I've been thinking about this latest more-or-less admission by the U.S. government that they've been spying on the leaders of supposed allies. It makes one recall the start of the Obama administration, when many - particularly in Europe - saw him so optimistically due to nothing more than the fact that he wasn't George W Bush. But, outside of not starting a war of choice, it's hard to see how his foreign policies would be any different.
The depressing part is that I don't really believe Obama is all that similar to Bush in terms of his priorities beliefs and tendencies. So I'm really wondering how much it matters who the President is.
I hate to say that because such it-doesn't-matter-who's-in-office sentiments usually come from either activists so radical that all others seem the same to them, or from the politically disconnected looking to justify their apathy.
But here's the most damning realisation of American behaviour: it really just comes down to what they can get away with. That is, there's no sense of a limit to morally acceptable behaviour. There isn't even a coldly pragmatic strategy to be nice to those who could turn out to be useful later. There's just an increasing drive to do anything that can be done until someone stops them. Or to put it another way, the U.S. had become the world's Tea Party.
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