General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: THIS is why the world laughs at us (or thinks we're batshit crazy) [View all]defacto7
(13,485 posts)My first hand knowledge ended about 10 years ago and it's clear much has happened in that time, so I acknowledge you may have some information I'm not familiar with. My wife is East German, I have lived under the German social system before and after the wall came down, I had a residence in Amsterdam and in a city in Germany, I lived off and on or even at the same time in Great Britain, Japan, Italy and Sweden plus a short stint in Argentina. I can't even begin a list of visited countries. I still have friends from some of these locations and I do hear a pretty regular guffaw about how they see the states and it's politics. Most of my friends and acquaintances are definitely not of the RW persuasion as defined by... anyone, they are all quite socialist in character and choice to one extent or another, but I'm sure we both know that variations on that theme can be wide.
My statement in the reply to you was light, but I was basically saying that the laughter is there in my experience, but it comes from different angles rather than from the typical notion that may pop into most American's heads. But fear of what the future holds for the world due to the deterioration of American domination seems to lay beneath most comments from my European acquaintances, whether it's fear of the loss or fear of general insecurity created by the vacuum. That fear is played out as anger, fear of the unknown, or fear based on past experience as children in the aftermath of war. There's laughter... but for some it's based on the present news with no experience and for others it's anxiety laughter with memories.