Putting aside the credibility problem that afflicts "Why We Don't Care" pieces, roughly in proportion to their word count, Kirsch was doing alright here. That is, up until his assertion that the source of injustice at the Swedish Academy is Europe's pent-up resentment at being "culturally, economically and politically dependent on the United States."

The residual truth of this familiar 20th-century brag is obvious, yet increasingly at odds with the direction of world events. That, surely, is the bigger point and the better context for the Swedish snub, as Kirsch's own shortlist of undeserving laureates suggests. (Either way, as part of an intended indictment of out-of-touch superciliousness, the imputation is startling.)

The Atlantic is wider, culturally speaking, than it was five years ago. Anyone who doubts it can ask a pollster or get a passport and go see for himself. And if Kirsch is simply alluding to a healthy U.S. trade balance in mass entertainment, rather than the values driving us apart, then we are talking at cross purposes, QED.

Europe has endured America's debt-fuelled dollar giveaway and subsequent economic collapse with far greater resilience than could have been imagined a few years ago, thanks to growing trade with places that many folks would be unable to find on a map. The fallout from years of U.S. free-market fundamentalism and profligacy may now be arriving here, but that does not negate the trend.

Finally, Kirsch brings a gun to the debate by invoking European political dependence (military inferiority) to no purpose. The implicit claim - that the academy's less-than-transparent stance masks a kind of missile envy, over and above its detectable disdain for actual U.S. foreign policy - is doubly gratuitous because neither is an avowed influence on the award of Nobel prizes.

This brings us back to the main pitfall of the whole impassioned-indifference genre. Kirsch's conclusion, that there is "no reason for Americans to pay attention", sits uneasily at the bottom of such a long entreaty. Like Saul Bellow, he has "tried hard not to care" but failed, and that may even be the moral of the story. Kirsch cared enough to write 1,123 words, and we enough to read them.

Yeah, and were the europeans "disdain"ful of US foreign policy when we kicked german ass?

The "Decline of the American Empire" was written in the 80s. Looks like you are replicating that European wishful thinking.