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I have never watched Mad Men, but there is this meme where two men are in an elevator. The first says, "I feel bad for you." The second says, "I don't think about you at all."
If you had two stickers, one labeled US and one UK/EU, which sticker would you put on the first man, and which on the second?
On the first thought, maybe you'd put the US sticker on the guy who says, "I don't think about you at all." Because after all, the US is a superpower that just Leeroy Jenkins its way through foreign affairs and seems to have grown increasingly disinterested in what Europeans have to say about it.
When people are polled, however, something interesting emerges: https://ecfr.eu/publication/how-trump-is-making-china-great-again-and-what-it-means-for-europe/
Here is one poll question: Generally speaking, thinking about the US, which of the following best reflects your view on what they are to your country?
In Switzerland, 21% of people view the US as "An adversary—with which we are in conflict" compared to just 8% as, "An ally—that shares our interests and values." They seem to be on the extreme for Europe. The UK seems to be on the other (European) extreme: 25% view the US as "An ally—that shares our interests and values." The EU10 is in the middle at 16% seeing the US as an ally.
The reverse was polled to Americans: Generally speaking, thinking about the EU which of the following best reflects your view on who they are to your country?
The total for the US was 40% who would agree that the EU is "An ally—that shares our interests and values." This percentage is higher in Harris voters than Trump voters, but importantly, Trump voters were still at 30%, which is higher than even the UK's rosy view of the US compared to the rest of Europe.
Another interesting question is: Which of the following best reflects your view on the EU's global standing?
46% of Americans said, "The EU is a power that can deal on equal terms with global powers, such as the US or China." Comparatively, EU10, Switzerland, and UK were all in the 30s of percentage points. There seems to be a gap between how important/capable the US thinks Europe is compared to Europe's self-perceptions.
The pattern emerges that people in the US are more likely to think that the people of Europe are both capable and share our interests and values, while the people of Europe disagree. I don't know who is right, but I think it is important for both groups to be aware of this emerging dynamic.
The actual answer is that the meme is not applicable. People in the US and EU think about the other plenty. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose, I'd say the US gets to be Don Draper in this scenario, if only because a lot of Americans seem only tenuously aware that people in other countries exist and have lives (Tanner Greer dubbed this type of thinking 'big country autism'). But the reality is that it's extremely easy to elicit thoughts on Europe from Americans, whether that is praise or contempt or seething.
The reason I don't think the Mad Men Meme applies is that I think this difference in attitude is not due to an asymmetry in concern (i.e. Americans caring more about Europe than vice versa) but due to the power asymmetry. As it stands now, while the US is allied with most of Europe, European nations are very much junior partners. That means getting jerked around by the interests and the whims of the US. I am fairly confident that if circumstances were reversed - if the military and economic security of the US turned on the impulses of European voters, or we were staring down the barrel of an economic crisis because European leaders did something retarded - Americans would be at least as cool on Europe as Europeans appear to be on us right now. Similarly, I think the greater American optimism about the EU's power is explained by this power asymmetry. What Americans perceive is that the US doesn't always get what it wants from the EU. What EUers perceive is that whenever there's an international crisis, they're stuck monitoring the situation while the US does whatever it wants.
Actually, the EU is Don Draper, feigning aloof superiority while privately riddled by anxiety.
Americans would probably be less anti-European than Europeans currently are anti-American. This is because there's an element of snobbish contempt and reflexive ego preservation in the European attitude that really doesn't exist in American attitudes towards Europeans outside of extremely online spaces.
Normie Americans think Europe is Notre Dame and Big Ben and Oktoberfest and Italian cafes, oh and don't they have some issues with terrorism? Still, beautiful place, would love to visit one day.
Normie Europeans think America is a country full of backward nouveau riche troglodytes who make houses out of wood and probably plastic and styrofoam and drive big stupid cars and kill each other with guns and eat nothing but McDonalds, Velveeta, and probably plastic and styrofoam and call it "cuisine," and worst of all they have the gall, the absolute gall to think they are equal or even superior(!!) to us and that they can tell us what to do! They won't say all that directly to your face, but 2 out of 3 Euros are unable to contain their seething contempt and will eventually have to get in a "witty" (passive-aggressive) dig about guns/racism/big cars/food/etc apropos of nothing in an otherwise friendly conversation.
Early Americans thought their political system was superior to European monarchy, but they copied European styles and imported European fine goods and high culture. Europeans have never had anything but contempt for American culture, and this contempt and wounded ego greatly amplifies their dislike for America.
There's some truth in this but seething contempt is a mischaracterisation. Most Europeans really like and look up to many aspects of America but are afraid and panicky about the path it's gone down, which sometimes comes out, for reasons of ego-protection, in superiority speak.
I suppose that as an American my problem with Europeans' opinions of "the path [America] has gone down" is that the average European really knows very little about what it's like to be an American, what America as a country is about, and why America does it what it does domestically.* But because they watch Hollywood movies or CNN they believe they understand America as well as (or even better than) the average American.
This isn't a unique phenomenon. As someone from the Southeast US, when I lived in the PNW, I would occasionally get knowing smirks when I mentioned my home state as my conversation partner assumed I was a refugee from "Jesusland" or "Dumbfuckistan" or whatever the popular slur was and would make some nasty remarks about the place my family comes from to try to ingratiate themselves with me. You see, they've seen Forrest Gump and Deliverance and finished the Grade 8 social studies unit on the Civil War and Jim Crow, so they know all about where I'm from. Have they visited? Well, no, they drove through once and cracked some jokes with their buddies at the time but they certainly never stopped to look around. Why bother? Everyone knows what those people are like.
*For the record I'm not irked by criticism of American foreign policy from Europeans. I'm not a fan of the GAE myself, so I just agree and shrug and say something to the effect of "if only votes mattered in the empire."
I think many European criticisms of American culture and red states are psychologically grounded in fear of American foreign policy posture and its impacts on the rest of the world. Going on about your Big Gulps, guns and megachurches may not be entirely rational, because in themselves they do not affect us much. But Europe doesn't spend a lot of time thinking itself superior to rural regions of other countries (it doesn't think of them at all). When it comes to America, though, there's sometimes a tendency to focus critically on the traits we see projected out into the world in the form of foreign policy and through multinational companies.
We might be wrong about the details of whatever southeastern state you're from, but we're not wrong about the material effects the US people's choices have on us, and sometimes that disgruntlement comes out wrong.
Sorry, might post might have been unclear. I was saying that European mockery of the US is analogous to NE or NW USians' mockery of Southeastern USians. In both cases, the mockery is rooted in an overestimation of one's understanding of the target of mockery, as well as a feeling of superiority that inoculates against any curiosity about the target.
As I said in another post, I think it's perfectly fair for Europeans to criticize American foreign policy, and I do not take it personally when I hear such criticisms.
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If one looks at social media on this topic, it is exactly Europeans offering these criticisms of American foreign policy and getting, in return, incoherent rage from the same Americans who just previously were boasting about how the American foreign policy is completely different now and the mistakes of Iraq (the previous time there was an American administration that was shitting on Europe, or large parts of it, for failing to support a dumb war) were surely not going to be repeated.
I don't doubt that. I was speaking about my own IRL experiences. Social media is designed to maximize heat, and the lowest quality members of the new Right live there 24/7. I dont feel compelled to defend the opinions of those people, nor do I expect you to defend the opinions of Europeans who post nothing but "do Americans really?" tweets and posts all day.
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You don't think that Euros make similar witty remarks about each other's countries when talking about each other? It's just normal nationality-related bants. They may be unfunny, of course, as bants frequently are unfunny, being that people frequently are unfunny.
None of this matters. Pro-MAGA Americans seems to clutch to anecdotes about smug Europeans being smug to sidestep the fact that Europe currently has very obvious reasons to be angry at America - ie. doing things that America supposedly has wanted from Europe (hiking up defense spending, cutting immigration, taking more responsibility for Ukraine, European leaders going into a frankly embarassing effort to kiss Trump's ass personally in 2025 etc.) and have received, as a reward, scolding from Vance, tariffs, the Greenland affair and now a looming huge energy crisis caused by Trump's impulsive war in Iran.
No, they don't. Most europeans don't have any opinion about the healthcare systems or racial relations in other european countries, and would be a bit confused if you made a derogatory joke on the topic expecting them to join in.
There are some commonly understood stereotypes, like the French always being on strike or bureaucracy being bad in places like Italy. But if you made a humerous comment about something like that, the response would be something along the lines of "Haha yeah, I've heard it is pretty bad there". That's quite different from remarks about America which sound more like "Don't those morons realise that their system is terrible and they're stupid for not fixing it".
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The seething contempt long predates Trump. It was like that in the 90s when I lived there.
Also, contrary to the European stereotype of Americans, we can tell the difference between good-natured ribbing and thinly veiled hostility. I have friends who rip on the U.S. in good fun. And I have acquaintances who clearly have a chip on their shoulder.
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No, it's not. These things happen without an American even being present, and if anyone voiced an opinion to the effect of "come on, it's not so bad", they'd get immediately shat on, let alone if there was an American present, and fired a few shots back.
How about: two things can be true at the same time?
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Now, there's a lot of contempt for america in europe, but from what I've seen there's also admiration, especially among the working class. My wife and I went to New York last december and my Spanish in-laws were quite jealous. They wanted as keepsakes american one dollar bills and statue of liberty merch. I think that's because despite all they hear on the news, the US remains a place they admire. Maybe for the people who can afford to visit it, it has less cachet, but from other europeans I know that have visited, I still see that they, on some level, admire it. The USA they hate is a construct created by the news media (both theirs, and the US blue tribe media).
You're right, I was mostly talking about white collar/upper middle class Europeans. The working class or lower working class Europeans I have met have been very chill and friendly. Good folks.
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Someone very pithily put it on X “Europeans looks down on us from below.”
Tbf I could also go back and say that the US is Don Draper, engaging in showy posturing to hide feelings of inferiority.
It's
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