From the below-mentioned Victory Blog, a Sunday Times of London article with a very different view than what you might be hearing elsewhere (“elsewhere” including, occasionally, “here”):
So at the most basic level America is loathed simply because she’s on top. The world leader is always trashed simply for being the leader. The terms of the trashing are remarkably consistent. Nineteenth-century Germans, Lind points out, responded to Britain’s dominance by saying, in effect, “they may be rich but we have soul”. That is exactly what many Europeans and all anti-Americans are now saying: we’re for God or culture or whatever against mammon. This is inaccurate – America has more soul, culture and a lot more God than any of her critics – but it is the predictably banal rhetoric of envy.
Good stuff.