Anne Applebaum, about to become a New Yorker, has had two outstanding columns in the last week.
First, today's column has one of the most devastating and accurate disses of Manhattan that I've ever read:

In fact, what makes me nervous about Manhattan nowadays is not the criminals, who have faded back into the Bronx, but the people who replaced them: clever people, accomplished people, well-educated people -- and people who agree about almost everything.
I first became aware of this phenomenon some years ago when in New York at a dinner party given by a publisher. Seated around the table was a cluster of minor literary and publishing types, chatting about this and that, all making light fun of that summer's Republican convention, which had just ended. A European visitor at the table was listening, brows knitted. Finally he spoke up. "But what's wrong with Bob Dole?" he asked. "He seems like a perfectly nice man to me."
What's wrong with Bob Dole?: All conversation stopped (and I am not making this up). Everyone stared at the clueless European, who was too naive to know that it isn't polite to say anything positive about any Republican, even a moderate Republican -- even a moderate Republican heading for a massive defeat at the hands of a Democrat.
It wouldn't happen in Washington, or at least it wouldn't happen quite that way. Washington is partisan, there's no denying it. But part of the partisanship comes from the awareness, even the hyper-awareness, of the existence of another point of view. The memoirs of Sidney Blumenthal and Hillary Clinton are fiercely defensive precisely because they know what the other side is going to say in response. Republican rhetoric gets sharper here than it does anywhere else, precisely because the rhetoricians know exactly what the response is going to be. Of course you can go to a dinner party in Washington and hear people profess shock and horror at the words of an out-of-place Republican, or indeed a lone Democrat. But that's because they disagree, not because they've never met one of the other species in polite company.

I think just about every conservative in the greater NYC area can relate to what I used to call the "Giant Panda" reaction: when a group of people, having just become aware of the exotic species in their midst, react with the strange mixture of curiosity and condescension: "I've heard such species exist, but I never expected to actually meet one!" Then there's the "Misplaced Compliment" variation, where the reaction is a stammering "But..but you're nice and smart ... you don't seem like a fascist!" Anyway, her comparison of Manhattan to Washington is well-taken.
Applebaum also had a great and chilling piece last week, which I am surprised did not get more attention in the blogosphere:

"Do you see any parallels between the security state that George Bush has created in America since 9/11 and the Gulag?" For a moment, the question struck me dumb. It had been put by a BBC radio interviewer, and we were on the air. It seemed impolitic to say, "What a ridiculous question," and I was too surprised to laugh. Finally I mumbled something about not having noticed that great a difference between daily life in George Bush's America and daily life in Bill Clinton's America, and left it at that. What I should have done was point out, tartly, that access to information is still far freer in America than it is in Britain, that immigrants are far better treated in America than in Britain, and that democracy remains a more open affair in America than in Britain. One always thinks of these things too late.
Yet in the days that followed, I did, rather surprisingly, have the opportunity to try out a few more answers. I was in London because a book I wrote about Soviet concentration camps had just been published there. For some, it seemed, the combination of that subject and my nationality offered the perfect opportunity to discuss the viciousness of contemporary American society. Several times I was asked if Guantanamo Bay should be considered a concentration camp. One reviewer, after saying a few neutral words about my book, complained that "the author has missed an opportunity to condemn human rights violations in her own country." Another interviewer asked whether people in America are often arrested for insulting the president on the Internet.
...
Partly, though, it reflects something I first noticed two years ago and am still at a loss to explain fully. This is the animus that George W. Bush personally inspires among what the British, among others, call the "chattering classes," in Europe as elsewhere. Recently, a Pew Research Center poll gave statistical backing to a phenomenon that many have observed anecdotally. Much of the world -- and Europe is no exception -- has a love-hate relationship with America. They consume our mass culture but simultaneously resent the impact of that mass culture on their own. They watch our television programs but are wary of importing them. On a host of issues, ranging from beliefs about the death penalty to preferred brands of sneakers, Europeans and Americans are actually growing closer, and the much-vaunted "values gap" is growing narrower. Yet when asked about it, Europeans often focus on what drives us apart.
Somehow -- and the Pew results support this too -- Bush has come to stand for the hate part of the love-hate relationship, symbolizing the downside of mass culture and the pushy side of our foreign policy, rather than the economic freedom and political openness that many admire. Largely this is because Bush, as a fully paid-up conservative, is at odds with Europe's left-leaning political elites, most of whom hate not only him but also the things with which he is associated, rightly or wrongly, such as a freer rein for the private sector. What they hate, in other words, is his domestic policy, more than his foreign policy.
Hatred of Bush has, in turn, slanted the reporting in the European press. Huge amounts of attention were given to the reports, after the fall of Baghdad, of the looting of the Iraqi state museum, which played into negative stereotypes (anti-culture Americans!). Far less attention has been paid to subsequent discoveries of the museum's treasures, hidden in vaults, safe from looters. Much was made a year or two ago of the administration's apparent lack of interest in Middle East peace (warmongering Americans!). By contrast, there has been relatively little interest in the president's recent trip to the Middle East, which has been widely dismissed as a cynical maneuver.
(Emphases added.)

European elites holding such attitudes need to ask themselves if they are encouraging and exacerbating the dismissive attitudes of the Bush administration towards their countries. (Hint: yes.)