ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the ways to approach the questions about global politics. Some issues have not yet figured prominently, especially as these coalesce around Michelle Obama - the Zipporah to Mr. Obama's Moses - and around the cultural institutions of the presidency and the First Family. The modern state and ideology of nationalism come together in an instructive way in the idea of United States of America. Thinking through the claim that the Obama presidency has in some sense been a post-imperial phenomenon. It appeals to any number of statistical or historical considerations in order to lay bare the redistributive project at the heart of modern imperialism. At the turn of twentieth century, King Leopold of Belgium established a personal fiefdom in central Africa and extracted labor and resources from it with astonishing brutality. Mr. Obama's post-historical possibilities interested students of global affairs in four ways: anti-imperialism, anti-anti-imperialism, neo-imperialism, and post-nationalism.
