[b]Europeans are Wrong About Bush — and We're Wrong About Europeans[/b]
[i]Both sides have smug caricatures of the other. But Europeans have more to lose if that continues[/i]

Thursday, Jun. 14, 2001
Europe, which produced Rembrandt long ago, now tends to see the world, or at least America, as a crude cartoon. George W. Bush is the European cartoonist's dream.

When the European elite — politicians, bureaucrats, commentators, intellectuals — look at the president, they see a caricature of everything their anti-Americanism indulges itself by despising: Despoiler of the environment, barbarous executioner, ignorant Texas oil fat cat, wild-hair militarist, uncultured slob.

The European anti-Americanism is an old habit that began almost as soon as the smoke cleared in 1945 — Yankee Go Home; leave the Marshall Plan money by the door. Americans don't pay attention to it anymore — in part because, at the moment, a substantial number of Americans share the European opinion of Bush, and in part because Americans, if they think about it at all, have a bracingly contemptuous view of the European Union, of its hilariously astigmatic bureaucrats, and its Monopoly money.

Perhaps Europeans, the leadership classes anyway, should be more careful about George W. Bush and the country that he has come among them to represent. Much of the European opinion of Bush is based on error or on dishonesty (about the Kyoto Treaty, for example, which the Europeans don't want and will not accept) that is artfully obscured by aesthetic distaste, a gaudy and festive condescension.

The British are brilliantly supercilious about George W. Bush. You hear them at their dinner parties, scintillating and twittering like bright, meat-eating birds while the American sits among them, stolid and monosyllabic as Br'er Bear, and thinks to himself, "Ah'm onna knock yo' haid clean off!" But the Brits are cousins, and Churchill's mother came from the colonies, and all that, and even during World War II, when the Brits had the effrontery to complain that the American soldiers engaged in saving their islands were "overpaid, oversexed and over here," they said it with a rueful smile and, even, perhaps, some concealed sense of gratitude.

But beyond Calais and heading east on the continent, where cousinship grows more tenuous by the kilometer, a more substantial antipathy materializes. There, the anti-Americanism hardens into an aggressive self-importance that seems a little foolish, given the unwieldy bureaucratic organization of the European idea, and the unreliable patchwork of old fears and fragile utopianisms that comprises the Union. How much of the European Union is a wonderful idea? How much of the wonderful idea arises from a mere terror of Germany, the monster in the midst that must be neutralized by uneasy absorption into the larger enterprise?

Henry James is gone, and in any case, perhaps he was too subtle, as who should say, to do justice to early twenty-first century encounters between Americans and Europeans. If we live in an age of vicious cartoons, it's important for each side to understand the cartoon that the other side is drawing. I do not think that the Europeans, in their smugness, have thought it important to notice the American cartoons of Europe, which are as fierce and nasty as European portrayals of the idiot Bush.

The historical importance of Europe to America is vastly diminished — which may, of course, be the buried reason for some of the current anti-Americanism. American genes and memories, once so dominated by Europe as to engender a chronic American inferiority complex, now come from everywhere else in the world. There remains no American inferiority complex regarding Europe; quite the reverse.

There's an old line about a man feeling as smugly virtuous as a Christian holding four aces. That — Europeans should understand — would be George W. Bush. As for themselves, they should explore the possibility that they are vegetarians holding a pair of fours.

Quoted:
Well, I think...yawnzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Quoted:
First of all, what are you doing reading Slime magazine?  I have to say that was a pretty lamely written article.  The best newsweekly, bar none, is The Economist [url]www.economist.com[/url] They skip all the fluffy and social trend-manufacturing, they cover all of the world and the most important events, and their coverage of science and technology issues is about the best you'll find in a mainstream magazine.

They take positions and argue them with sound and rational arguments.  For example, they're for drug legalization and gun control (I know, I know...) They do it without sensationalism, and everything is written incredibly well.  So if you read/subscribe to Newsweak, Slime, or US News.......why?

Quoted:
Is it possible that our viewpoint, while not popular has some merit, at least some of the time?

Quoted:
Cry me a f*cking river....The tower still leans, we got most of the ingredients for pizza from them, and Im not here to make friends with cultures that do nothing other than complain about us for the most part. Another thing, when I post my opinion here I am speaking for myself not for my southern brethren. If you want to take up for an area of the world that gladly takes our handouts, that come out of my pocket via taxes, that turn around an badmouth us because they think they are a superior culture and we are a bunch of red neck hillbillies then that is your perogative. I however will not. Like Ive said before, they need us, we don't need them.

Michael

Quoted:
I'll suggest to read more carefully my posts. If you want. Or if you can.
Any way there is always the 1st Emendament...

Originally Posted By t rex:
Utah will soon host the 2001 winter Olympics, and every piece of Euro-trash will descend upon the areas within 125 to 150 miles of the games.

Originally Posted By t rex:
Europeans seem to have short memories. It was the United States that pulled their butts out of the fire in WWI and WWII, but I guess that is ancient history, and since they don't have to raise their arm to a fuerher (sp),

There was a saying that Europeans are like watermellons. They are green on the outside and Red on the inside.

Quoted:
Like I said before I wasn't trying to be a jackass...

Not that the 1st Amendment even has anything to do with you, unless you are an American citizen.

Michael

Originally Posted By Max The (2 post) Helldiver:
OH YES, and the main WW2 battle was Pearl Harbour, and it was the USMC who took the Berlin, and it was very peace-keeping to drop the A-bomb over already defeated Japan.
And of cause, you USA-men did a lot of good to the Viennam, Libya, Iraqui, Serbian [b]people[/b] [:(!]...

Now i want to see if your mr Bush has enough balls to start the NMD, and what will happen when this system will prove itself a "XXI century Panama e-canal", a multi-billion failure? I wish you good luck with your hi-tech, one day it will take its toll on you.

The [b]only[/b] thing i'm jealous in USA is a 2nd amendment. But, i hope, one day we make ours - don't loose yours.

Quoted:
If I understand, most (of all ) the people of this forum are right-wing people. Traditionally they are isolationists, they tend to look USA as a happy island detached from the planet. USA has resources to do so if they want. Probably if there was a Republican President instead of Franklin Roosevelt, I can only speak german now.