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A Theory of Everything
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As President Bush meets other world leaders this weekend, and tries to patch things up between America and the rest of the planet, I find myself looking back and asking: What's been going on here? After 9/11 people wondered, "Why do they hate us?" speaking of the Muslim world. After the Iraq war debate, the question has grown into, "Why does everybody else hate us?"

I've sketched out my own answer, which I modestly call "A Brief Theory of Everything." I offer it here, even more briefly, in hopes that people will write in with comments or catcalls so I can continue to refine it, turn it into a quick book and pay my daughter's college tuition. Here goes:

During the 1990's, America became exponentially more powerful — economically, militarily and technologically — than any other country in the world, if not in history. Broadly speaking, this was because the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the alternative to free-market capitalism, coincided with the Internet-technology revolution in America. The net effect was that U.S. power, culture and economic ideas about how society should be organized became so dominant (a dominance magnified through globalization) that America began to touch people's lives around the planet — "more than their own governments," as a Pakistani diplomat once said to me. Yes, we began to touch people's lives — directly or indirectly — more than their own governments.

As people realized this, they began to organize against it in a very inchoate manner. The first manifestation of that was the 1999 Seattle protest,

What protest was that? Typically, you think that everyone in the world concentrates on what is happening in the USA, I assure you that this is not the case, and whenever it is the case, it is not for lack of something else to look at, but because we want to make sure that bombs are not about to drom on our heads unnanounced.

which triggered a global movement.

So it, like everything else in the world, started in America. Riiiiiiiight.

Seattle had its idiot side, but what the serious protesters there were saying was: "You, America, are now touching my life more than my own government.

Were these american protesters in seattle. or non american protesters? Are you saying that the hundreds of millions of people outside the usa all sent representatives to protest I-dont-know-what in seattle. Honestly!

You are touching it by how your culture seeps into mine, by how your technologies are speeding up change in all aspects of my life, and by how your economic rules have been `imposed' on me.

That you put the word imposed in qoutes is telling. Its part of what you dont understand about why the world now hates america. america is now freezing the money of people in other countries by confiscating the sums from banks that have correspondent branches in the USA. This one of the more outrageous and recent impositions on the people and economies of other countries. There are many examples. Perhaps you should do some homework and look them up.

I want to have a vote on how your power is exercised, because it's a force now shaping my life."

By the sound of this, americans were protesting something in america. No outsider would be demanding a vote in the us system. Clear thinkig is good for everyone; try it.

Why didn't nations organize militarily against the U.S.?

Now this is the extraordinary part; only an american would imagine that a military response is appropriate when a country is faced with the economic sucess of another nation. How completely absurd that you would think such a thing. But it has to be said that in the light of your country's recent behaviour, it is not in the slightest bit surprising. You americans think that the military response is the answer to everything; the first option that you go for before all others. Someone is growing Marijuana or Poppies in another country; bomb the fields. It is totally repulsive and barbaric, and shocking to us in the civilized world, that you could write such a thing seriously.

Astonishing!

Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World," answers: "One prominent international relations school — the realists — argues that when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it. But because the world basically understands that America is a benign hegemon, the ganging up does not take the shape of warfare. Instead, it is an effort to Gulliverize America, an attempt to tie it down, using the rules of the World Trade Organization or U.N. — and in so doing demanding a vote on how American power is used."

OR the WTO and the international court of justice, the UN and the other international treaties and organizations written and formed by civilized men could just be trying to create a more equitable world. This never occurs to americans, because they are drunk with power, delusional, insular and eager as a forest fire to spread their poison, in every sense of the world, all over the world.

There is another reason for this nonmilitary response. America's emergence as the hyperpower is happening in the age of globalization, when economies have become so intertwined that China, Russia, France or any other rivals cannot hit the U.S. without wrecking their own economies.

Everywhere is boycotting USA goods and the dollar itself, from the poorest student in Bangalore to George Soros. Lets see what happens.

The only people who use violence are rogues or nonstate actors with no stakes in the system, such as Osama bin Laden. Basically, he is in a civil war with the Saudi ruling family. But, he says to himself, "The Saudi rulers are insignificant. To destroy them you have to hit the hegemonic power that props them up — America."

Once again, an astounding piece of ignorance. What OBL wants is very simple. He has said this time and time again. In writing. What he (and a billion other) want is simple. No one hates america because you have great riches, or your much vaunted "Freedom" (which you all seem eager to throw away at the drop of a hat). Get over it. america is hated because it is doing wrong all over the world, and has done so for decades. Everyone is fed up with you. Enough is enough.

Hence, 9/11. This is where the story really gets interesting. Because suddenly, Puff the Magic Dragon — a benign U.S. hegemon touching everyone economically and culturally — turns into Godzilla, a wounded, angry, raging beast touching people militarily.

Suddenly??? Vietnam, Korea, and the endless list of countries where you have assasinated, murdered, invaded, corrupted, propped dictators and sold deadly arms? THIS is why everyone hates you; you publicly deny that you have done evil for generations, as if none of us remember recent history like your drug addled countrymen. Despicable, dreadful, immoral, inhumane and utterly bad; that sums you up.

Now, people become really frightened of us, a mood reinforced by the Bush team's unilateralism.

we are not frightened, we are sickened.

With one swipe of our paw we smash the Taliban.

You utterly foolish man, Taliban 2 is just over the horizon, and they will be even more deadly to you. No doubt, your CIA is funding its creation right now like it funded the creation of the first Taleban.

Then we turn to Iraq. Then the rest of the world says, "Holy cow! Now we really want a vote over how your power is used." That is what the whole Iraq debate was about.

Once again, you are completely and insanely wrong. The Iraq "debate" was a simple matter of facts and international law, something with which americans do not concern themselvs.

People understood Iraq was a war of choice that would affect them, so they wanted to be part of the choosing. We said, sorry, you don't pay, you don't play.

Oh dear, this childish rhyming language, as infuriating as it is sad. "First to go, last to know" (from the vietnam era). People with such a poor command of english should not be writing for the New York Times...one would have thought.

"Where we are now," says Nayan Chanda, publications director at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (whose Web site yaleglobal .yale.edu is full of valuable nuggets), "is that you have this sullen anger out in the world at America. Because people realize they are not going to get a vote over American power, they cannot do anything about it, but they will be affected by it."

This "sullen anger" is going to be the death of you. One way or another, you will be tamed, boxed in and rendered harmless. You are now, officailly, the skunk of the world, that title formerly held by South Africa. And the world knows what to do with a skunk.

Finding a stable way to manage this situation will be critical to managing America's relations with the rest of the globe. Any ideas?

Boycott america.

Let's hear 'em: thfrie@nytimes.com

but none of you seem to be able to LISTEN!

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