One wonders what it is that you are addicted to (besides grandiose posturing and doomsaying).

I must agree with pretty much everything you written, though dispute your conclusion that Mexico is somehow on the verge of becoming a failed state.

Mexico, where I reside and where there are great problems relative to income distribution and the consequent poverty, actually has an expanding middle class. Mexico also has a stable government which has made great strides in increasing the transparency and in the delivery of public services, such as potable water and electricity, to its citizens.

There are indeed tens of millions of Mexicans, primarily in rural areas, living in abject poverty, while, like Latin America in general, there are also the super rich. Carlos Slim is amongst the three richest persons in the world, thanks in large measure to his closeness to former president Salinas at the time the national phone system was privatized. (Slim, by the way, has just recently invested over $100 million in CitiBank.)

The drug cartel violence you cite is primarily localized to the states bordering upon the USA, though there are occasional attacks on Mexican government and police officials in the capital and elsewhere.

Additionally, the Cuban mafia is quite active in the Yucatan, in trafficking in drugs and transporting Cubans to the USA where they may avail themselves of the wet foot/dry foot policy, which only Cubans enjoy. Regularly in Cancun, and less often elsewhere in the Yucatan, bodies of traffickers eliminated with extreme prejudice turn up.

Most of the violence and killing is aimed at drug and human trafficker competitors, though retributive killings of government and police officials are also common. The bigger problem, just as in the USA, is that the immense amounts of black market money generated entice government and police officials to bribery.

The drug cartels and Cuban mafia violence is pretty much a direct result of USA policy. If the recreational use of now illegal drugs was legalized the drug prices would almost immediately fall to their real levels and render the black market unprofitable. Likewise if USA immigration policy were the same for Cubans as it is for immigrants from other nations the Cuban mafia trafficking in humans would be greatly reduced.

There are reasons, of course, why prohibition and the wet/foot dry foot policy continue despite their ineffectiveness and taxpayer costs. There are folks in the USA profiting handsomely from the policies.

I also agree with your statement that "It is the Americans themselves that don't know America and what it is."

Mexicans, as well as folks throughout Latin America are much more aware, it seems to me, of the 150 year history of USA government nefarious acts throughout Latin American aimed at protecting markets for USA businesses than are all but a small percentage of USA citizens.

Additionally, I travel frequently to Cuba where I enjoy discussing politics with Cubans, whether friends, taxi drivers, or folks I meet on the street. On a number of occasions, during such discussions, Cuban have remarked to me of the importance of Florida's 27 electoral college votes in USA presidential election. I believe that a very small percentage of the USA population would, without looking it up, be able to say how many electoral college votes Florida enjoys.

Traveling along the Dalmatian coast of Croatia I also found folks with whom I spoke very well informed on USA politics. More so than most folks in the area of coastal Washington state where I spent most of my life.

"It is the Americans themselves that don't know America and what it is." Why certainly, your logic is impeccable!

"It is DS himself that doesn't know DS and what he is." There, I have become as wise as you!

Sleepy time in Spain, where the rain is mainly in the plain. It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring. A smile plays across his lips as a scene flashes upon his inward eye - a parade of the world's newspapers, all covered in bold blaring headlines reading:
US Lies in Smoking Ruins - Failed to Heed Warnings of the Blogger Who Foretold It All

If the issue is Mexico, why the pharmaceuticals in the cheesy image?

The big cartel money is cocaine and heroin, neither of which is not produced in Mexico but rather is transshipped. True that American demand is high, but it's more the combination of porous border and relatively strong economy. Of course if we are in systemic failure, as per your other offering with cheesy image, I guess Mexico won't be selling as much here.

And the insane drug policies here are not the result of Obama, or Democrats in the main, but the pressure from the right. So I'm not sure what point is being made. Do medical-marijuana growers in California make Mexico poorer? Should we build a better fence? Tear it down?

And Obama supported, past tense, ethanol when an Illinois senator, big surprise. He recently said it has to be re-evaluated.

Try again, we like arguing.

If what America is to the world is such a sorry sack of shit then why was Obama's election such a mood-raiser? It is because what America "is" is now what it "was", that is, Bush is leaving.

Most of the less-honorable aspects of our interactions with the world can be laid at the feet of right-wing hawks, whether Democratic or Republican. We can blame Vietnam on them, not on Kennedy. We can blame the empowerment of Al Qaeda on them, not on Clinton. We can blame the brutal drug interventions on them, the coups to benefit United Fruit, the coups to squash any socialist movement, the wars to drain the Soviet Union, the arms race (mostly) and the egregious qualifications on foreign aid that required recipients to use American companies, and the restrictions on medical assistance that limited or prevented birth control choices on conservatives.

I fail to see why these old complaints are raised now that those responsible are in disgrace, with terms like investigation, impeachment, and indictment hovering nearby. This is associative guilt in a weak and transparent manner. Now that Obama has won you are tarring him with history's brush before he can even take office.