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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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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.

Going off of your point about urbanism, what has always galled me is how much more beautiful European cities and frankly people are compared to their American counterparts, knowing the difference in wealth. Some of the few things Europe has left going for it (in purely material and aesthetic terms, of course people have an attachment to their own culture/language/etc.) are gothic cathedrals and a lack of visible homeless drug adicts or morbidly obese people walking around in public spaces.

It's pathetic that the richest country in human history can't close the gap on these things when you consider how far ahead the US is by any other measure. We could build our own Vienna or Paris if we wanted to, but all we can manage is Las Vegas and Disney World. When it comes to small towns and rural areas, the only place where the manmade environment hasn't depressed me has been New England (crossing from Massachusetts into upstate New York and seeing the contrast in what the small towns look like feels like crossing the iron curtain into some post-industrial wasteland).

On pretty much any other topic I will happily argue against liberals who romanticize Europe, especially when they're immigrants ("If you think Denmark is so much better then why did you choose to move here?"), but I have no counter on this one.

what has always galled me is how much more beautiful European cities and frankly people are compared to their American counterparts

Old European cities have their own problems. Visiting Florence, I was struck by how little greenery there was on the streets. Yes, the city is old but it's also mostly just narrow cobblestone streets. One nice thing about having had your city ruined during WWII is that it gives ample space to redesign streets in a way that living in an openair museum doesn't, because there is little resistance to demolishing some shabby commiebloc.

Many of these older Italian and Spanish cities also allow cars on these narrow streets, which is less than pleasant. The solution ought to be to limit cars, but that would also require better public transportation and you can't really do much given the narrow width of these streets. Cities which grew big in later periods (e.g. Copenhagen) don't have the same problem as these old Italian cities do, given that during the 1800s the idea of boulevards became popular and even non-boulevard streets became wider.

It's also worth noting that just adding bicycle lanes isn't the only issue, planting new trees and adding greenery requires space too. That's why many Eastern European cities have added a huge number of bicycle tracks and general greenery in their inner cities in recent years, but you don't get the same activity in old Italian or Spanish cities because of these inherent limitations. As a result, they may be pretty at first blush but often feel sterile.

US cities are absurdly car-centric, yes, but generally speaking it is much easier to remake a street that is too wide than too narrow. Once buildings, especially old buildings, are built it is very hard to reshape a city due to "historical preservation" NIMBY:ism. Removing a few lanes is trivial by comparison. So while progress is slow in the US, the potential for fast improvement is there.