Admitting that the United States is not the worst place on Earth, President Obama says that he still sort of wishes he had been elected president of a better nation.

“Being president of America sounds great, doesn’t it?” Obama said in an interview with Ricard Dernière of the French culture magazine La Chèvre. “You get to live in the White House, folks want your opinion, and everywhere you go, Secret Service agents are prepared to take a bullet for you — when they’re not snoozing on the job or banging Colombian whores, of course.”

However, Obama says that America isn’t the shining city upon a hill as some of his predecessors erroneously claimed, and that its citizens are less than ideal. In fact, a majority of Americans are nothing more than stubborn racist hicks who dig their heels in the ground at the slightest push towards progress, and who don’t even know the difference between Brie and Camembert, he insists.

“Oh, and the guns,” he said. “We got mass shootings all the time. I’m downright sick of giving the same speech. I’m almost tired of hearing myself talk about it. You folks here in Europe do it right. No one has the right to own a gun, but everyone does have the right to a philosophy degree, at no cost at all. And recycling. You’re the kings of taking old bottles and making them into new ones. That’s what I call having your priorities straight.”

Obama is also displeased with Americans’ fashion sense, their willingness to stuff their faces with unhealthy fast food, their incessant toothy smiling, the obsession with driving trucks, statues of Confederate generals, the banking sector, and Texas in general. Also, he says that he’s confounded by his fellow citizens’ preference for vapid television shows and brutal NFL games to more stimulating forms of entertainment, such as experimental theater “happenings” and lectures by aging 60s radicals.

“I can’t help but wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d been born somewhere else,” Obama said. “What if my mother had gone into labor in French Polynesia instead of Hawaii? Instead of Harvard, I’d have gone to the Sorbonne in Paris. Instead of being a community organizer in Chicago, I’d have been an advocate for folks living in banlieues.”

He says that while he should feel proud to be president of Hillbillylandia, he’s often plagued by profound shame, and that he’s envious of leaders of better, more enlightened countries.

“I’d take being leader of a country like Denmark or France over the U.S. any day,” he said. “Hell, I’d even take Belgium.”