Foreign Relations #1 - Britain and Obama

From day one, Obama has gone out of his way to offend the British. Suciô suspects that over the years Obama built up a personal myth of familial resistance to colonial oppression. He seems to have co-opted much of Caroline Elkins' bogus work on the Mau Mau uprising in order to inflate his narrative. After all, if a ditzy blond can black-up enough to snag a Harvard chair, why shouldn't the story embellish the credentials of a privileged community organizer? Stolen valor for professional race-baiters?

H.M. the Queen waves to President Obama.

The RAF Red Arrows in a salute to the President.

The Politics of Smug

Suciô had thought to call today's piece "From Bromance to Tragedy" but, on reflection, the story of Patrick and Obama is the story of an electorate wallowing in smugness.

The radical wing of American politics has always been about self-righteousness: from the opposition of Yankee smugglers to British tariffs, to the abolitionism of slave-free Northerners, to the temperance of teetotalers and support for redistributive taxation from trustafarians. The left never feels better than when it's making grand gestures with other people's money. (Suciô is not attacking these causes - merely observing that their main supporters were not the ones picking up the tab.)