In fact, on January 18th of just a year back, 2018, Gallup had headlined “World's Approval of US Leadership Drops to New Low”, and this plunge in the global rating of America’s leadership could reasonably cause a person to expect a decline in the American public’s view of America’s national image in foreign countries, but it’s not showing up, at all. The exact contrary is being displayed in the recent data. On February 25th of 2019, Gallup bannered, “Americans' Perceptions of US World Image Best Since 2003”, and reported that “58% say US rates very or somewhat favorably in world's eyes.” This disparity between reality and the public’s view of reality, is clear in the data despite all of these polls’ having altogether ignored almost all of the Islamic-majority nations, where there has long been a very negative view prevailing both of the United States and of US leadership. (The US regime prefers its pollsters to sample mainly favorable countries regarding its public image around the world, and so that is what is done.) The last time that Gallup surveyed America’s global public image (and this isn’t the world’s approval of US leadership, but approval of the US itself, such as was measured and reported by Gallup’s report issued on 25 February 2019) was in "1991 Feb 28-Mar 2”, and the global public image of the United States was overwhelmingly favorable at that time — 95% favorable versus only 3% unfavorable — by far the highest of any country rated at that time, though today a few countries are nearly as high as that: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, UK (“Great Britain”), Japan, and Norway, all show nearly as high in Gallup’s global polling now, as America did then. Gallup's surveys never mentioned any other of the Scandinavian countries than Norway, nor mentioned Switzerland nor Netherlands, so those countries (which might even lead the ratings if they had been included) might likewise have been close to what America’s sky-high global approval-rating had been, at the time of the Cold War’s supposed end, in 1991. (Secretly, the US Government actually continued the Cold War even though Russia was unaware of the fact, and this one-sided and secret, purely aggressive, continuation was and is kept secret from both the American and global publics.) However, Pew has been polling this matter — the global image of the US itself — ever since, in 2008, Pew started taking it over from the Office of Research of the US Department of State. When Pew introduced their 2018 report concerning this matter, of America's global image, on 2 October 2018 at the CSIS or Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the first question raised after the presentation was about America’s overall public image, and the presenter, with apparent reluctance, summed it up by acknowledging, at 29:05, “The US is definitely seen in a much more negative light than it was a few years ago. … People [worldwide] are much less likely to express a favorable opinion of the US … By and large on the questions we asked at least, we see much more negative views around the globe.” The full written 2018 report from Pew is online as “America’s International Image Continues to Suffer.” It opens by saying: “A year after global opinion of the United States dropped precipitously, favorable views of the US remain at historic lows in many countries polled. In addition, more say bilateral relations with the US have worsened, rather than improved, over the past year.” The following highlights are taken from Pew’s verbal presentation to the CSIS: Gallup’s findings regarding not the world’s favorability toward the US but the American public’s estimation of how favorably the world views the US, were reported there, and opened: Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe the US rates "very" or "somewhat favorably" in the world's eyes. Though the current figure is up just slightly from the 55% recorded last year, it represents the highest figure Gallup has found since 2003. The increase in the overall figure is the result of an increase in the percentage of political independents saying the US is rated favorably abroad, up eight percentage points, from 50% to 58%. Meanwhile, the views of Americans identifying as Republican or Democratic haven't changed. So: America’s non-aligned or “independent” voters are even more deceived about this matter — especially about the stark decline in the public’s approval of America — than America’s partisan voters are. This Gallup report furthermore says: At the same time, Americans are fairly upbeat about the country's global image, the percentage satisfied with the position of the US in the world today is also at a relatively high ebb. So: Ever since America’s Government destroyed Iraq on 20 March 2003, Americans haven’t had a rosier view of foreigners’ opinions of the United States. Such a deceived nation’s public is, obviously, a reflection of that nation’s ruling regime, both its Government and its stenographic mainstream ‘news’-media, which won’t publish reports such as the present one, because such reports, as this one, would be exposing the deceived public that results from America’s fraudulent and highly controlled (by America’s 585 billionaires) mainstream press. This reality of the press-problem in America is not what they call ‘fake news’ media, but it’s instead the mainstream media themselves that present to their public actually false ‘news’, real lies (that are the official government lies, bipartisan lies), to such a huge extent as to achieve this enormous disparity between the reality and the public’s warped view of that ‘reality’, regarding America’s international image. What’s important here is not this particular news-item itself, nearly so much as it is what that news-item means — what it indicates. What it indicates is enormous. This news-report is therefore being offered free of charge to all US media to publish, so as to help rectify the rabidly false impression that exists. Obviously, any news-media that aren’t publishing this report are trying to hide this reality — they evidently, and quite clearly, want to continue this particular deception of the public. But the sites that publish this are honest — as any reader here can easily verify by clicking onto this article’s links.
[dropcap]G[/dropcap]allup issued on February 28th its “2019 Rating World Leaders” report, subtitled “The US vs. Germany, China and Russia,” and said that “The world still frowned on US leadership more than the leadership of any other country asked about in 2018.” All four of the countries’ leaderships received approval-ratings from people worldwide in only the 30-39% range, and this low score for the US leadership (which was approved by merely 31% of people sampled worldwide during 2018) represented an enormous decline for the United States, which during the Obama years had received scores ranging from 41% to 49% approval. However, a Gallup report which had been issued only three days earlier, on February 25th, indicated that the American people are blissfully ignorant of any of this reality, and instead believe that the global approval-rating of the United States itself is high and is rising, not, as it actually is, low and declining.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hereas in 2019 Gallup finds that 58% of Americans think the world views America favorably, versus 41% unfavorably, and in 2018 these figures were almost as high, 55% favorably and 45% unfavorably, the figures in the very first month of Trump’s being in the White House were the reverse, 42% favorably versus 57% unfavorably; and, back in 2016 they were 54% favorably versus 45% unfavorably — almost but not quite as high as today. In fact, the current 58% favorably versus only 41% unfavorably is the rosiest view that Americans have displayed in these Gallup polls regarding how they think foreigners view the US, extending all the way back to Gallup’s polling on 14-16 April of 2003 — 61% at that time thinking the world viewed the US favorably, versus 37% unfavorably, and this was just a month after the US had invaded and destroyed Iraq.
ERIC ZUESSE, Senior Contributing Editor • Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.
What will it take to bring America to live according to its own self image?