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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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