Look at how hard it was for German to reform its social system in 90/00s for example. And German was one of the countries that actually achieved significant reforms while many others didn't.

I'm a Canadian that just moved back after 4 years in Europe, and I found it impossible to have a progressive-minded conversation with most europeans (not all, but much higher ratio than at home) - about feminism, rape culture, about racial discrimination, about unconscious bias, about migration and immigration.

Europe has figured out a pretty good well-balanced society for its' citizens, and is incapable of reacting to change.

This is why nationalism, racism, and yes - fascism - are on the rise throughout Europe. Because nobody worries about it, and nobody pays attention to it. They just see brown people at the train station, get nervous, and ask no follow-up questions.

Which means it's effectively impossible to do, because as soon as you try, they'll vote you out of office. Short of suspending elections, I don't see how democracies make the level of changes needed until we're actually suffering badly from climate change. But historically it doesn't seem like the types of people who become tyrants do so because it's the only path available to save the society from itself.

I have visited several European countries and met and interacted with many young and old Europeans, and I hope to live there permanently in the future, and so find add more depth to my admittedly incomplete data. I do know that every part of Europe is different - some parts are in my experience much worse than even than the picture I painted (Hungary for instance). I guess I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. Still, I think there are serious emotional problems in modern Europe, and I'm not satisfied that people are really acknowledging or facing up to them.

I really do have a lot of love and hope for Europe. It just frustrates me I suppose. Perhaps a corollary of meeting primarily younger, party-oriented Europeans?

Hope this explains my views a little better.

I live in the US largely because I was born here and partly because I don't like the perspective in Europe or E. Asia. I guess I feel the same way about Europe as Europe feels about the US, though if I were in control, I'd probably make some changes that Europeans would agree with (open borders, for one).

Instead of bickering about who is backwards, how about we just work together on things of mutual interest, like increasing free trade and freedom of movement? Name-calling isn't doing anyone any favors. Ideally, you should be able to live where you feel the most comfortable, and you should never be stuck because your government made poor choices.

I'd argue that for the average European this kind of comment would seem paranoid bordering on insane.

I guess some cultural differences are found way deeper than you'd expect.

The European point of view about the whole "government opression" thing is that you don't fight tyranny with guns and cars (LOL), but with a population educated about the benefits of democracy. If you've lost the people, nothing can save you.

It feels like the entire continent is one big HOA, deciding what color you can paint your house, or what flowers you can plant outside, to “preserve congruency in the neighborhood”.

It’s honestly a bit concerning seeing how pacified and apathetic people become about government overreach when it doesn’t affect them directly (yet).

Of course, this is painting with a very broad brush, and people in both places believe in all sorts of different political ideologies, but I think it generally tends to be true. Europeans are more likely to reason along direct lines like "this is a good policy, therefore it should be enacted" whereas Americans will think in more abstract terms like "this may be a good policy, but do we really want the state to have the power to enact such a policy? How may this power be abused in the future?"

I don't have a good explanation for _why_ this is the case; intuitively, you'd expect the opposite, since the US has never had a totalitarian regime, and most of Europe has within the last 100 years. My only guess is that nowadays the US is way more corrupt, undemocratic, poorly run, etc. than most countries in Western and Northern Europe which leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.

It's basically what I get from the media and stuff. You know.... whatever country you live in. They want to tell you that you are great, should be proud and only talk about other's problems. So usually it's best to watch foreign medias to get a good (or pessimistic) view on your country.

Actually. Sorry, if that sounds plain, but from my perspective the bigger fear is that the US or China are taking over.

Maybe it helps to see Europe more like the states, just still more decentralized. I never really thought about this. In fact this comparison comes from a now US citizen.

Of course Germany and France (as well as UK, but they don't really care too much about the EU anyway) are like two strong US states. There may be so rivalry, but with EU and stuff they have the same goals.

It isn't like people in US think that some state is going to take over, right?

And one doesn't really have to fear much, if it isn't by means of war.

I am not from France, so no idea, how exactly they feel, but you have to keep in mind that the "constitution" of the EU basically grants everyone very equal voting rights. In fact smaller countries would have gotten even more votes if they hadn't killed it off.

There also is no dictator, not even someone in sight. From a democratic point of view Europe's distribution of power is far more even that for example what you see in the US, especially with the recent laws. There is no single person in Europe that has as much privileges as the US president for example.

Lets pretend Germany would really take the lead and stuff making Europe one big Germany this wouldn't really harm anyone.

So that's why people here are more afraid of a state like the US, which invests way more money (and I speak about percentage) into military than every other nation and which also has a lot of power with IWF, world bank (which aren't even really governmental/democratic) and where they have pretty strong nationalism, etc.

Now, nobody really fears the US and stuff. Actually the opposite is partly true. They see how the US struggles with debts, old infrastructure, loosing power to China, etc.

What I want to say with all of this is that things like that are more likely to go on in people's heads.

And I know this sounded kinda bad, but I actually heard the "US is struggling with own problems and soon isn't a world power anymore. That's why they do war and tell others about how to do their economy" quite often lately. Just a few days ago they even showed on the news how all the infrastructure built in sixties makes problems in the US. I guess it was kinda exaggerated, but it sounded like it is a poor country. What I want to say with this is that countries are really, really complex. You can't really say general things about them, cause every time you try to you actually say something that's wrong.

So, maybe there are lots of people fearing Germany and I just don't see them. The only thing I can say is that whenever they show the heads of Germany and France they at least pretend to not have any problems with each other and they do it really well.

Even if that wasn't a clear answer I hope that helped a bit. Basically the only thing that people worry about currently are Greece, Spain and Italy. Maybe it even is too much. They'd be doing well, if there was no worry. They "just" have the problem of everyone worrying, so they don't get any loans, people pull their money from these countries and this creates troubles and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To come back to the topic a bit. It's pretty much what all these rating agencies do. They say: This country may have troubles to pay back their debts, which causes them to have high interests and so it actually becomes true.

Almost everything people consider typically European, from food, culture to social-economic policies, has mostly been imported and adopted from countries and cultures outside of Europe.

It's this openness to change, this constant iteration instead of desperately holding on to the "one true way" (something typical not only for cultures that rise and fall, but also something that seems to be hindering the US when it comes to implementing necessary change) is the essence of the enduring wealth of Western-Europe.

There is no one European way, just constant evolution until a new successful road is found.

The riots in the streets and social unrest, which are nothing new or unusual in Europe, are a part of that process, not a sign of deterioration.

(And unemployment figures are hard to compare when what is considered employment in the US is considered exploitation of people below the poverty line in Europe...)

The economic policies of "a decade or two" are nothing. A blip. European countries can completely tilt social-economic policy within a generation because none of it is tied to their fundamental identities. You visit some European countries now you would find it hard to believe they were strictly communist less than a generation ago.

Whatever traditions European nations have, they go much deeper than the favorite social-economic policy du jour. It's something Americans seem to find very difficult to separate.

The US has tied it's identity to fundamental social-economic values and ideologies. For European nations, social-economic policy is a changeable as the weather.