CRAZED ANTI-AMERICANISM: Mark Steyn is taking the term literally:

I was in the Gulf six months ago, and I came to the conclusion that a majority of the people I met – somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent – were, to use the technical term, nuts. That’s to say, they believed things that no rational person could believe. You’d be talking to an attractive, westernised, educated Bahraini lady doctor and she’d suddenly start babbling on about how there was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, all the footage had been faked by the government. “But I know someone who saw it from his office window,” I said. “He just thinks he saw it,” she replied. “The Americans know how to do these things.” . . .

Well, about halfway through this last week in Canada, I realized I was beginning to feel about my homeland exactly the way I’d felt in Araby: these guys are nuts. . . . Most Canadians and most Europeans are kind, gentle people but, Bush-wise, they’re the ones who are mentally challenged. The “moron” line is simply inadequate: no rational person can believe a twice-elected Texas Governor, successful US President and overthrower of the Taliban is a moron unless a majority of Americans are morons, too. And in that case how come the morons have a global dominance unparalleled in history? As with those wacky Arabs and their Zionist conspiracies, Euro-Canadian anti-Americanism is a psychosis.

Actually, it’s an example of successful propaganda. Recognizing that these folks care more about feeling good about themselves than about actual accomplishments in the real world, Bush has given them a way to do just that, while he occupies himself with, well, the real world. It’s brilliant: Everybody’s happy. Sure, American dominance over the world continues to grow, but the Euros secretly like that — it’s certainly better than taking responsibility for the world themselves, and it allows the luxury of sounding dire warnings from the sidelines that no one is expected to take seriously or actually act upon. Like any shrewd negotiator, Bush has figured out how to give the other guy what he really wants, while still getting his way.