Dean,

My family is presently in New Zealand but I am privileged to reside and work in quite a few places.

I've spent many pleasant seasons in the USA. I like and respect your country and its people, who I feel are decent and generous to a fault.

But I also believe that just as a proudly famous actress has to expect that media scrutiny and loss of privacy is part of the deal, so the USA cannot be proud of its pre-eminence without expecting scrutiny and commentary from outsiders.

Having said that, the only time I've commented on political matters here is when it was external relations- e.g. attacks on the UN for being too stupid to find the WMD piled under their noses, or the criticisms of Germany and France who did not believe that WMD existed in Iraq.

Finally: I already said I think that Americans are decent and generous. But you are also very inwardly focused, which is understandable when you are so big and strong, but also makes it difficult to understand real motives for people in distant lands. It is easy to simply write off their observations as unreasonable, but that does not solve the misunderstandings that are increasingly common in this world and which are causing so much concern and fear in western democracies at the moment.