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Importing masses of net-negative people with no interest in assimilation, no interest from above on assimilating or otherwise dealing with them (Denmark excluded, sure), and seemingly no sufficiently strong sense of a cultural mythos willing to accept the tragic mode of politics looks like a fair set of reasons to underestimate Europe. Managed decline and moral signaling was a choice, and so they can make a new choice, but is it too late?
Maybe Macron or some other French leader could step up with an iron fist and pave a new path for Europe and European identity, but it would require a lot more sacrifice and suffering than the average European has any guts for (says the American, of course).
What's the actual path from here to there that isn't just exchanged the US for China as the new boss? How do they regain a cultural attitude that actually justifies the smugness instead of running off century-old fumes?
The last time the Germans unified Europe, the Americans invaded and crushed them.
That's also part of why the Fourth Reich can't do this like the Third did, by the way- the Fourth is mostly just controlled opposition. And the Eurocrats know that, which is why they make efforts to [quite literally] cry about how unfair that is while changing nothing domestically (they're holding out hope for a Blue win in the US so things can go back to normal).
And the problem with European "progress" is just like Canadian progress- it defines itself by opposition to [things that would create competition for elites, but would make the rest of the country prosper], and their people clamor for this approach. So other than going full Nazi again- which is unlikely (migrants are HBD selected for their relative unwilling to fight for principles) there's very little hope for them.
...and there are those that would say that the greatest tragedy of mid-20th century is that we (the West) didn't finish the job. We not only allowed half of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to survive, we allowed them to profit handsomely from their war of conquest, and continue to wage war against us for an additional half-century.
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