When you strip all the politically correct rhetoric, and the carefully sculpted facade is taken off for the night, this is what remains. Via Germany's most popular financial newspaper Spiegel:Read the rest for context. Some thoughts on the article(s) are available below the fold.
"There is hardly an issue about which Germans as so united as they are by their desire to see America on its knees. It unites both the left and the right. Wherever they look, they see decay, a lack of culture and ignorance. "A perverse mixture of irresponsibility, greed, and religious zealotry".
...............With a bit of luck, the specter across the Atlantic might even take care of itself. It can't be ruled out.
UPDATE: From The Dissident Frogman, "Only one man can kill the Republic, and it isn't Barrack Obama."
Many Germans have long resented America. Not all of them (that article is quite misleading in many ways), but a significant portion of them, to be sure.
However, there's a certain element of denial (and outright hypocrisy) in Der Spiegel article. Within the European Union, Germany is is the primary nation paying for the debts and financial mismanagement of smaller EU nations. Germany is the economic powerhouse of the EU, and is viewed as the source for cash strapped EU members.
Greece is the best known of that lot, but the list includes Portugal, Ireland, and possibly Spain in the future. And many Germans don't like working hard while the other nations play. Merkel is walking on eggs between continued EU bail outs and a rather angry electorate on that matter.
So, if the EU needs a bail out, and Germany can't or won't pay, who do they approach? Eventually......the United States of America, still a economic powerhouse on the world market. As even the author of that article says.
Further, there is considerable bias on the part of the author. That hyperbole about us shooting each other, or power lines falling down, is way off mark. This is a play on stereotyping and prejudices from the European view, where "culture" is what they define. Finally, life is not all roses in the European Union, let alone in Germany.
So, it's a harsh article, and has a core of truth to it; our infrastructure is indeed crumbling, for example. But that core is so buried in leftie assumptions, bias, and assertions, that the article is a better indicator of the genuine feelings of some Germans, rather than any indictment of the United States.
As the author concludes, "The prophets of doom can continue to hope." The mask is indeed coming off.
