From Hypocrisy To Tedium

NRO: Our Spoiled And Unhappy Global Elites

(National Review Online) 
In other words, Khan, Roy, and Nooyi are, by their own volition, knee-deep in the supposed greed of the West in a way that most ordinary Americans surely are not. Maligned Americans on the tractor in Kansas or walking the beat in the Bronx have not a clue about the privileges that a Roy or Nooyi enjoy -- and they are not whining, complaining, or biting the hand that feeds them far less well.

No, these ungracious operators all seem to gravitate to, profit from, and then spite the paradigm that created rich global business, media, publishing, and entertainment conglomerates -- and themselves.

A second constant is illustrated by director von Traer's remark: "America fills about 60 percent of my brain." There is a sort of schizophrenia also common among the "other" who bumps up against the U.S. The extreme example of this syndrome can be seen in bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, who seemed mesmerized and yet repelled by their own thralldom to things Western.

In the case of von Trier, does he ever ask why the U.S. is so obtrusive in his gray matter, and why, for instance, Scandinavia is not -- or for that matter a larger France or an even larger Russia? Instead in his movies and outbursts he retreats into the usual racist or exploitative mantra that serves a psychological need of reconciling what you want and enjoy and won't give up with a feeling of unease and guilt about your own expanding appetite -- or exploding brain.

A final suggestion for these unhappy and privileged few: To end your obsessions with the pathologies of America and the West, find a way to create your own alternative sports, literature, corporations, soft drinks, and filmmaking in the non-West.

It is not that we Americans are mad at what you say. It is just that you have all become so hypocritical, then predictable, and now boring -- you are all so boring.


Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.