Originally Posted by
OUTLAW 09
What you and a lot of Americans tend to forget is the following.....
We the US are responsible for this exact problem....we drove into the heart of Germans after the war that it was their actions that resulted in Hitler and WW2 and we changed the political and educational system to reflect that idea...of no more war...at any cost.....
We drove into Germans a form of democratic views that now are being aimed back at the US and stated "you have sold out your own democratic values"....
You failed to catch Merkel's comment on "shared values"...
It has been that US drive to eliminate anything from looking like ""German miitiarism" that now inhibits Germans as a whole to engage into anything that looks and smells "like war or conflict"....
Secondly, the US drive to re-educate Germans and the forcing of them to accept the results of WW2 as their responsibility has led up to even today a distinct non desire to not look like they are leading Europe out of "fear the Germans are coming again".....which after Merkels beer tent comments did come up in some European MSM.....
They have been content to lead from behind and pay for that leading from behind....
Merkel's speech was actually two fold....1) a warning to Trump and US elites in DC and 2) prepping the German public at large that they will have to start stepping up and accepting that German must lead.....if they value Europe and a majority in fact do value Europe...
CHECK the polling......Germans while not cheering for Article 5 do in high polling numbers thoroughly accept Russian as an existential threat to both Germany and Europe...and are willing to defend both from Russian attack.
German culture is interesting if you confront it..then their back stiffens up and they can get aggressive and defensive...all the while remaining outwardly calm and good mannered......but they will not engage with you....and it has a quiet determination if things gets bad that many had not previously seen until the truck attack in Berlin that allowed the society as a whole to both quietly grieve and get on with every day life....
They inherently know they must now step forward and lead....and you must as a politician gently nudge and gently convince with good arguments and then suddenly they will support it..."as it was their idea"...BUT at the same time they do not like being the "bank" for the EU.
Right now Germans who save and they save a lot... have lost over 38B Euros on their savings and retirement plans in order for the ECB to keep the interest rate at ZERO in order to bail out Italy, Spain, Greece and others who truly overspend with their "EU credit card" and they are growing tired of it....thus they must be nudged and that was what Merkel has started to do....
So when discussing Germany fully understand it and the current German culture.....
Also remember that everything that has proven to have not worked in the US gets imported into Germany with a 10 year time lag and Germany is now coming out of that "US excess of failures" and are now moving again on their own agenda....
So when people critique Germany you are indirectly critiquing the US....