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Doesn't Poland often get honorable mention as the non-freeloading part of NATO from the American elites? And what's with this "unserious country" nonsense? No one on the western side talks about it like that anymore, you gotta ditch that inferiority complex of yours.
Head pats in public for a retarded puppy and rightoids projecting their fantasies onto "based Poland". We carry water for the US, we buy US weaponry, we can and are used to sabotage Europe, ask for very little in return. And since "US is a reliable ally and a positive force in the world used to be near axiomatic" and our elite quality is laughable, praise was and still is effective and sought after.
US elite consider us suckers, taking ideology/propaganda seriously, satisfied with an army unfit for operation outside US framework, weak internally, transparent.
I resent this, you don't know what you're talking about. There is not a shred of inferiority complex in a typical Pole; he is cynical, a pessimist. Appearance of strength is enough for outsiders, not for people invested in the outcome.
A country in our position should have domestic arms industry fit for modern war, own satellite recon, civil defence and reserve at Finnish level, elite loyal and capable of running a nuclear program without someone instantly running to snitch to the US. We don't have any of this due to a combination of skill issues, bad historical luck, and meddling.
I reject this framing, by the way. In fact, with the inability to keep trade routes open under even slight pressure, and the benefits of European integration into the NATO, the US is the freeloading party.
If you spent a lot of time mingling with the American elites, and that's your honest assessment of them, fair enough. I can't say I've talked to them all that much.
Oh, I know quite a fair bit, actually. #NotAll, but if you've ran into someone who not only complains about his country, but goes out of their way to convince you that his country is shit, and does so over your explicit expression of genuine admiration, you're almost certainly talking to a Pole. Cynicism and pessimism? There's a difference between lack of trust and expecting the worst, and self-abasing yourself in front of others with expressions like "retarded puppy" and "unserious country". Yes, appearance of strength is for outsiders. In private there's nothing wrong with a sergeant screaming profanities at his men to whip them into shape, but there are also things that are not for outsiders' eyes, and performative self-flagellation is one of them. Even with all this, I could write it down to peculiarities of culture, and go with your explanation, if it wasn't for the tendency to put some foreign country on a pedestal, and chase them down every retarded suicidal trend they come up with. Which one it's going to be depends on one's political views, but if it's not the US, it's usually Germany or the nordics.
Maybe there's a better term for this than "inferiority complex" but it sure as hell is more than just cynicism and pessimism.
You've pulled yourself out of a literal gutter within a single generation. It's good you don't want to rest on your laurels, but none of the countries around you are particularly serious by this standard.
I've seen 3 views put forward about the US' relationship with Europe:
Americans are the good guys, ensuring the world's stability purely out of the kindness of their hearts, and doing so despite the ingratitude of the parties they're helping
America and Europe voluntarily entered into an agreement, where Europe gets security in return for strategic deference.
The post-WW2 order is an American scheme to keep Europe down and ensure it will never be able to rival. or even be independent of, the US.
My personal view falls somewhere between #2 and #3. I've never heard of your view #4 "America is getting so much out of """European integration into NATO""" that they're the freeloaders, actually", and it feels about as naive as view #1 to me.
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I guess it depends wildly on who you mean by "elite", but I don't find this accurate at all. The way I see it, the broad left considers us a less bad version of Hungary for failing to bend the knee on various progressive causes. the right, honestly, hard to say, maybe the do see us as rubes, but I don't think it's as calculated as you present it, we're merely a weak, still unestablished player for them.
Guess I am imagining it then, when every single goddamn time, multiple times a week, when something bad happens, somebody from my friends or family is compelled to chime in saying that what occurred is so "typically Polish". When I hear people wishing that our country wouldn't exist, that the Germans should just annex us and bring civilization here. Etc. etc. The complex of Z A G R A N I C O may be less pronounced than it was 20 years ago, but it's alive and kicking.
Something more exclusive, definitely. For broad left/right, I don't really disagree with your view.
I'm surprised you find it so prevalent, I don't really encounter people that seriously hold (meaning, would make and stand by such a statement on pushback) this mindset irl, rarely someone that would say it without it being a joke.
Sorting, I suppose? My groups skew male, too.
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You may well be right, but FWIW there is a lot of genuine respect for Poles from other countries that maybe wasn’t there before. Not just militarily, they’re often seen as very serious, very capable people who’ve known real hardship and don’t get fooled by trivial griping. One of the best engineers I knew was Polish.
I don't doubt this, I'm thinking here of Poland, the nation/country.
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When I hear "unserious country" nowadays it's usually someone on the right talking about the U.K. or Germany.
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