Looking at the Election from the Outside In
The mainstream media is still the major source news on America for foreigners. Andrew Bolt describes how the Australian Broadcasting Corporation presented Mitt Romney to its readers. He is characterized as slippery, deceitful, and vaguely crazy. If that’s all you read, that’s what you would think Bolt concludes: “It was an excellent hatchet job … This is not reporting, but pandering to prejudice.”
Michael Gurfinkiel describes the election coverage in France.
PARIS – During breakfast this morning, I listened to RTL, one of France’s major radio channels (my wife’s choice, not mine). There was a quick report on the impending U.S. presidential election.
“Yesterday, we followed Barack Obama’s campaign,” a young woman said. “Today we turn to Mitt Romney’s campaign.” All right. Except that “following Romney’s campaign” amounted, incredibly, to an interview with a certain Dr. Gordon, who explained that most Americans were grateful to President Obama for having introduced Obamacare. Especially those women who otherwise would have been deprived of any access to birth control. Some journalist at RTL then explained that Romney would abolish Obamacare. And the report was over.
Most people don’t really have a lot of time to spend on foreign news. Pity the poor Frenchman who must form his impressions from RTL. He is left with the image of America as a country in the dark ages; an overgrown ape of a nation whose bulging muscles are too large to control from a pea-sized brain.
This is view with variations is subtly dinned into people everywhere. A poll appears to conclude that almost everybody in Europe would vote for Obama. The proportions are especially interesting.
Austria: 93 % Obama, 7 % Romney
Belgium: 93 % Obama, 7 % Romney
Finland: 93 % Obama, 7 % Romney
France: 88 % Obama, 12 % Romney
Germany: 92 % Obama, 8 % Romney
Greece: 82 % Obama, 18 % Romney
Ireland: 86 % Obama, 14 % Romney
Italy: 87 % Obama, 13 % Romney
They are almost North Korea-like in their disproportion.
The problem is that Americans will probably elect Romney in a couple of days, possibly by a landslide. This will cause no end of perplexity among foreign observers. They will scratch their heads. They will gnash their teeth. They will rush off to the nearest pub, or cafe or wine shop and calm their frazzled nerves.
The world is in peril. A superpower in the hands of an imbecile! Romney! Romney!
Andrew Bolt concludes that in the event of a Romney victory “ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] voters will be astonished – or convinced Americans must be mad, or even bad.”
When it breaks many Europeans are going to conclude that Americans have taken leave of their senses.
The primary purveyor of the notion that Americans are illiterate, backward, bloodthirsty religious fanatics are the US media outlets themselves, closely followed by Hollywood. They tirelessly tell the world how bad America is. If all the information you had to form an opinion about America came from CNN, the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian and Michael Moore you would think the North American continent looked like this.
There are any number of jokes told about the American ignorance of foreign places; but the ignorance runs both ways. There are probably a large number of “well informed” non-Americans who believe that Lincoln was a Democrat or that Nixon started the war in Vietnam.
And why would they not? It is not normally the business of people to know the histories of other countries. Add to this natural condition an insistent and insidious propaganda and you can see how most people can get the wrong idea.
But there’s probably another reason, beyond the sheer lack of information and cultural bias, for the persistent misrepresentation of America in news outlets overseas. It is conscious disinformation.
The idea of America, with its notions of small government and individualism — in addition to the physical outputs of the United States itself — are a competitor to other worldwide models: in particular to European social democracy, Islamism, and authoritarian economies like China.
It is an ideological threat and a market competitor. A strong America not only rivals with other economies, but provides a model against which their own establishments are judged. It cannot help but have that effect.
This effect is magnified during a world crisis or when America is doing well. In European social democracy’s salad days it enjoyed a genuine popularity among its adherents. Then it was secure. But now it is falling apart and it is particularly vulnerable to other models which are succeeding. What has saved Europe over the past year, as it stumbled through a debt crisis, unparalleled unemployment and economic weakness, has been a similar weakness in America.
If Barack Obama had not made such a hash of the American economy; had he made even a half credible attempt to get out of the way of American enterprise, Europe would have faced an even greater threat of capital flight than it does today. It would have looked bad, very bad.
Obama objectively served the cause of European social democracy not only by openly admiring it and by copying it through Obamacare, but principally by being such a bumbler. The same incompetence made him similarly convenient to both to radical Islamism and to China. There is a saying that you should never complain if your opponent is making a mistake.
No wonder they like him. It is unnatural to hope for your competitor to better himself. Rather you will cheer for whatever makes your competitor weaker.
None of this necessarily means that a Romney election will automatically bring about a renewed American ascendancy. However, it might. An Obama re-election simply guarantees it won’t.
The potential danger that Romney represents is that he might be a perceptibly better president than Barack Obama. Not by a long margin of superiority, but perhaps just enough to make a difference. He may be a little better than the sad sacks who currently run France, Italy, Spain, Greece and Brussels.
There is a story told which illustrates the point. Two peaceful herbivorous dinosaurs were grazing on ferns when they spotted a T-rex coming over the hill for them. One of the plant eaters immediately lumbered away. The other herbivore cried out, “why are you running? You can’t outpace a t-rex!”
“No,” said the other, “but I can outrun you.”
And that captures the danger that Romney represents. He might not be able to outrun Ronald Reagan. But he might just outrun Europe. And that possibility alone, as they face the unresolved conflicts in the Eurozone, makes the potential of a Willard Mitt Romney victory a perilous one indeed.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
It seems the overwhelming majority of people outside of America want a weak socialist emasculated America and therefore support Obama. I guess this is consistent with the Norwegian parliament giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing.
The two polls that actually matter (Gallup and Rasmussen) favor Romney slightly, refer to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html
Opinion polls typically have a margin of error of 5%. However many opinion polls have shown obvious bias, e.g. junk polls from PPP, CBS/NYT, etc. Even Gallup which is usually quite reliable has been behaving oddly (an obvious outlier) with the Presidential Job Approval Poll, refer to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
The Electoral College Map is also within the margin of error, refer to:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html
As of right now, this election is a toss-up. I hope Romney’s people are watching the polling stations like eagles against misconduct.
Ironically, an economically robust America is better for European social democracy. It is the American economic engine that has given Western European democracies a second wind back in the 80′s. A good American economy means people here buy more stuff from Europe, thus creating wealth over there — someting Yerps seem to always leave out of their economic rescue equations.
Equally ironic is that a Romney administration will be better for America’s social safety nets, by virtue of 1) creating greater revenue for the federal coofers, and 2) applying fiscal constraints to spending and 3) reforming entitlements.
This is what New-Hate and New-Racism look like. They are the new and improved versions that fit New-Fascism. Brought to you by the old fascists who have learned a lesson or two about branding. If the concentration camps were only deemed to be healthcare centers things would have been different and we’d all be speaking German right now. Sieg!
The best way to show a Eurpean that you are not from Jesusland is to smash their teeth out. This is definately something that Jesus wouldn’t do. They need to know.
One day in Florence my wife and I noticed a couple in a restaurant near us; the woman was black and the man white. On that basis alone I assumed they were Americans, but when I asked them they said no; the woman was born in France and the man in India. They said they’d be afraid to travel to the U.S. because of the condemnation they expected as a mixed-race couple. I tried to assure them this would not be the case, and especially not in California. (One of my friends at the time was a white professional football player who had traveled all over the country with black players; he told me California really is different this way.) Nothing I could say was convincing to them. It was clear to me then what a horrible job we do of representing ourselves to the rest of the world; but on consideration, that same image is largely what is promoted within the U.S., not only by MSM, but by politicians who have something to gain by it. They are slandering us and we ought to rise up and give them the obloquy they have so richly earned.
An expatriate friend of mine pointed out that “only” 15% of Americans have passports, to which I replied, “that’s at least 45 million Americans with passports — at least as many as people from any of the major European countries. How many Americans, I asked him, do you want wandering the world, anyway?
I love it when supposedly more “worldly” Yerps and other nationalities get America so spectacularly wrong.
The vast bulk of Europeans actively desire for America to be weak and for Americans to be harmed in some way.
Those are not just inflammatory words. Anyone with a memory of the days after 9/11 should remember that while a few European leaders mumbled some half-baked words of sorrow and support for us, poll after poll showed that the bulk of the populace in most if not all European nations were at best indifferent and in many or most cases joyful at our misfortune. Sites like Fred Pruitt’s Rantburg have archived this information.
I suspect that European hate for authentic American thought and authentic Americans has not abated since that time eleven years ago and may have actually grown worse, based upon things I see like the aforementioned survey.
And yes, it is true that the infotainment industry and education industry have both had a heavy hand in this. Their indoctrinated hatred has reached across the globe and ensnared millions in its web of disinformation.
The fantasy of Euroland was that you could be childless or nearly so, stay in school until 25, work some fussy little public sector make-work job until 55, and live like a king without working until 80, and the financial math would work out and the system would last in perpetuity.
As Lincoln (an American) said, you can’t fool all the people all the time.
America does things differently (or at least did so in the pre-2006 era) and eats their lunch, which gives lie to their crappy little narrative. This more than anything else is what stimulates the hate – having to admit error, which is the worst thing to a leftist.
Well frankly I (American) don’t know much more than that about Australian, French, or even Mexican or Canadian politics, and I can’t even tell you the name of the current emperor of Japan.
When Ireland was doing well – or seeming to – there were protests from EU nations that the new lower tax rates of that country were “unfair.”
No doubt that much of the EU feels that way about the USA on a more or less continuous basis. Obamacare and the higher taxes that accompany his programs will make the USA less attractive.
Aside from that Obama especially and Bill Clinton to a slightly lesser extent are “Euro” style leaders. They say one thing, do another, and expect not to be called on it. They have no private sector experience. They are tainted by scandal in their personal lives. They are both shadowy figures and simultaneously vastly public in their lives. They act like royalty and still call for solidarity with the common man. They are all too familiar to the Yerps, and that makes them comfortable with them.
And this is what we get for the blood and treasure that those before us shed to keep them free. And then we’ve paid for their defense for the past 60 years. After a while, I get pretty annoyed with the party crashers who then complain about the food and then trash the place on the way out. I recognize that it comes with the territory of being the strongest country in the world, but seems like we’re getting into the realm of throwing good money after the bad. Sorry MC, but we’re tired of it all.
I’m probably postulating something unrealistic, but I’m ready to go full bore on domestic drilling and turning nat gas into transportation fuels. Let the rest of the world depend on the Mid East and Russia (which is a demographic death spiral) and lets pull up the drawbridges. Meanwhile, we can leave a few markers around. Let Tehran know that there will always be at least one boomer in the neighborhood in case they want to try anything with Israel. Any rogue nukes = the end of Mecca, etc…Perhaps this is too simplistic a view, but I’m all for repairing our home front and letting someone else wear the Marshall’s badge for a while. Or not wear it, if that’s how it comes down.
“If Barack Obama had not made such a hash of the American economy …”
This is something that the MSM just doesn’t want to admit. How they can go on “barracking” (so to speak) for this failed president is a mystery, and has to be seen as symptomatic of a deeper leftist malaise. We have the same issues here in Australia, with a huge national debt thatnthe MSM doesn’t want to mention.
It’s noticeable even from a distance that they aren’t treating the lack of food, electricity, petrol and services generally in the wake of Sandy as the fault of the President this time around. The attacks on Bush after Katrina always looked to me like propagandist opportunism, not a pretty sight.
I admit I wasn’t in favour of Obama the first time around, and am even less so this time. I heard the left leaning pundits back then extolling his rhetorical flourishes, and wondered at their shallowness, indeed their myopia.
To repeat the same dose after actually experiencing an amateur hour ( or worse) administration would be a sad reflection on the US political state of the union. The polarisation and dysfunction will destroy the country, and the world will feel the fallout.
Josef Joffe describes “The Turn Away from Europe” in Commentary. He argues that because Europe is no longer at the geostrategic center of the world America is objectively abandoning it. So he makes the case that Europe needs America because without it the whole Mediterranean neighborhood would go. He actually says that without America Europe could not simply act to defend its interests.
This is basically Samantha Powers “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine applied not to Kosovo or Syria or Libya but ‘core Europe’!
While Joffe’s concerns are real it is unlikely that Europe can be ‘helped’ in the long run by helping it into a wheelchair or a walker. What Europe needs is competition. The root of its weakness is is its social democracy. Its ‘stability compacts’. Its social agreements. These are simply modern terms for a very old idea: feudal relations. Except now the King no longer feeds the vassals in the Hall. They are fed via the welfare system.
Europe has tremendous human potential. But if it sinks into dependency and survives only at the sufferance of its aggressive neighbors or American protection it will doom itself to demographic senescence and economic irrelevancy within a generation.
A president Romney would discomfort Europe. But stirring them up and making them do better — however they do it — would be best in the long run.
Rachel Madcow was voted “most important/influential” American journalist, or some such drivel, in a UK survey last year. Shows their cluelessness over there.
And let’s not forget one of the most spectacular demostrations of moral bankruptcy from Europe: the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for just “showing up.”
#5. Don Rodrigo–
They might also look at a map. The US only borders two countries, and they are both huge by European standards. And prior to the current US requirements for having a passport for getting BACK into the country, US citizens didn’t need a passport to travel to Mexico or Canada for short periods of time. Proof of American citizenship was enough. The same thing applied to many Caribbean countries.
I wonder how many names of the US States the average European can name, or the provinces of Canada, or the States of Mexico?
And yes, the worst thing a Utopia can have is something for it to be compared to unfavorably. It breaks the illusion, and Utopias can’t exist without illusions. And for those whose notion of self and/or livelihood is bound up with the existence of that Utopia, reality which conflicts with the theory is the most evil form of blasphemy.
If it goes down the way I hope and think it will, one of the biggest stories of the next few months will be a serious reckoning, possibly across the Western World, between its people and its media organs. In essence, it just will take a few prominent people to stand up and say to the masses, WHEN are you going to DEMAND that your media stop LYING to you??? WHEN??????
Because it is possible that many of them will not be able to recover from what there is a good chance may be coming down the pike.
It’s the same up here in Canada where about 80% claim they would vote for Obama. One effect of all the conscious disinformation about the U.S. is to create a symbolic American bogey man. I swear that if you planted an inflatable American in many Canadian rooms, some Canadians would faint from fear and some would start throwing darts.
Unfortunately Americans don’t help themselves. My daughter completed her post graduate studies in Chicago where she convinced her fellow students that Canadian Christmas comes in November by using the powerful logic “Canadian Thanksgiving is a month earlier than American Thanksgiving, so Canadian Christmas is also a month earlier”. Her logic-challenged American fellow students all went on to successful careers as medical Professionals.
I wonder how many Euroweenies know Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican and Bull Connor with the attack dogs and fire hoses a Democrat.
There are any number of jokes told about the American ignorance of foreign places…
Well-intentioned hipster chick: “Americans are so ignorant. Europeans travel to other countries all the time, but most Americans don’t even have a passport!”
Me: “Have you ever been to Arkansas?”
WIHC: “No, why?”
Me: “Never mind.”
Interesting use of the Jesusland map. There have been several versions. One with a nation of Cascadia – OR, WA & BC. Another adds Saskatchewan, Alberta and perhaps even Manitoba to Jesusland. Yukon and whatever remains of the NW Territories end up going wherever AK ends up. And nobody, but nobody wants CA.
The trouble with TWANLOC is that they are serious about it. Cheers -
http://zapatopi.net/cascadia/
Canadian “Thanksgiving”? Is that when ya’ll give thanks to Major General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm? At least the French Canandians don’t make their Matza out of the blood of innocents.
As far as Cascadia is concerned, the Cascades stop north of the Siskiyous, which is the Northern Range of the Redwood Curtain.
I so seldom get over here when one of Wretchard’s posts is fairly new, so I hardly comment anymore – even though I cut my blogosphere teeth as a B.C. commenter. I arrived early today because I can’t bear to read another election prediction, another story on the tri-state destruction by Sandy while the bureaucrats do their usual inefficient sidestep, or another Benghazi “suppose” (since the reality is buried under six feet of b.s.).
I’m prepared for either eventuality re the election. Romney would give me a bit more hope for our future; Obama’s continuing reign a sinking feeling. But either way we’re in for a rough ride.
My heart lies with Steeple’s desire to isolate. One gets tired of the ignorance of Europeans re what America is about in addition to the absolute conviction that their ignorance is reality.
However, I have hope for Oz, and am glad we have a small outpost of Marines there…and the friendliness of Aussies toward the US (in general terms)is also heartening.
Funny, that many ex-pats from Northern Europe end up in Oz. It is a real culture shock I’m sure.
Europe is scary. England is a soviet and the others are rushing to play catch-up. As I run thru a mental list of countries that might be trustworthy, Oz is about the only one. In Europe? None. They are in full retreat before the onslaught of Islam. The trials for “hate speech” in the EU are all persecutions of those on the right. Oh…make tht the ExtremeRight. No islamic utterance is ever deemed hateful…
I pray for Tommy Robinson, held, literally, in a dungeon in solitary for 23 out of 24 hours, segregated for his “safety”. And he’ll be there for months until the QC decides to put him on trial. A thin blanket because they’ve frozen the donations that come in which would allow him to purchase warm clothing/bedding at their commissary. It’s so creepily USSR it hardly bears thinking about.
I doubt that the framed “film-maker” here in the US, dragged off in the middle of the night and remanded without bail until 3 days after the election, has it any better.
What happened to the rule of law?
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD(LES)S
Europe is on the verge of collapse, both economically and spiritually. They have invited the Muslims in, and will soon turn the graves of their fathers over to them. Islam is and has always been a mortal threat, but Europe no longer sees or cares.
The Muslims faced stout Christian men
At Tour and Vienna’s gates
Lepanto saw the Crescent set
The Cruses held their own fates
In hands of rock and hearts of steel
And trusted they in their faith
But now the Cross is déclassé
A ghost, a far distant wraith
Adrift the Europe that once stood
Athwart all of time and space
Have given up their father’s graves
In false favor of the Grace
Bestowed on them by Mammon’s smile
And Brussels’ slick oily ways
And so the States that once were great
Have entered their final days
I lived in Europe for the first half of my adult life, and it is surprising how paternalistic the culture is, and how maternalistic American liberalism has become. In most of Europe they play non-contact sports (and are fanatical about it) while in the US the lefty crowd wants games with no winners or losers. In northern European schools there is a strong stigma against shirking school, while here there is a whole subculture of slacking and expecting momma to find you a paycheck on the far side.
I find both to be patently offensive, and I prefer American football with all its violence. If you have no skills and add nothing to my business I won’t give you a paycheck.
The European hatred — not too strong a word — for the US goes back a long way. At least to World War II and the jibe that US servicemen were ‘over-paid, over-sexed and over here’. It may even go back further than that, to the 18th & 19th Centuries when Europe’s dynamic fringe got on the boat for New York, leaving their whining brethern behind.
In recent decades, the fires of hatred for the US have been stoked in Europe by the same kind of Leftist media we see in North America. It is a mystery why media people should automatically be Big Intrusive Government types around the world, but the evidence is incontrovertible.
Still, all those Euro-Weenie BIG types are getting what they have longed for — a US that has been cut down to size; one which no longer has the economic clout to intervene in world affairs. And they are about to re-learn an old lesson from history — Victory contains the seeds of its own eventual defeat.
At one time, U. S. support was seen as the “Kiss Of Death” for foreign candidates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/world/middleeast/10arab.html
Quote:
““It’s the kiss of death,” said Turki al-Rasheed, a Saudi reformer who watched
last Sunday’s elections closely. “The minute you are counted on or backed by
the Americans, kiss it goodbye, you will never win.””
To be seen as the favorite of foreigners (or foreign interests) can be a bad
thing for a candidate.
So, could all this foreign support for Obama actually help Romney?
I think nations are different and they should compete. If the social democratic system, communism or certain aspects of them are better, then that will out. The founders saw the American states themselves as laboratories to share in some things but expected to compete in others.
But as competitors they will also be rivals. I don’t think Europeans or Americans can have an entirely unbiased view of each other. That’s all to the good so long as everyone knows it.
This election is part of that competition. It is a referendum on whether social democracy, or “Hope and Change” as president Obama called it, has passed the muster of the last four years. But the ball goes both ways. If Obama loses then it will become the turn of the other side to challenge social democracy indirectly.
The challenge for Romney is convincingly show that even under ordinary management that freedom beats central planning. What this election is about is the chance to return serve.
The world is in peril. A superpower in the hands of an imbecile!
but it’s been in the hands of an imbecile for four years already.
Anyhow, beyond the simple envy, schadenfreude, and desire to see a competitor commit unforced errors, there’s also the free-rider aspect of Euro and Canadian support for Obama. At a subconscious level, foreigners realize they don’t have to live with the problems Obama would create for the US, so it’s a freebee to them. They can engage in some moral grandstanding without suffering consequences.
Well, in reality, they will, but in an indirect way that’s beyond their IQ to understand.
It’s like saying Paul needs a free lunch and Peter ought to pay for it. Peter may have one opinion about that, Paul another. Who cares what Mary has to say.
Europe has tremendous human potential.
There is an alternate possibility – that the US, by siphoning off a significant percentage of the entrepreneurial Europeans over four centuries, basically ruined Europe by condeming it to be run by aristocrats with no more credible challengers. In that scenario, the revolutionaries that took over France, Germany, Italy and the rest, were third rate rabble. When the crowned heads finally ran out of energy, there were no enlightened, capable, middle classes to take their place, and instead the thugs took over.
Obama’s race is another factor in his European approval. Supporting him allows Europeans to show that they ae not racist, unlike the red state types in America.
The biggest problem with Europe’s ignorance of America is not the ignorance per se: It is that they don’t know they are ignorant.
…#19 Annoy Mouse. No, the Cascade Range extends south to Mount Lassen in California, about 150 miles south ( and some miles east ) of Siskiyou pass in the Siskiyou mountains. The Sierra’s start south of Mt. Lassen.
#16 trangbang – Forget Europeans, how many *Americans* know that MLK Jr was a Republican and Bull Connor and Democrat? Precious few.
7. Josh
Well frankly I (American) don’t know much more than that about Australian, French, or even Mexican or Canadian politics, and I can’t even tell you the name of the current emperor of Japan.
The average American freely admits to ignorance about other countries. By contrast, there are a lot of people outside the US who believe they know a lot about the US, but in fact know very little about the US.
I could get rich purchasing foreigners for what they know about the US and selling foreigners for what they think they know about the US.
Michael Gurfinkiel is hardly a journalist, he is expressing his own feelings that are but pro American conservatives, a political movement that hardly exists in Europe, at least in its religious configuration.
I never met such pro Obama worshippers in France, the french people don’t care who will rule the US, he would first be American, Democrat or Republican, it’s the same for us, America is America !
dunno who filled the polls?
Andrew X @ 14 said:
“… one of the biggest stories of the next few months will be a serious reckoning, possibly across the Western World, between its people and its media organs. In essence, it just will take a few prominent people to stand up and say to the masses, WHEN are you going to DEMAND that your media stop LYING to you???”
The MSM has become a serious threat to national security. It was clear that George W. Bush intended to go after the Iranians after Iraq was pacified. Unfortunately he was stopped dead in this tracks by our MSM through the assistance of people within the national intelligence infrastructure who were leaking classified information. The MSM then went in for the kill by constructing Obama as George W. Bush’s replacement. Hillary was the obvious Democrat candidate but was effectively sandbagged by the MSM and replaced by Obama. We as a nation were incredibly lucky that Obama proved to be so incompetent. Had Obama been a more ruthless demagogue like Huey Long, it could have been much worse for our democracy. The MSM is still positioned to play this game again. The nation remains in serious peril.
JMH @ 26 said:
“… the US, by siphoning off a significant percentage of the entrepreneurial Europeans over four centuries, basically ruined Europe by condeming it to be run by aristocrats with no more credible challengers. In that scenario, the revolutionaries that took over France, Germany, Italy and the rest, were third rate rabble. When the crowned heads finally ran out of energy, there were no enlightened, capable, middle classes to take their place, and instead the thugs took over.”
JMH’s comment is perceptive. America underwent two brain transplants in the 20th century. The first and most important was in the 1930s when Europe’s brightest people fled the Nazis, e.g. Einstein, Teller, Fermi, etc. Many of the people behind the Manhattan Project were European scientists. America’s economic ascendency in the 1950s was partially a consequence of European genius that had immigrated to the United States after WW-II. The second brain transplant occurred more slowly over the later half of the 20th century. That second brain transplant was composed of people fleeing the Soviet Empire and Western European stagnation due to stultifying cradle-to-grave socialism. To some extent, Europe has been sucked dry and they’re not happy about it.
Annoy mouse
Bush world map
http://czechmatediary.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/world-map.gif
“It is unnatural to hope for your competitor to better himself. Rather you will cheer for whatever makes your competitor weaker.”
I have always strongly suspected this as the prime motivator in the Euro’s take on American leaders, as well as how popular the USA is with the inhabitants of other nations.
When we are booming, dissatisfaction with Americans grows. When we are stumbling, our popularity rises. . . .as a general rule. Some things, it seems, are infinitely scalable. When an individual strikes it rich, or experiences great opportunities, his neighbors often begin to resent him, and secretly rejoice when/if he experiences set-backs. When someone elevates his/herself from a ghetto, there are always many who would happily see him/her broken back down. I’m certain there are few in Europe who would rejoice if we dragged ourselves out of the recession ahead of their continent.
It does not surprise me (especially when this underlying phenomenon is reinforced by one-sided press coverage) in the slightest that the rest of the western world is rooting for us to re-elect Obama. If we do, we continue to yield to the wishes of the UN. We continue to avoid pressing our national interests abroad. Perhaps, secretly, they even know and fear that Romney would indeed stoke the fires of economic recovery. While we are down, citizens of the Euro zone can placate themselves with the notion that the economic circumstances are so bad, that even the mighty USA is struggling. If we start a healthy recovery without them, then they will have to acknowledge that it wasn’t just ‘circumstances’. They’ll have to look for reasons the recovery isn’t happening there too. I’m sure none of them are excited about that prospect.
9. Steeple
note that you paid little less for our Defense since the 1960 years than for the other European countries, besides it was a win-win game, they bought into your arms corporations, which today are so benefitfull and that provide lots of american emplois
11. wretchard
Joffe is right, demonstrated for the libyan campain
hmm Romney wouldn’t be a enemy for France
check:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XffRmburdw&feature=share
Each generation of Americans knows one place in the world pretty well.
As Willy–or Joe–said, “When the war is over, I’m gonna be a expert on types of European mud.”
Those yurps or other foreigners who think we know nothing of them ought to hope it stays that way.
”The mainstream media is … ” (!!)
It’s are, ARE, A-R-E! If that’s not so, what is the plural of ”media”?
I think the truth will be told pretty quickly. In the first hour of polls closing there are some real hints as to how the race is going to go.
The real entertainment will be watching MSNBC if Romney is winning. The head spinning and induced vomitting will be better than a remake of The Exorcist.
Oops — a “grammo”: “This is view”
It’s not just the Europeans who are exposed to outrageous canards about Republicans. After Hurricane Katrina, some Black activists spread the rumor that Bush had set up genocidal concentration camps to murder refugees from New Orleans. More recently the Vice President of the United States declared that “Romney will put y’all back in chains!” Although this was hyperbole, and another obvious Biden gaffe, many took it seriously. Witness the YouTube video of a 9 year old boy expressing genuine fear of being sent back to the fields. He heard that fearful idea from someone who took it seriously, probably a parent. I am afraid that the “back in chains” rumor may be in part responsible for the threats of urban rioting in the event of a Romney victory.
#25. wretchard
I think nations are different and they should compete. If the social democratic system, communism or certain aspects of them are better, then that will out. The founders saw the American states themselves as laboratories to share in some things but expected to compete in others.
This is true, but with qualifications. Much depends upon the systems hierarchical structure and the price to be paid if you fall from a position at the top. The steeper the price to be paid for the fall the more the rulers will attempt to suppress the results of such competition. It can be life and death for them, or a great fall in status and/or wealth. At the time of the founding of the US leadership was essentially seen as an unpleasant duty to be done. George Washington merely wanted it to be over so he could go back to his farm. Competition can and does work in such a situation.
But when being a leader is all you can do competition is very unwelcome and the virtues of your competitors political product must be suppressed by any and all means, fair or foul. What exactly is it that the Dear Leader of North Korea or the king of Saudi Arabia would do if they were thrown down from power and striped of their wealth? Beg coins on the street? More likely they would be killed, and they know it.
Don’t buy our competitors bread. Its contaminated with arsenic and our own scientists have proven it. Its a scientific fact. Just ask our staff scientists, they will tell you.
Competition is nice in theory but that presupposes that the consumers have accurate information about the qualities of the actual products, and whether or not the sale or even advertising for any of them is banned in the neighborhood where the consumers live.
Currently that doesn’t seem to be the way it works in the world.
Kinuachdrach @ 23:
You do not go quite far enough. Remember Oz and US started as penal colonies. They view us as the remnants of their criminal classes or less. I have done lots and lots of business there in Switzerland, Ireland, France, The Netherlands and Germany and can attest to the below the surface attitudes. On a personal level most Yurps are okay but the way they talk among themselves is unnerving. (They assume as an American you do not speak any of their language.)
Dymphna – Nice to see you over here again. This robot has not visited your HQ for a while as the sit-rep at home is so dire.
Gee you got me Dave D. I have walked most of the sierras from the Mexican border to Tahoe, and a good bit of the Cascades from Rainy Pass to Snoqualmie. Big gap in my knowledge of the Cascades. I was just trying to frame my Redwood Curtain crack.
Marie Claude. Thanks for the map! I am going to update my atlas to include Yurop. I had it as part of the red Commies part of the map.
eggplant@32
“JMH’s comment is perceptive. America underwent two brain transplants in the 20th century. The first and most important was in the 1930s when Europe’s brightest people fled the Nazis, e.g. Einstein, Teller, Fermi, etc. Many of the people behind the Manhattan Project were European scientists. America’s economic ascendency in the 1950s was partially a consequence of European genius that had immigrated to the United States after WW-II.”
Not so fast, Eggplant.
It didn’t take a 1930s Euro brain transplant to enable us to save the Europeans from their intellectual wank for the second time in 25 years.
It took American mass production, American inclusive mass culture, American energy, American realism (as in not living in an ineffectual and delusional mass projection like the fascists and communists), American self reliance and American productivity to grind those pissy little jerks into their sodden tired little continent.
They thought small and had the airplanes with the short range and little tactical bomb loads to reflect that. Their elitist cultures had a narrow industrial base in part because their normal people were too poor to stimulate industrial capacity with their demands.
Hell the krauts still had town baths because they simply did not have adequate plumbing at home to take showers.
Our practical genius saved our intellectual betters from their illusions 3x in the 20th century and they hate us for it (at least the ones that aren’t envious).
Europe’s best voted with their feet long before Bismarck united Germany and handed it over to a Prussian fool with a fascination for toy soldiers.
W
33 @MC
That was unfunny the first 100 times that some addled liberal tried to pass it off as humor years ago. Probably about as entertaining as you would find a Pepe Le Pew cartoon.
34 @Yashmak
Yes, the crab bucket, writ large. A nasty aspect of human nature which seems to be universal.
41 @Ernie G
Recently seen on social media as gullible types are convinced that a President Romney will ban tampons and weaves as his first act.
pour .. for …Marie-Claude … bonne lecture !
http://mittromneyfrance.fr/accueil_013.htm
SF
On a hike to Brokeoff Mt, just southeast of Lassen with my daughter’s middle school class, I learned that true Sierra/Cascade dividing line is Feather River canyon, about 30 miles south. Cascades are much younger and seismically active, versus Sierras. Brokeoff and Lassen are part of a huge caldera, still very much alive and capable of throwing us a surprise or two.
Peter Lassen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lassen) was an interesting guy, found murdered in his tent one night, but quite the entrepreneur in his day. One of those Europeans who made it to the US for fame and fortune.
25. Wretchard
The founders saw the American states themselves as laboratories to share in some things but expected to compete in others.
———————————————————–
For the last thousand years, the West has always had a ‘Frontier’ that could absorb the more ambitious of any community. In Europe one could be a Crusader or soldier and see worlds unknown to most; you could go to sea and find new horizons. and when the Age of Exploration came along Europe was enlarged and enriched by the wanderlust of its bolder sons.
A frontier can siphon off the pressures that build in any culture from discontent, new visions, new ideas. And it can plant the idea in the public mind that there is another way, another possible form of compact by which men can live.
And the new ideas, inventions, perceptions that pour back into the Mother Country can bubble up through a society at a tolerable pace that doesn’t wreck it.
The American genious is in recognizing the Right of each man to pursue his happiness without hindrance, so that even when the physical frontier no longer exists, the freedom to stretch out into new ground is still there.
The folly of Statism is the closing off of that frontier, forcing the natural drive and ambition of men to turn their energy against the state. Instead of expanding the horizon of a society, enriching and prospering all, it wrecks it.
The mainstream medias is really biased. I have been reading that on other forums.
Britain has become its own penile colony. Anybody who could run, jump, or swim let out for the new-world a long time ago.
More Europeans routinely carry travel documents than do Americans. They need to. If a German checks into a hotel in Italy or France they will check his ID, and may keep it in the hotel safe.
America remains a country where travel is largely unrestricted. If you do not use an airplane the only time you will be stopped traveling internally is for a rare agricultural inspection or a check for illegal aliens near the border. To go by land or ship to Canada Mexico or the Caribbean you do not need a passport, only an Enhanced Drivers License or State ID.
America is a country, not a collection of fiefdoms ruled by an elite mistrustful of their own as well as of each others subjects and foreigners. The purpose of the EU is to tamp down the history of violence, in opposition to not fulfillment of popular interests.
The European legacy died during the Shoah.
Just take a peek at the Nobel list in the hard sciences…
Hitler ruined Europe for as long as the mind can conceive.
————
A staggering percentage of our European rep comes directly from the BBC; which these days is overrun with islamist sympathizers. They even had AQ operatives ( disinformation wing ) on their staff. (!)
——–
R Daneel, American colonies did not start off as penal colonies in any shape or form.
Plymouth Rock was established with private capital — no state funding whatsoever. ( And, no, they didn’t start from England. Their very first embarkation was Holland. The Puritans had fled to Holland, first; then a generation later gave up on the free and tolerant Dutch as being too permissive. There was but a pit stop in England to pick up ever more of like minded Puritans so that they could travel in convoy. Eventually, that scheme was adjusted down into just the single larger ship: Mayflower. )
Likewise, time and again, colonies were founded by those fleeing the religious and civil turmoil in Europe. (It was intense in the 17th Century: 30 Years War and all.)
[France did, ultimately, establish penal zones in the New World -- but not in North America.]
If you couldn’t raise the fare, indenture (labor debt) was an option, an option commonly taken. Normally limited to seven-years servitude — you were ‘double crossed’ when the counter party renegged on the deal and did not recognize/admit your term of service. (Double crossed = double signed = doubly contracted — since the indenturee was almost certain to be illiterate, to sign was to give one’s ‘cross’ or mark. The latter term giving us a ‘marked man’ — a person with a signed writ ( the king’s justice ) on their head and now having a bullseye/mark on their back. To be a marked man always means to be officially marked.)
( ‘Double crossing’ an indentured party was a very dangerous business because the indenturee was prone to murdering their counter party — and then flee into the west. Even otherwise, gaining a reputation as a double-crosser was economically lethal. )
Today the expression lingers on to mean: changing the terms of a deal/ back stabbing/ betrayal of trust.
[The opening vignette of "How the West Was Won" featured prompt frontier justice to double crossing Col Jeb Hawkins/ Walter Brennan and his crew. Later, it was the railroad double crossing the natives; mayhem ensues.]
———-
BTW, the number one crime of that ancient age was poverty.
———-
Back in the early to mid 90′s, I lived in Spain. I was shocked to read about our country as portrayed in the NY Times and International Herald Tribune, as well as (to a lesser extent) USA Today.
Everything was Michael Jackson’s exploits with young boys, Clinton and his affairs, and the rest was all frickin’ Hollywood.
It was insane, as if WE were all insane, a nation of absolute idiots, child molesters and/or abettors to such, just a freaking circus.
I was pissed, but what can you do?
I had never been a fan of those publications, but after that, I knew who the enemy was.
And is.
And in their disdain (and I include you, Mr. Obama) for those who “cling to their Bibles and guns”, they’ve poisoned the world’s view of America and Americans.
blert 52,
Georgia did start as a model penal colony. The importance of that heritage is sometimes overstated. The interest in Australia was stimulated by the lose of Georgia due to the American Revolution. Nascent industrialization and the Enclosure Movement were creating a displaced urban underclass ripe for criminality just at the end of the 18th century. Most of the North American colonies had been established prior to that and were settled by merchants and free yeomanry.
You are correct regarding the importance of indenturing as the economic engine of settlement in a period before credit systems were established. Technically speaking African slaves were permanent and then inherited indentured servants, most of whom were eventually denied the opportunity to earn release from their servitude. That distinction explains both the rise of free black communities in the Antebellum South and the persistence of some, albeit inadequate, legal rights for slaves. A slave in the US was, at least until the Dred Scott decision, a person.
Europe remains important to America. The reasons given by George Kennan 65 years ago still largely apply. As a collection of Human and as a source of Resource and Industrial or even Financial Capital we do not want an enemy getting control there. Yes the demographics are terrible. Yes the enervating effects of Socialism have destroyed much of the EUs financial strength as well as debased the value of working class human labor. Still the Capital assets in all categories, with Resources soon to increase in value with fracking, remain strategically important. Europe is worth fighting for.
Europe, always there when they need us.
Bob Murphy @ 45 said:
“It didn’t take a 1930s Euro brain transplant to enable us to save the Europeans from their intellectual wank for the second time in 25 years. It took American mass production, American inclusive mass culture, American energy, American realism (as in not living in an ineffectual and delusional mass projection like the fascists and communists), American self reliance and American productivity to grind those pissy little jerks into their sodden tired little continent. They thought small and had the airplanes with the short range and little tactical bomb loads to reflect that.”
I should emphasize that we’re having a violent agreement. Never the less, nuclear fission was a German discovery (Otto Hahn). In the early 1930s, the Germans had the raw brain power to develop nuclear weapons. (Un)fortunately many of those experts either bugged-out to the US or were hauled off to concentration camps because they were Jewish. The V-2 rocket warhead had a mass of 1000 kg. The Fat Man atomic bomb had a mass of 4633 kg so a V-2 could not have carried it. However the Germans had an advanced version of the V-2 on the drawing board called the “A-9/A-10″ or the “Amerika Rakete” (literally had our name on it). ***IF*** the Germans had completed their nuclear weapons technological development program and ***IF*** the Amerika Rakete had become operational then the Germans could have won WW-II with minimal casualties. In more ways than one, Hitler was like Saddam Hussein in that he launched his war before his military technology was ready. We (the United States) have been lucky because our enemies have tended to be stupid.
Also, much of America’s industrialization was due to cross fertilization with England. Don’t forget that Andrew Carnegie came from Scotland and the Bessemer process was invented in England along with most of the Industrial Revolution. In the 19th century, the British and Germans were miles ahead of us in science and technology.
MC 35, remind me what Defense goods the Eurpoeans have bought from us? They make their own planes, and they don’t own any ships or tanks. Perhaps sashes and medallions for the dress white dinner banquet uniforms?
57. Steeple
only the French and the Brits do, but most of the italian, dutch, German, spanish… planes are amemerican’s
Looks to me like the US is going down the same path as Europe and Canada.
Best to tone down the hubris.
Hitler…launched his war before his military technology was ready.
Interesting point.
However…, in “The Good Nazi: The Life and Lies of Albert Speer”,
http://books.google.co.il/books/about/The_Good_Nazi.html?id=fCNpXKbV9WwC&redir_esc=y
the author says that according to Speer, Hitler never envisaged that war would break out as early as 1939 but planned instead for the early-to-mid 1940s as the eventual starting point. That is, Hitler, after his successes in the Rheinland, Austria and Czechoslovakia, never harbored the possibility that Britain and France would actually go to war over his invasion (with Stalin) of Poland.
And by the mid-40s, Germany would have been more than ready. Perhaps….
Talk about dodging bullets—that and Hitler’s disparagement and rejection of “Jewish science”… (Or is it just another case of “Man proposes; God disposes”?)
FWIW.
File under: The Chamberlain Redemption?…. (meanwhile, in Teheran….)
Blast from the Past @ 54: “Europe is worth fighting for.”
Europe may well be worth having Europeans fight for it — or, more likely, fight each other for it. But the whole of Europe is not worth the bones of a single Alabaman, to misquote a certain European of an earlier age. America’s unfortunate meddling in World War I was the start of the slide to the US’s current mess.
The coming American retreat into isolationism is an inevitable consequence of the last several decades of fiscal mismanagement by America’s own Europhiliacs. That exit from the world stage will be good for Americans, and might even be better for Europeans too in the long run.
“what is the plural of ”media”?”
mediasses
Wretchard, you nailed it. The European strategy since not too long after the fall of the Berlin Wall has been to hobble the U.S. (and East Asia) just enough to prevent us from swamping them (in the sense that the big American cigarette boat was going to roar by and its wake was going to sink the European dinghy). Of course that is not a very good strategy, unless they can completely Europeanize us and our economy. Eventually differential growth rates and demographics overtake them. So no hope at all except to slow down the other guys just a little.
45 Bob Murphy nailed it as well. The Continentals never could achieve the levels of productivity and economies of scale that we achieved beginning in the 1920s. To be truly competitive, you need to give up control and let your middle class buy houses in the suburbs with big honking cars to drive them there. You need to let your middle class invest directly in the stock market (not easy to do in most of the EU or East Asia). You need to stop forcing 40-75% of your young people into trade schools (I’ve done the research) and let them find their own way.
My book recommendation on this subject is Path Between the Seas about the building the Panama Canal. The French simply could never visualize the scale of the project. They could do the calculations, but they couldn’t “see” what those calcs told them. They brought in tiny mining trains (like the ones you see portrayed in amusement part rides) and killed about 30,000 people scraping out a few small ditches (you can still see the “French Cut” just to the east of the Gatun locks). The Americans brought in full sized steam locomotives and steam shovels. They invented whole new ways to move spoil off of a train of 50 cars in minutes. They conducted basic research on what was causing the epidemics and then hired armies of laborers to screen in buildings, create adequate drainage, and spay the puddles that didn’t get drained with larvacide.
Barry Meislin @ 60,
“… according to Speer, Hitler never envisaged that war would break out as early as 1939 but planned instead for the early-to-mid 1940s as the eventual starting point. That is, Hitler never harbored the possibility that Britain and France would actually go to war over his invasion (with Stalin) of Poland.”
I believe Hitler was genuinely surprised that England would go to war for Poland. His miscalculation probably did move WW-II forward by a few years and thus excluded nuclear weapons and heavy high altitude bombers as technological options. In Albert Speer’s autobiography, it was clear that Hitler planned on having WW-II completed before 1950. Apparently his master plan was to have a Nazi empire stretching from Calais to Vladivostok with Berlin as western civilization’s capital city. England was supposed to be sitting impotently on the sidelines due to a policy of appeasement. Likewise, the United States was supposed to be running around in circles not knowing what to do because our leaders were a gaggle of idiots. Hitler was wrong about England and the United States. Consequently he lost his war and later his own life.
At the rate things are going, I reckon our sophisticated Euro-friends won’t be worrying so much about Le Primitif Romney once they’re faced with multiple, full-frontal fascist regimes in eastern and southern Europe.
@49: “The American genious is in recognizing the Right of each man to pursue his happiness without hindrance, so that even when the physical frontier no longer exists, the freedom to stretch out into new ground is still there.”
The physical frontier, of course, does and always will remain. When translated into American English, the word meteor means: “fly me to the moon” as sung by somebody or the other.
Uncle Jefe at 53 is right on. We don’t always notice how skewed our own reporting is. Imagine you’re an ordinary Egyptian deliveryman and all you know of the US is what you hear. The imams say we’re the great Satan (evil deceiver and seducer). To be fair, you read what our own magazines imply about us, and find that they validate the imam.
59. hammaknocka
If you were marching in the same direction as Canada I’d feel relieved. Up here we’re slowly marching away from the left (painfully slowly, but it’s happening). For example, we just eliminated one of the left’s sacred writs- the “long gun registry”.
Right now you have your Trudeau in charge. Even if he gets a second term, at least you’ll only have 4 more years of him. We got stuck with our Trudeau for a lot longer.
If Romney wins tomorrow, you’ll have your Mulroney. No, it’s not perfect but at least it’s not Trudeau.
(of course, I could be wrong about Romney, and instead you’ll get a Harper).
63 el baboso
“1881, the first attempt to construct a sea-level canal began under the leadership of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, with substantial financing and support from Paris. The French effort went bankrupt after reportedly spending US$287,000,000, and was largely abandoned by 1890.”
Ferdinand de Lesseps ran off money and of experienced men. Besides the technics from 1880 years were different from the 1910 years
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal
Good article, and thanks for referencing Australia’s most influential conservative columnist- yes, you can count the number of conservative journos in Australia on one hand.
I met an American the other day. I began chatting about my enthusiasm for the USA, and he felt he had to apologise for them. I told him he shouldn’t have to apologise for the USA- then he mentioned “The Bush years”, and that he was from Chicago. I realised I was talking to a liberal, and to them, everything America does is evil when it’s done by a Republican. Even if they do far worse, it’s not evil when liberals are in charge.
We teach our kids that the healthiest attitude they can have is not to care what people think of them. America has spent the last four years caring what everyone else thinks, and it’s been a disaster.
America is at its best when they think they are the greatest country in the world. When they enjoy the freedom to think so- they actually become the greatest country in the world.
#50 – You are having fun with some of us ‘detail’ freaks.
69 MC: One theory is that so many of the best French engineers (virtually a whole generation) died attempting to build the Panama Canal, that France thereafter permanently surrendered technical leadership on the continent to the Germans.
The willingness of the French to sacrifice 4,000-5,000 engineers and 25,000 largely Caribbean laborers on a failed project prefigures the carnage of WWI and the Fascist and Communist experiments. As so many have pointed out here, it is about valuing people more than an idea. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as some American rustic once put it. I would argue that the Europeans still don’t get it. Oh, you’re not killing off millions of your own right now, but you still won’t let them take charge of their own lives — messily, noisily, disruptively pursuing their own happiness.
MC (58),
Ahem.
73. Kirk Parker
ach Ja, the famous Gripen, that the Swiss don’t want to buy anymore
72. el baboso
The cost and difficulty of building a canal in the rain-soaked tropics through unstable mountains exceeded expectations. Health risks posed to workers in the mosquito-infested Panamanian jungle, principally malaria and yellow fever, cost thousands of lives and caused unanticipated delays. Public health measures were ineffective because the role of the mosquito as a disease vector was then unknown. Accidents and disease cost about 22,000 workers their lives. These high death rates made it very difficult to maintain an experienced workforce. Those French-trained technical employees and engineers who remained healthy often quickly returned to France after discovering the true work conditions. Even the hospitals contributed to the problem, with conditions that unintentionally provided breeding places for mosquitoes inside the unscreened wards.
Added to this, the men who started and directed the project had little or no engineering training or experience, which contributed to grossly underestimating the difficulty they would encounter, as building the Panama Canal was a project of massive scale. The geology worked to defeat them as canals cut though mountains had to continually be widened, and their slopes reduced, to minimize landslides into the canal. Lack of field experience, such as with tropical downpours that caused steel equipment to rust rapidly, contributed more difficulty. In addition, limited types of heavy-duty engineering and electrical equipment were available in this period. Steam shovels had been invented but were still primitive, as were other types of heavy-duty equipment; electrical generators, electrical motors, electrical distribution systems, and the like were still in their infancy, as Nikola Tesla had only just invented the alternating current (AC) motor in 1886. Beyond the hygienic and technical difficulties, financial mismanagement and political corruption also contributed to the French failure.”
well hardly what you’re saying
@ 41
Biden’s statement wasn’t a gaffe, it was a deliberate bit of racist propaganda. Time to stop giving that Potemkin American a pass.
#54
What American colony was founded with an initial group of colonists that was 1/3 Jewish?
Answer: Georgia. When Savannah was founded in 1733 as the first settlement in the new colony, 33 of 99
colonists were Sephardic Jews from Brazil by way of the Dutch Caribbean islands. Their descendants are there still.
Not even debtors wanted to take up General Oglethorpe on his offer. Living on the frontier with Spanish Florida was hazardous to your health. Like much of American colonial history what the founders planned and what actually transpired was often very different from what we learned in American history.