THOUGH PUBLIC REACTION in Europe to President Bush's reelection this month was predictably outraged, grief-stricken, and generally dumbfounded, it wasn't hard to detect behind the mask of uncomprehending disapproval a smug half-smile of self-satisfaction. Deep down, European political and media elites must have been delighted that their instinctual prejudices about the world had been confirmed in such spectacular fashion.

The ignorant voters of America had, by a decisive majority, chosen to reject the enlightened entreaties of the sophisticated leaders of Europe and reelect that halfwit cowboy bent on wiping out humanity in pursuit of American power and Middle Eastern oil.

What more proof did clever, rationalist Europeans need of the effortless superiority of their culture, political institutions, and way of life over a nation of Bible-reading, foreigner-hating, fundamentalist rednecks than this stunning election result?

"How can 59,000,000 people be so dumb?" screamed the front page of London's Daily Mirror. North America had divided into two, according to a cartoon in a German magazine--the civilized northern and bicoastal United States and "Jesusland," the theocracy now represented by the vast swath of red-state America.

Colin Powell's announced departure from the State Department merely confirmed the master European narrative. The last urbane, multilateralist man of peace in the Bush administration had been cast aside to better ensure that the bigoted, war-loving instincts of the American people could now be given free, full-throated expression.

The left and right in much of Europe agreed. America could no longer be seen as a civilized country: It had become an alien, medieval

President Jacques Chirac of France, on a state visit to London last week, seized on President Bush's reelection to return to his theme of the need for Europe to unite around a vision (his vision) of an alternative to American power and influence in the world.

This followed his decision to snub Ayad Allawi, the interim Iraqi prime minister, at a European summit meeting last month where he chose instead to caucus with the German and Spanish leaders in an effort to begin building the European alternative to the United States.

It is a shame that Europeans were paying so much attention to interpreting developments on this side of the Atlantic because they seem to have missed a remarkable series of potentially more significant events in their own backyard, events that say much more about the real divergence between Europe and America, events that point in a disturbing, dark direction for the peoples of the old continent.

Take the Buttiglione affair. A couple of days before the U.S. election, the European parliament, an institution with zero popular legitimacy but growing political powers in the European Union, forced the resignation of the entire European Commission, the executive leadership of the Brussels bureaucracy, because a majority of the parliament's members objected to the religious views of the Italian nominee.

Rocco Buttiglione, a highly regarded conservative, who also happens to be that rare thing in European public life, a devout, churchgoing Catholic, caused an outrage when he told reporters that he agreed with his church's basic teachings on homosexuality, the sanctity of marriage, and abortion. As the proposed justice commissioner, Buttiglione made it clear his own religious views could not and would not affect his capacity to enforce European law. But for the European parliament's politically correct majority, that was not enough.