Bantustan Begging for Crumbs

A European blogger on Obama’s State of the Union Address finds his Eurocentrism would normally not permit him to observe the activities in the wild of non-Euros. Nonetheless, mere mentions are still longed for:

As I am currently living in the US who heard throughout the media for the past weeks how much this would be an important speech , I could not not watch it ; and as a Euro-blogger, I could not not look for references to the old continent.

Newsflash Mr. Henning: it wasn’t an important speech. It was a platform using Kabuki and forced seating arrangements to raise the President’s profile. It’s eroding unavoidably due to public observation of the predictability and mediocrity of the POTUS and his political entourage.

The SOTU surpassed my expectation with TWO mention of Europe. The first about our rail and road infrastructures, the second as a NATO ally.

Those two mentions have to be compared to China (4 mentions), India of Chile (3 mentions both) or South Korea (6 mentions). We (Europe) are on the same level as Russia (2 mentions also) and just before Brazil (1 mention).

This certainly speaks to an anxiety, if not a level of self-absorption in the continental brain trust. The question that goes unasked is: how is it that the wealthiest entity on earth, one with a population of half a billion, not be up to anything worth noting outside of the usual pedantries about state subsidized high-speed trains, inefficient windmills, and the like?

Let’s just notice the Energy goals stated by B Obama: 80% of the US power from clean energy by 2035. Hard to say if this will become reality, but that’s a courageous goal.

Giving away other people’s resources is courageous? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?