You can imagine how I regret not having read Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, especially now that I've learned that in this tome our future President likens the British Empire to the USSR—I would have expected that to be a compliment from him—as well as to South Africa during the era of apartheid, even though that policy of racial separation was generally opposed by South Africans of British ancestry. (Indeed, Afrikaaner racism had been a source of friction between Briton and Boer ever since the former arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, in the late Eighteenth Century.) Furthermore, in the Comparatively Good Old Days before he became the (mis)leader of what used to be known as the Free World, it was said that Obama holds a strong grudge against our closest ally for her history of empire-building.
Has it not occurred to Obama that his own country is a product of colonialism, that of the British and also our own (as practiced, post-Independence, in lands previously occupied by American Indians or Hispanics)? That the extension of British rule meant the extension of civilization, from which his father's side of the family benefitted? That British paramountcy not only extended but also improved civilization, since it was primarily British might that put an end to both piracy and the slave trade, and which provided protection that great numbers of missionaries needed in order to bring the Gospel to peoples who knew only superstition? That, early on in World War II, the Colonies, Protectorates, and Dominions aided the motherland in defending the rest of the world from the Axis? That the dissolution of said empire opened a door for such tyrants as Idi Amin and Kwame Nkrumah (and Obama)? That the problem of India's and Pakistan's both having nuclear arms arose because Great Britain no longer rules the Indian subcontinent? With all due respect to our President—that, is, none—I would say that the British Empire had less in common with the Soviet Union than does the USA now that it's an Obama nation.
Has it not occurred to Obama that his own country is a product of colonialism, that of the British and also our own (as practiced, post-Independence, in lands previously occupied by American Indians or Hispanics)? That the extension of British rule meant the extension of civilization, from which his father's side of the family benefitted? That British paramountcy not only extended but also improved civilization, since it was primarily British might that put an end to both piracy and the slave trade, and which provided protection that great numbers of missionaries needed in order to bring the Gospel to peoples who knew only superstition? That, early on in World War II, the Colonies, Protectorates, and Dominions aided the motherland in defending the rest of the world from the Axis? That the dissolution of said empire opened a door for such tyrants as Idi Amin and Kwame Nkrumah (and Obama)? That the problem of India's and Pakistan's both having nuclear arms arose because Great Britain no longer rules the Indian subcontinent? With all due respect to our President—that, is, none—I would say that the British Empire had less in common with the Soviet Union than does the USA now that it's an Obama nation.
Being an author, I'm interested in psychology, and so I'm curious as to the motives for Emperor Nerobama's Anglophobia. I discern several possibilities, not necessarily in this order of probability: 1) Obama minimizes the value of our longstanding alliances, and so the United Kingdom, as our oldest real friend (as opposed to France, which might once have claimed this title), in his perverse logic, deserves the most belittling. 2) Expressing indignation at (others') imperialism, and at the supposedly tyrannical governance of the Thirteen Colonies, is a Usan (see the list of Domanisms) tradition. 3) Since Great Britain, more than any other state, epitomized capitalism, imperialism, and Western Civilization in the Nineteenth Century, she is a special target for hate by leftists like Obama. 4) Obama has an Œdipus complex, and his mother had an Anglo-Saxon name: Dunham! (This would also explain why he speaks of himself as if he were entirely of Kenyan descent, although he's just as much White as he is Black; why he was willing, in that "major speech on race," to tell the country that his still-living White grandmother was racially prejudiced; and maybe why he brusquely instructed the UK to take back the bust of Sir Winston Churchill, who also had a White Yank for a mother, which was made a gift to President Bush in 2001.) On the other hand, it may be that 5) He just feels that he needs another way to be wrong; if so, he needn't have concerned himself.
