Some thoughts on a Powerline post:
Writing as a Briton with American children who have both Jewish and 'aryan' German antecedents, I think that anti-Americanism is strongest in Germany (looking outside America, that is) and motivated by inferiority complex and unexpiated shame. The main attraction of Obama is that he is weakening America and apologizing for America's sheer rottenness, as he sees it. That brings America much closer to Germany. America's alleged war-crimes are totemic to Germans for the same reason. The mood music from Obama on the moral equivalence of Israel to the Palestinians is music to Teutons too.
Britons (I prefer that to 'Brits' which rhymes with 'shits') don't have a complex about this stuff. Once there may have been a slight inferiority complex, but we solved that when all we snaggle-toothed, snaggle-brained charmers took your most beautiful women. The BBC is a problem. It has it's own vast, childish, depraved agenda and over the decades that has infected the British middle-class.....but we have a robust press compared to America and even The Guardian is more heterogeneous than the New York Times. Moreover there's just too much mingling between the USA and the UK for false stereotypes to fool most of the people most of the time unless those caricatures pervade the US media as with Bush and Palin. The mother lode of anti-Americanism is to be found in America.
An example of the mingling is British accents on American ads when there's no British association. It's as tho British accents, even regional British accents, were just regional American accents. We're starting to speak the same sports language too as soccer sweeps America (I know, I know, it's hardly on tv, but in Houston, NYC and NJ where I've lived it's by far the most played sport). If the USA were playing England today, the USA would be favourite to win.
I also have high hopes for the reported friendship between our Queen and your First Lady. Despite Mrs Obama's affirmative action background, life changes people and the simple friendship of an older and younger mother can be a mighty force in this naughty world. Obama and Prince Philip next?
The French, I detect, are actually pro-American, but even more strongly pro-French and need to be assured of their own importance. Obama really should have dined with the Sarkozys at the top of the Eiffel Tower. There's never been a bigger bang for a diplomatic buck than that chance to butter up the President of France and Obama frivolously threw it away. Quel dommage!
We could take it country by country....Russia, India....but the rule is that most elites want a weaker America in order to raise their own self-esteem. Obama's really effective at that, so he's the man. As America switches from hyper-power to has-been and aborts and apologizes and borrows it's way out of history, so the anti-Americanism will become disdain and mockery. But Osama is right..men back the strong horse and Islam looks like that. My guess is that the Islamic power will not be Middle Eastern, but will be France or Germany or Russia. They won't be apologizing.
