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insi sted that our international partners put a European-built canal back in
Nasser's hands.60
By giving Nasser a victory, we lent tremendous prestige to the Arab
revolutionary movement, a political tide that soon planted anti-American
autocrats all through the middle east.61 And eventually, with OPEC, those
leaders found a way to twist our tail. The resulting rocket rise in the price of
oil would give us our first negative international trade balances in the early
'70s. It would create a decade of spiralling prices. And it would make a
major contribution to the American decline.
At its best, scapegoating is a nasty business. At its worst, it is a
sluggish form of suicide. Battering our British allies in the Suez incident, we
set the stage for a financial hemorrhage that would later overwhelm us.
During the McCarthy era, we attacked talented people in government and
the arts-- "eggheads," intellectuals, people with insight and brains.
Ultimately, we were the ones deprived of the fruits of their talents. And in
the late '80s, when conservative groups battered away at rock and roll, they
were undermining one of the few American fields of endeavor which
contributed massively to our economic well-being. In just the first half of
1988 we exported 3.65 million records and CD's to our arch trading rival,
Japan.62 That's one reason the entertainment industry in 1987 generated a
$5.5 billion balance of payments surplus, a surplus second only to that created
by U.S. aircraft manufacturers.63
When we run into pecking order problems, we look around for
someone smaller to kick. And in the end, the folks we kick the hardest are
ourselves.
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