The great American chutzpah 2025 remix

You have to give it to United Staters stating things that, by their sheer chutzpah, make you stand up and break into a slow clap. Their penchant for being self-appointed guardians of democracy is legendary. By telling themselves that their duty on Earth is to spread a rules-based, liberal democratic order that would make Macaulay's 'civilising mission' seem bashful, United Staters, even when in isolationist mode, are executors of the biggest 'neo-cons' in history. Whether it's self-hypnotism via their truly seductive mass media or through arm-twisting that comes with economic-military heft, the US has lived by what Franklin D Roosevelt had apocryphally said about Washington-blessed Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Garcia way back in 1939, 'Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of bitch.'

Regular homilies have kept the virtue-signalling going, the latest being the current US president's trade counsellor's finger wags. He is this month's pot commenting about the blackness of the kettle. 'India, you're the biggest democracy in the world, act like one... side with the democracies... (instead) you're getting in bed with authoritarians.' It's not just Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping or the ghost of Somoza who are guffawing at that touching observation, but also the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu, not to mention Asif Munir, who can still taste his White House lunch.

As far as the highest moral ground goes for the self-described 'leader of the free world', the slip is more than just showing for the authoritarian with American characteristics. But the US has never cared for looking into the mirror. Which doesn't mean the rest of the world needs to succumb to the standard response the US seeks and gets when it asks the mirror who the fairest is among them all.