Historians have recently trained their analytical insights on the Bush American calamity alongside the collapse of an overly bloated, calamitously extended Roman Empire and the comparisons are numerous and demonstrably apt.

A few years ago alarm was expressed over the "dumbing down" of America and rightfully so, with a film like "Forest Gump" achieving multiple Oscar status while the romps of "Beavis and Butthead" gained wide fame on television.  

That was over a decade ago and many would argue that we moved from "Forest Gump" in a movie to occupying the Oval Office of the White House with George W. Bush's emergence on the national scene.

Politically well-informed people I am in touch with from other countries, as well as those I have visited on trips out of the United States, all ask the same question.  While the Bush Administration attempts to put its spin on such concerns by alleging that people from other countries plainly hate America an opposite interpretation emerges from talking to people outside America.