Politics & Power Quote by Richard Reeves

America as spectacle: that is Reeves's target, and he lands it by stacking images that feel both apocalyptic and absurd. "Flames, flood, etc". reads like a weary shrug at catastrophe-as-programming, the way disaster footage becomes a genre with predictable beats and interchangeable B-roll. The line isn't just about bad headlines abroad; it's about the export of an American self-portrait that has slipped from power to panic, from competence to improvisation.

The East/West detail matters. Reeves isn't talking about a single hostile press ecosystem. He's pointing to a rare consensus across rival media cultures: whatever their politics, they can all use the same American montage of vulnerability. "Cities ... underwater" evokes climate and infrastructure failure, but also the symbolic drowning of the American promise of control. The camera isn't simply documenting; it's indicting.

Then comes the surgical punch: "befuddled American officials" trying to explain "why we are winning the war on terrorism". The subtext is that the language of victory has become a reflex, even when the visuals contradict it. Reeves skewers the mismatch between narrative and reality, policy and PR. Officials aren't sinister masterminds here; they're confused performers trapped in a script written for an earlier era of confidence, still reciting triumph while the set floods.

Contextually, the quote sits in the post-9/11 media moment when "war on terrorism" messaging demanded constant reassurance, even as new crises (natural disasters, wars, institutional failures) exposed how thin that reassurance was. Reeves is diagnosing a credibility gap turning into an international image problem: America, seen from afar, as a superpower talking like a winner while looking like an emergency.