Irritating Europe

The fact that someone feels depressed and helpless doesn’t mean that his political ideas are necessarily wrong, but one expects a high concentration of bizarre notions among the people who fall into those categories. Hence, poll data quoted by David Frum (from a not-online article in the new issue of American Enterprise) may help explain why creatures like Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Dominique de Villepin, Romano Prodi and Gerhard Schröder flourish in Old Europe:

57% of Americans say they are “very satisfied” with their lives – as opposed to 14% of French, 17% of Germans, and 16% of Italians. Only 8% of Americans describe themselves as “not very satisfied” or “not at all satisfied,” as opposed to 18% of French, 16% of Germans, and 20% of Italians.

Only 32% of Americans agree that success is determined by forces outside our control. But 54% of French agree with that statement, as do 68% of Germans, and 66% of Italians.

To be fair and balanced, one must consider the possibility that Americans suffer from delusions or that sophisticated Europeans have much higher standards of “satisfaction”. The straightforward reading, though, is that those trapped inside the EU (vide another piece in the same issue, “America Still Beckons”) see accurately that their destinies are largely controlled by bureaucratic mandarins and aren’t content with the outcome. Their unhappiness gives hope to European liberals. Unfortunately, as the election returns in West Germany showed, many of those who chafe under the mandarinate are afraid to venture into the world without its guidance.

Europe’s psychological misery can also be seen as the foundation of much of its anti-Americanism. To ordinary Europeans, anxious and fearful about their own lives, Americans’ chipper optimism, our belief that anybody can, through his own efforts, achieve personal success must be intensely irritating. It’s natural for them take pleasure in seeing cocky Americanos suffer mishaps, like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, to glow with inward sympathy for our country’s avowed enemies, and to construct paranoid fantasies about what those grating people across the Atlantic really plan to do to the world. As another American Enterprise article observes,

Nearly one third of Germans under 30 say that the U.S. government ordered the 9/11 attacks. In France, a book insisting that Americans carried out the assault themselves to increase defense budgets becomes a huge bestseller. In Britain, major newspapers carry headlines like “The USA is Now the World's Leading Rogue State.”

Asked which countries are the biggest threat to world peace, Europeans name the U.S as often as North Korea and Iran (each are picked by 53 percent). Countries characterized by Euros as less menacing than the U.S. include Syria, Iraq, Russia, China, Afghanistan, Libya. As one American living in Britain, Anglican minister Dwight Longenecker, summarizes: “Our cultural ancestors have become unrecognizable, even hostile, to us.”

What can we do about attitudes like those? Our diplomats and journalists normally assume that foreign hostility stems from clashes of interests or culturally induced misunderstandings. Those can be ameliorated or corrected. To the extent, however, that the real cause is irrational ressentiment, rational approaches can do nothing. It may be that Old Europe won’t get over its problem with America until it resolves its problem with itself.

Addendum: A Davids Medienkritik correspondent calls attention to a manifestation of German anti-Americanism that seems consistent with the idea that American self-confidence grates on the Old European mentalité, leading in this instance to denial of acquaintance with the disliked volk:

Surprised to see tourists still climbing the stairs inside the glass dome of the Bundestag at 9 PM, I decided to join them for a panoramic view of the city’s skyline.

At the base of the walkway that leads to the top there is a photographic exhibit on the history of the building, beginning with its construction as the Reichstag and ending with its reconstruction as the Bundestag. Naturally much of the exhibit is devoted to the post-war period, the division of Berlin, and reunification.

To my amazement, there was not one mention in either the photographs or the accompanying narrative of the United States and the role it played in bringing down the wall and reunifying the city. Without the United States the Bundestag would still be meeting in Bonn, but here were busloads of German and international school children reading a history that would have made the East German Communist Party proud. The experience reminded me of those photos of the Politburo where the faces of party members who had fallen out of favor had been cropped out.

On a related note, I watched a television documentary on Berlin earlier this summer that included a segment on the Berlin airlift. It showed clips of the Berlin Airlift but not once did it mention who flew the planes. There is no doubt that history is being re-written in Germany today. One can only wonder where it will end.