Germany: The Key to What Happened to Europe

How and why Germans have lost it, is not clear to me. I don’t live in the country and I don’t have a way to study events all the way to their causes.

But the results are obvious for anyone to see. Here is an emblem of what I am talking about.

Long time ago, Goethe, one of the smartest Germans (and there always have been plenty of great minds in Germany), had observed: “To understand a writer you have to go to the land he came from.” As simple as that. You have to know the context, you have to have a proper perspective to understand anything.

Fine. And that’s what a lot of smart Germans would do, from Baron Von Huxthausen to Rilke. They traveled, they learned, they imagined, they explored.

And then comes the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Germany is now ruled by this pathetic mediocrity, Mutter Merkel, who imagined that because she lived in Eastern Germany, she understands Russia. And people under her began to mock its long time partner/rival/frenemy — Russia. Exactly the way, Hitler’s propagandists were mocking it. A giant on the feet of clay. Who cares what they do or think. They are losers, eastern despots and so on. Subservient media even came up with the term. Putinversteher. That’s how would they dismiss everyone who tried to understand what Russia was doing.

In other words, from Goethe maxim of going to another land in order to understand the action of another man (and for a writer the words are his actions), Germans began to mock anyone who would try to go to another land to understand anything.

That type of dismissal is not fully ingrained in German character, as opposed to American character. Yes, Americans like French food, Scottish whiskey or German beer, but basically they don’t give a damn about other countries. These foreigners are all wrong in any case, so what’s there to understand?

That’s clearly one explanation of what’s happened with Germany: Americanization. Needless to say, the country had the predisposition for it. German burghers are the greatest in the world; they work hard, they pray hard, they are serious and responsible, so what’s there to learn?

And here we have it. We don’t need to understand anything, we have America for it. Their intelligence services, their military bases, their vulgar press, they condescending attitude toward the rest of the humanity. I’ll never forget how Merkel had the balls to declare that Putin lives on another planet in response to his absolutely reasonable actions vis a vis NATO and its endless expansion. I’ll never forget how triumphant Germans were bombing Serbia and proclaiming that finally we are bombing for a right cause. And how do they know it is the right cause? Clinton told them so, that’s how.

So if thoughtful, philosophical, artistic, mystical Germany fell for the most pathetic American propaganda, what do you expect from others, like France, for example, which with the loss of de Gaulle, already got into American pocket due to the Cold War billions poured into the country to get it hooked on jazz and Hollywood. And when there was resistance, it was forcibly silenced. Like the murder of the Swedish leader, Palme, who imagined a different path for Sweden rather than being a cannon-fodder for NATO.

So yes, that’s what happened when for almost two generations, you refuse to understand anything, relying on the most cynical greedy bastards from Washington to explain to you what is happening, and how you should respond.

And not let’s pause for the “karma is a bitch” moment. Hey, Germans, what about Trumpversteher? Are you mocking those, or hiring them? Because you’ll need those if you want to understand why Greenland should be American or why you have to pay prices that Trump tells you to pay. And of course, you’ll need a lot of Freudian analysis to understand what has happened to you and to Europe.