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The last gasp of the europoor
For years, I've been treated to a steady diet of smug elitism coming from effete liberal Europeans laughing at obese, gun-toting and bible-thumpin' Americans. This reached its crescendo during the George W. Bush administration, took a lull during the Obama years and was resurrected after Trump took office.
The American was an ignoramus, a loud-mouth, a religious fundamentalist and irreversibly stupid. Hopelessly inferior to us sophisticated and cosmopolitan Europeans. Did you know half of Americans don't even own a passport? Most don't even know a second language!? Ha! And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
But as the years went by, these smirks felt increasingly hollow. The economic distance - and with it, standard of living - between the two major partners is growing wider by the day. A young French econ professor at Wharton lays out the bad news over just how deluded his fellow Europeans are on this question. Prominent FT columnists have noted the same.
Yet, perhaps there is still time to save the last shreds of honor for us poor Europeans. For one, the gap in PPP terms doesn't seem to be changing much. Europe has been behind for a long time. In terms of total GDP, the situation is much the same. Another aspect is that Europeans tend to work fewer hours.
While some of these arguments may have some validity, they all feel like desperate excuses. I for one am very much happy to see the insufferable elitism of Europeans slowly being wiped off our collective smug faces. The uncouth and primitive barbarian across the ocean turned out to be smarter and harder-working all along.
Perhaps this can also lead to a more pro-capitalist liberalism in the US. For much of my upbringing, liberal Americans were typified by folks such as Michael Moore and his obsessive admiration of the European welfare state. Colbert's snark about the embarrassing Red State American always felt like an underhanded way to gain favor with declassé elites across the ocean. Ann Coulter's observation that liberal elites in the US loved soccer because it is European surely hit closer to home than many in the media were willing to admit.
Of course, there is still some amount of liberal American simping left in the bag. This is perhaps most obvious whenever there are discussions on urban policy and the words "walkable city" invariably comes up. (To be clear, I actually think Europe gets this part better than the US).
Outside of an increasingly narrowing set of areas where Europe still outperforms, we are slowly witnessing a reshuffling of the deck. The old illusions are slowly coming undone and reddit-tier arguments about the US being a third world hellhole are convincing fewer by the day. At long last, after years of insufferable and unjustified smug elitism, the europoor is finally unmasked as the sham living on a lie that he always was. And I couldn't be happier.
This is a crappy post that reminds me of this guy. While I banned @Astranagant for personal antagonism (and to be clear, this was a continuation of a pattern, not just for insulting you), you don't seem to have much to say here beyond cackling triumphantly at "effete liberal Europoors."
We are frequently accused of not modding people for posting low-effort culture war sneering if they use enough words. Well, you used a lot of words, but this is just low-effort culture war sneering.
Then I did not succeed in trying to point out that there's been an unbearable sense of superiority among a certain segment of Europeans, and as an European myself, I'm not sure if this counts as "boo outgroup bad" given that it's essentially self-criticism. The post also tried to weave together a narrative how US liberals like Michael Moore spent much of the first decade of the 2000s trying to glorify Europe, and how the latest developments may try to undermine that. Perhaps if I had made clear that I was European, people would have been less offended. Many responses assumed I was American.
So I am not sure if I agree that there isn't material to mine here, though I will agree that using low-effort slurs like europoor was probably a bad choice of words and I'll try to keep that in mind going forward. It was meant as a tongue-in-cheek way to open the conversation but clearly it didn't land.
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