It doesn't take much to indoctrinate people one way or the other.

Media saturation, a faux appeal to their better instincts, and like any good religion - an appeal to their guilt is equally important. Top that off with the human need of wanting to be liked and loved and before you know it you have a legion of folks who think the way you program them.

Control the flow of information. Romanticize other nations as morally superior and more enlightened.

What it really illustrates is that Americans, as a whole, don't get out much.

Austria, less than 3 weeks ago. Note the happy faces you meet everywhere in the post Obama Europe. This shot could be taken almost anywhere in Europe. The frowns are universal. The continent is perpetually constipated.

All of them are so glad Obama is now President. (Not that they will smile..even for Obama) And when you ask why? Well the bottomline, after you get past the soundbytes, is that they feel it will mean more money for their country if the US is not engaged in the Middle East. To Europe the Middle East is ...well it's sort of like Mexico to the US. It's the source of their slave labor. Their toilet cleaners aren't Mexican - they are Middle Eastern.

And it's even bigger than that because Europe has contracts for nearly everything in the Middle East. They are the builders, architects and exporters of technology to that part of the 3rd world. The matrerialism that cocoons Europe is built, in large part, by monies made in the 3rd world. Americans don't get out much, so they don't know this and if told, don't care - because they don't see the big picture.

The way our nation kisses Mexico's behind, that's the way these nations think of the Middle East. It's pure, unfiltered self-interest and nothing more. Their hatred for Bush for invading Iraq was the way the US might hate Russia invading Mexico - because its very bad for business. Nothing more. Simple financial motivations covered rhetoric dotted and dashed with words like "freedom" and "sovereignity" for good measure.

Their companies all have ties to the Middle East the way ours have ties to Mexico and/or Mexican labor. Saddam was not just a tyrant - he was a businessman. He was sure Europe would always protect him, because they had so much to lose if he were removed. He was right...and wrong. Iraq is now more peaceful after we brought TOTAL back into the region with a billion plus dollar contract. It was the deal that ended the 'insurgency.'

European morality now looks quaint next to the lowering of the common denominator by the world wide web.

Incidentally, it's posters, ads and old statues like this that, that contain nudity, that can be seen vandalized with lots of Middle Eastern graffiti all over Europe, from Lucerne to Vienna.

But I know it's hopeless. The need to self-flagellate is proportionate to the subconscious guilts that sit uresolved and festering in the collective id of the American public.

They need Obama to wash away their American sins, the way a Christian embraces Jesus. The media just find a niche that is profitable for them and stick with it.

For those of us with no guilts eating away at us and who don't profit by portraying the rest of the world unrealistically - we see the world just a bit more clearly.

Maybe you actually have to be half-European, and get to talk to relatives and the politics behind the propaganda to see it honestly.

Maybe thats why our schools teach nothing of value anymore while focusing on training kids to feel guillt. Guilt about their nation, guilt about their race, guilt about their species and its relationship to the planet. The teachers really believe they are doing good. Really!

They need to get out more too.