she doesn’t exactly see eye to eye with Obama on foreign policy, but she’s still prepared to work under him as the Secretary of State? Isn’t that a little disingenuous?

It’s not as strange as it seems, of course. You just have to remember that most politicians are duplicitous, conniving megalomaniacs with only their own interest at heart. Then it all starts to make sense.

Clinton has a history of modifying her stance on anything and everything in order to increase her popularity with the general public, thereby improving her chances of career advancement. If the sum of 2 + 2 was a hot political issue and she believed the result to be 4, you can rest assured that her public statements would repeatedly emphasise that the result was, in fact, 5, if that’s what her advisors were telling her the unwashed masses wanted to hear.

Taking the job with Obama, therefore, is nothing more than cynical self-interest. Even if she considers Obama to be an incompetent baboon, there’s no way she’d ever turn down a chance to occupy a powerful office like that. It’s all about the power, you see. Political ambition is all she has left in her vacuous life.

And what does Obama now have to say about Clinton, a woman who voted to send her country headlong into an unwinnable war in Iraq without even first demanding to see the evidence the proponents of said war claimed would unequivocally justify their actions?

He says this: “She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world’s leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world.”

It’s hard to know how a woman who can support starting a war without caring to see the evidence that would supposedly justify it can command anyone’s complete confidence, much less that of the man about to run the world’s most powerful country.

In fact, what’s the worst possible job you could imagine giving to someone whose judgement has already been demonstrated to be woefully, negligently bad? Minister for Foreign Affairs, is the one that springs to my mind.

Not only does Obama have bad foreign policy, he now has an equally bad foreign minister to enact it. You can at least give the man credit for a perverse consistency, I suppose.

Watch out, Afghanistan. The next four years are going to be harsh.

The United States of America have a new president, a black man, and many people are calling this a historic event. “If this can be achieved, anything is possible”, is an oft heard quote from Americans during the past 24 hours.

Well, if that’s true, we can look forward to future elections being won by:

• a woman

• an unmarried person

• an atheist

• a Muslim

• a homosexual

• a pacifist

For the sake of your health, don’t hold your breath.

I belong to a seemingly very small minority of world denizens who see little significance in the fact that Obama is a black man. I find the colour of his skin utterly irrelevant.

In fact, I find any detail you care to mention about the man himself irrelevant, except for his intelligence. One is, after all, electing an office more than the individual himself. If Obama dies whilst in office, another party member will take over the reins and enact the same policies, so it makes sense to look only at the party politics themselves. I find that many, if not most, Americans lose sight of this and are distracted by the individual politicians, their personality, charisma and manner.

Looking just at the politics, then, I see little reason for hope in Obama’s foreign policy. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Under Obama, the US will still not be subordinate to the UN. Unilateral force will continue to be applied overseas, if deemed appropriate by the US.

There’s virtually no chance of the US joining the International Criminal Court, either, so there’s no chance of holding the country’s leaders internationally accountable for their crimes abroad.

Military aid to Israel will continue under Obama, which amounts to an implicit approval of Israel’s continuing acts of aggression, occupation and oppression.

The war in Afghanistan will be stepped up, costing untold numbers of lives in that country. Obama sees Afghanistan as the prime front against terrorism, but fails to understand that much of that same terrorism has its origin in brutal US foreign policy over the last 50 years. When others, such as the very vocal Jeremiah Wright, point this out, they are decried and denounced for statements that are “offensive to every American”. The truth hurts.

We can hope, at least, that Obama will do some good within his own country. Perhaps under Obama, the standard of education and health care for Americans will improve. Anything that can be done to raise the general level of awareness in America that the country is not alone in the world and cannot endlessly continue to use the rest of the world as its own private, vast resource pool without incurring the wrath of many, has to be a good thing.

The wake-up call of 9/11 was a painful opportunity for some much needed introspection, but that call was not heeded. Obama doesn’t understand (or can’t politically be seen to acknowledge) that most anti-American terrorism is born of a desire for retribution, not blind hatred. Better education and presumed consequent increased global awareness amongst the voting populace of America are perhaps the only hope for a more peaceful world, even if they take years to yield any observable fruit.

Dutch TV broadcasts the US presidential debates live at around 03:00. They even ask viewers to send in questions to the NOS‘s American correspondent. That means that the viewing public doesn’t just consist of VCR and DVR owners who watch the broadcast the next day. Apparently, there are people here who stay up (more than) half the night to watch this stuff. They must either think it’s important or be suffering from insomnia.

Make no mistake, though, this is important; in theory, at least. Whomever America elects, the rest of the world (that’s us!) gets saddled with the consequences; and those, whilst never good, have been particularly dire over the last few years.

We in Europe have no say in this, of course. Whilst America’s foreign policy arguably has more of an impact on our daily lives than our own country’s policy (which mostly just sees us begrudgingly dancing to American pipes), we have little choice but to sit back and hope that the American electorate will get it right.

Unfortunately, though, getting it wrong is a foregone conclusion. A country with a population of 300 million people somehow each time manages the incredible feat of producing just two credible (yes, I use the word advisedly) presidential candidates. Evidently, the entire political spectrum in that country can be neatly represented by two parties, the most liberal of which is still firmly right of centre by European standards.

To Americans, Obama and McCain are as different as chalk and cheese. Progressive Americans view Obama as the salvation of a nation, a shepherd to lead a nation out of the bleak wilderness of the Bush era, a beacon of light in a world currently shrouded in darkness, the imminent new leader of the free world; and other such hyperbole.

By the same token, progressive Americans see McCain as the logical prolongation of the Bush dynasty, a man who would continue to scrap services and indulge the rich, whilst continuing to mire America in Iraq for the next 100 years.

As a European, I view all of this with much cynicism and a fair amount of bemusement. I fail to see the supposedly huge differences between the two camps.

Let’s examine a few facts.

Both Obama and McCain favour continuing the supply of $3 bn per annum in military aid to Israel. Like Bush and Clinton before them, they intend to adopt the pretence of brokering peace with the left hand whilst passing weapons to one of the warring factions with the right. There can be no peace in the Middle East while the US continues to support Israel in its acts of aggression, oppression, occupation and apartheid.

Both Obama and McCain say that they are prepared to disregard the UN security council when determining whether to go to war. Neither camp apparently has any respect for international law, yet both are hypocritical enough to criticise other nations, such as Russia, for the same flagrant disregard. If the UN is to have any meaning, all nations that wish to be regarded as respectable, democratic states must submit to its authority. The same applies to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, another institution for which the US has (even greater) disdain.

Both Obama and McCain are critical of Iran for its ongoing commitment to nuclear technology, yet the US has a fearsome nuclear capability, as does Israel. I’m no fan of Ahmadinejad, but I don’t see an argument for denying Iran nuclear technology — even if that means weapons — whilst nations such as the US and Israel have them. Obama fears an arms race in the Middle East if Iran develops nuclear weapons, but he curiously doesn’t fear it enough to stop selling arms to the nation from which Iran would be seeking to protect itself. The double standard here is ludicrous and dismisses any notion that the US is truly interested in achieving peace in the region.

You see, to get elected in the US, you have to support Israel. Not only the large Jewish lobby, but also American Christians are, by and large, sympathetic to Israel; much more so than Europeans. I attribute this to a couple of things. Firstly, there’s the much more one-sided portrayal of the conflict in the American media. Secondly, a large number of fundamentalist Christian Americans believe that the presence of Jews in the promised land is necessary for the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. That’s Armageddon, by the way, and I, for one, would like to avoid it.

McCain supported the invasion of Iraq and continues to favour a long-term American presence there. Obama, on the other hand, favours stepping up operations in Afghanistan, because he believes that to be the main breeding ground of terrorism. Both conveniently ignore the fact that much of the world’s terrorism has its origin in America’s disastrous foreign policy, which for decades has sought to enrich corporate America, achieve absolute military superiority, and sequester huge quantities of the world’s natural resources in an attempt to assuage the insatiable appetite of a populace addicted to an unsustainable lifestyle.

Hundreds of thousands of lives have already been lost due to this myopic policy, and the loss will continue under either Obama or McCain. Only the theatre of operations and the associated media limelight may change.

Speaking of death, neither candidate has said anything about working to abolish capital punishment in the US. Civilised nations do not execute their miscreants; it’s as simple as that. In fact, even most uncivilised nations draw the line at executing children, but the US continues to flout international law by occasionally putting a child to death. There are scarcely words to describe my revulsion towards this. See this Amnesty International report for more details.

Neither candidate supports homosexual marriage, which effectively means that neither candidate supports equality under the law. This is a basic human right, not to mention part of the American constitution. Even Spain has legalised same-sex marriage, and they still torture animals for sport in that country.

So, perhaps the above serves to illustrate somewhat why I fail to perceive much of a difference between the two main American political parties and their chosen figureheads. Whilst they diverge more convincingly on domestic policy, you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t find it in myself to consider their effect on their own nation anywhere near as relevant or as important as their effect on the rest of the world, including its ecology.

Those of you going out to vote this November, do so with your conscience. In my opinion, a vote for either Obama or McCain is ultimately going to leave you with blood on your hands. In your position, I wouldn’t vote at all.

To not vote is viewed by some as akin to apathy or, at the very least, as an implicit abdication of one’s civil responsibility, by dint of which one forgoes one’s right to complain about the country’s elected leaders.

Bollocks.

Not voting is not akin to apathy. Rather, conscientious abstention demonstrates a proud conviction. It embodies the twofold rejection of an inherently undemocratic electoral system and a farcically piss-poor choice of candidates, under either of whom the world will not be a safer place

Seven years on from the levelling of the World Trade Center and most Americans still don’t understand why America is so deeply reviled across the world. I keep waiting for the penny to drop, but it never does.

After the events of 11th September 2001, I remember thinking that some good may actually come from the horror of what had unfolded. I thought that America had been so fundamentally shaken that it may pause for political self-reflection; that it might hold its past behaviour up to the light, blush and mend its ways.

No such luck.

I’m still waiting for the penny to drop.