It is very true that Bush helped cause some of the worst neighbor on neighbor violence seen since Germans were killing their jewish neighbors. But Bush accomplished this as a result of his unbelievable stupidity, while Hitler was really just evil.

bush is only evil insofar that stupidity can result in evil.

Andrew

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“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen

okay thats certainly fair. I agree that the vast majority of people I spoke to back in the day where sympathetic and didn't 'dislike' Americans, but they disliked America, and also in ways that worried me and have come back to haunt us all, uhm detached, or antipathetic to what I at least consider their own best interests.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Was that in the eighties, during what Germans refer to as " Pershing Two" unrest ? Under Reagan ?

There are some differences between Bush and Hitler - For example Germans tried to kill Hitler more than 40 times - but only a pretzel tried to kill Bush. Where is the film about this heroic pretzel or got it a job in the torture business? Whose stupidity in total results in evil?

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Soldiers in Afghanistan: Don't defend vote riggers and drug dealers. Come home friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFlKx3YPL5I

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Scientia et potentia humana in idem coincidunt, quia ignoratio causae destituit effectum
Sir Francis Bacon

On ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz-QCvB4m1U

FBI: Grenade Was a Threat to Bush

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“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” - Carl Sagan

Man i would love to see a film about the heroic pretzel, that would be hilarious.



Andrew

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“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen

Europe's intellectual class is generally possessed of a certain knee-jerk anti-Americanism. That's been the case for quite some time; it didn't start with Bush, it's not going to end now that he's gone, and this idea that the Transatlantic divide magically came into being when Bush took office is a bit too close to willful ignorance.

That being said, I don't think the average European particularly cares about much beyond the local.

The last part is definitely accurate.

As to the former, sure, there is in Europe and elsewhere what me and others call the 'the radical chic' crowds--most often the deep end left types--who find it vogue to be anti-American. But they are a small but loud lot, the kinds you see at protests with gaudy banners instead of at work. They get the attention because they seek it. And the 'intellectuality' for many is often just Kool Aid and/or radical stuff that isn't very intellectually grounded. As for the European intellectuals overall, it's actually just as common if not more so for them to admire much about the US and even emulate whatever they believe is desireable. In Ireland for example, it's been the educated crowd that courted and works with US multinationals on technology, etc. You'll find the intellectuals going back and forth on planes to the US and elsewhere doing business, etc. It's the same with positions on freedoms and human rights that they have liked, etc, and that's been true going back to the US's founding.

Sentiments were elevated over Iraq. And in fairness, the Bush Admin and others in the government and Americans on the streets did their own corresponding part with pouring fuel, especially from the deep end American right. This was true even in childish taunts like 'Axis of Weasels', 'Freedom Fries' 'Old Europe,' etc, with a special emphasis of whipping on the French, which existed before Bush for fair and unfair reasons and claims and just plain obnoxiousness. So, I think it's prudent to measure that these things also reap what they sow. It can't be expected that if one disrespects others that they will form a kind opinion of those who do. That's just human nature. However, people being people, the vast majority also respond well to offered and reciprocated positive treatment.

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Leftists like to bash America sometimes, for obvious reasons. But you shouldn't fear them. Left is being wiped out, each elections more and more.

European public opinion mostly hates the leftist 'intellectuals' and media too, if you allow a generalisation.

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yes.....

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

At the core of this "disliking America" was something that you already know, but maybe not from a german perspective. It was the controversial decision by the Reagan administration to deploy nuclear warheads to western Germany, and do so largely over the heads of the Germans. People who went to the mass demonstrations back then were driven not so much by a dislike for America but by the very concrete fear of nuclear annihilation of their entire country ( which in the case of Germany was a technical possibility) and also by concerns that the renewed confrontation between the blocs would move a possible german reeunion far away in the future or make it completely impossible.( after the two social democratic chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt had made impressing progress towards the eastern bloc, signed peace treaties with Poland, Czechoslowakia and the Soviet Union and also brought the two german states closer together).
And since the Reagan admnistration didn´t seem to take these concerns very seriously and pretty much overrode the Germans on this Americas image also suffered ( not only among left wingers)
Things became different, and Americas picture in Germany took a huge turn to the positive ( where it stayed more or less throughout the Clinton years) when the first president Bush supported Germanys reeunification against british and french objections and made the famous statement that : " America won´t waste any time or efforts to keep eighty million people forcibly apart."
Well, and then came Bush......

The NATO Double-Track Decision (NATO Doppelbeschluss) and the following deployment of nuclear missiles in Germany was also supported by the Schmidt and Kohl administrations in Germany. The "peace movement" was not only directed against the American, but also against the German government. At first, many Europeans feared, that Reagan was some kind of trigger happy cowboy (like in his movies ). But in fact in his second term Reagan became quite popular in Germany, culminating in his famous "open this gate, tear down this wall" speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In fact all US-Presidents were very popular in Germany since then ... until .... you know who.

Tim:

Looking over the alleged German attitudes about Americans from the article, the only one I can find that is unjustified is "Bush was worse than Hitler." That's absurd, of course, but understandable given the source and the natural desire to rid themselves of a historic albatross.

Otherwise -- do we not in fact tend to go to extremes? Did we not delay entry into World War II, and lose the chance to stop Hitler early when it would have been easy, because of an excess of isolationism? Did not Bush's actions in unilaterally and arbitrarily invading other countries go to the other extreme? (Or at least towards the other extreme. It's STILL not as bad as what Hitler did along those lines. Sorry, Germans.)

The purely cultural things that they mentioned are also facets of our national character. We DO tend to be overweight, and to overreact to this and go crazy over dieting and fitness. We DO have a lot of prudish puritanism in our cultural past, and an overreaction to this in the form of promiscuity. Finding a happy medium is characteristically difficult for Americans.

I think they have us pegged. Except about Bush being worse than Hitler. Both of the species warmonger, but the scale alone says Hitler was worse.

This comparison doesn´t need any discussion, it is completely absurd.
But I never met any German who would even consider such a ridiculous claim and neither does the author mention a source nor does it frequently appear in Germanys media.

The Bush/Hitler comparison would not be unique to Germany anyway, and it is certainly not absent in america itself. Hitler sort of achieved the standard for being evil to the point where all bad people end up being compared to hitler.

Andrew

__________________
“...corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have... .I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host.”

-- Derrick Jensen