I would like to be able to disagree vehemently with Nick Cohen on this, but I cannot because experience has shown me that he is, alas, in part right when he makes the following point although it takes him to another direction than I because I don't make the mistake of confusing a symptom with the disease:
Pride in American exceptionalism ran through Obama's Nobel peace prize acceptance speech. "In many countries, there is a deep ambivalence about military action today," he told his doubtless deeply ambivalent Norwegian audience. "At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America." He would take no notice of it. "Make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms." Obama drew a map of a pacifist Europe, unwilling to face reality, and a tough-minded but idealist America ready to defend civilisation with "the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms".
Nowhere has American satisfaction with its uniqueness been more noticeable than in the applause it awards itself for its treatment of immigrants. Articles contrasting the success of the US in integrating Muslims against the failures of Britain have been a regular feature of the American press. Liberals emphasised that immigrants who wanted to leave their old identities behind were helped by a constitution and bill of rights that accepted them as equal citizens.
Conservatives claimed that immigrants could not sit resentfully at home living on welfare payments and developing sectarian grievances, as they could in corrupt Europe, but had to find jobs that inevitably brought them into contact with Americans from other cultures.
(...) Depressingly, Americans seem to be as bad as the British are at recognising the differences between Islam and Islamism. They can no longer, however, get away with pretending that Islamism is an un-American disease. Trying to explain the rise of religious hatreds and identity politics, Obama said in Oslo that "given the dizzying pace of globalisation, and the cultural levelling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities", which was true enough in a platitudinous way.
I wonder if he yet understands that Americans are not exempt from the manias of our time and that his formerly special country is not looking so exceptional any more.
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