Oh, to hear how some Americans talk! – the Chinese are a menace, and Latin America is full of different kinds of Mexicans all of whom want something from us before they go communist, same as the Chinese. In fact, probably joining the Chinese!

That’s how the world looks to some on the right who don’t look too closely. I’ve seen it on bulletin boards and heard it on talk radio shows and listened to it from friends. It’s all scarily wrong.

And fortunately, not the foreign policy of the U.S. Most in that establishment see far more closely what is going on. Take China:

Foreign-policy-wise, the Chinese have a gentle message to the rest of the world that conceals no hidden agenda. In short, it’s: “Let’s get rich together.” That’s China’s message to Southeast Asia and that’s why China is making friends and winning influence all over the globe. It is the foreign policy we think we also have in the U.S., but given the fog of the Iraq war, we are rarely able to project. We ought to work harder on it, because what we think we are, and what other people think we are, are two different things. We Americans want nothing more than for every country around us, in Latin America, in Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa and in Europe, to get rich, too.

One can only get rich by doing the things that make one rich, and unfortunately, socialism – which creates no wealth, and only redistributes it – isn’t one of those things. To the extent that a country avoids socialism and extends freedom, getting rich is a realistic plan that always yields the same awesome results. The Chinese know this. That’s why although China is not perfect, we ought to stop all wholesale criticism of the place, there are some things China does right.

But scarily, Latin American leaders, even good ones, like Lula da Silva of Brazil, still have this old mentality that believes that we are rich because they are poor. And that the U.S. has this masterplan of shutting them out of wealth creation. And that their struggle is against us, as if in conflict, as if us-and-them, is their national mission. That’s why Brazil is constantly trying to set up alliances – and interestingly, why the “Let’s Get Rich Together” Chinese have rebuffed them. They have no use for an anti-U.S. alliance while they are busy getting rich with everyone.

It’s shocking and revelatory to think that that’s what the Brazilian leader is thinking, for it’s not even anything like what we are thinking. We have no interest in conflict with Brazil – our big issue is not caring in the slightest what happens in Brazil. But that’s not the same as wanting to fight Brazil. Leaders like Lula really do think that we intentionally want to shut them out of prosperity and keep them poor. That’s how they make sense of their world, so that they don’t have to look to socialism and oligarchy as the root causes of their own problems.

It’s amazing. Even in this essay, by a normally sensible Venezuelan Sumate person, Ana Julia Jatar, she seems to think that Hugo Chavez, an obvious hammer-and-sickle tyrant, is really right-wing, same as George Bush, and that explains why Chavez is so bad. Chavez is bad because he is LIKE George Bush.

This is an absurd reading on George Bush, who has personally gone to bat for Sumate, taking great political risks to stand up for this Venezuelan group. Jatar’s essay is not a direct attack at Bush, but Jatar’s ‘with us or against us’ allusion is clearly directed at the one leader who’s been willing to stand up for her NGO, Sumate – George Bush. It just goes to show the mentality we are up against here in the states. She should be willing to say ‘thanks’ to Bush instead of view her enemy, Hugo Chavez, through the prism of all she does not like about Bush. But her ideas are so ingrained about this that she cannot see it any other way. If Chavez is bad, he must be the same thing as Bush.

How we in the U.S. view ourselves and how others view us is often oversimplified into Bush-hate, which is pretty insulting to the majority of U.S. voters who voted for Bush, however unwitting the Bush bashers may be.

And they aren’t always unwitting – as this UN official has shown, his contempt for the American people who did vote for Bush is quite real.

But if we had Clinton in office, the bashing would still be there, too. That’s because it’s not really about U.S. leaders, it’s about this idea that we are in natural conflict with other states and are secretly trying to shut them out of prosperity. Maybe it has something to do with our long visitor visa lines, something must disgust anyone trying to pay a visit to the U.S. from a poor country. The fine Indonesians I knew who wanted to pay a visit to the U.S. were all turned down.

It’s all unfair to be thought of as a nation that wants to keep other nations down. After all, haven’t we championed free trade? The free trade that has quadrupled Mexico’s economy? To say we are holding any country down is untrue. But it’s a road map we have to dig our way out of, because it’s not what we are about at all.

Carlos Alberto Montaner has a dazzling essay on this topic here.

UPDATE: Boli-Nica has more intelligent discussion here.