by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The German Stereotype<\/strong><\/p>\n There were lots of stories that left a lot unsaid. The Germany\/EU debt imbroglio was one of them. The more Germany\u2019s 80 million people were looked upon to bail out the 120 million of Mediterranean Europe \u2014 if not still more in France and Eastern Europe \u2014 the more in our politically-correct age we never quite were told how this could be possible.<\/p>\n German Octopuses?<\/strong><\/p>\n Did Germans not sleep? Did they each have eight arms? Was Germany itself sitting on secret oil reserves? Did it have tons of stolen war gold horded in its vaults (as some Greeks alleged)? Had it harnessed a new type of energy? How strange to be told that Germany was the new heart of Europe but never to be told how and why?<\/p>\n So how, in fact, did a humiliated Germany of 1919, a Germany after the ashes of 1945, and a Germany stung by a $2 trillion bite in absorbing a ruined East Germany in 1989, find itself \u2014 as Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand once feared in 1989 \u2014 once more\u00a0adjudicating the history of Europe<\/a>\u00a0[1]? Were we terrified of stereotypes that were cruel to Germany (goose-stepping automatons were back again?) or that were cruel to southern Europeans (the Danes and Dutch were likewise solvent in comparison to the siesta-napping, and perennially shouting sunny Mediterraneans)?<\/p>\n Is there such a thing as national character or habit \u2014 both having nothing to do with race \u2014 in our postmodern age? In the 21st century, can we still say that Germans go to bed when Athenians go to dinner, or that they more likely consider tax cheating theft rather than ingenuity, or that they make things to work well rather than just make things to sell? Is it that when you go into a German bank you are served, and when you go into a Greek counterpart you witness an unending coffee break? Do tiny habits like your bus driver going down the aisle to collect trash versus throwing it out the window add up? When I see two Greek drivers scream and gesticulate at each other in Omonia Square over a tiny fender bender \u2014 as four lanes are shut down for their fifteen minutes of machismo \u2014 and, in contrast, watch two German drivers on Neuhauser stra\u00dfe in Munich exchange information, shake hands, and help push their dented cars off the road, does all that 1000 times a day also make a difference?<\/p>\n Is there a reason, aside from weather, why one would rather relax for a week in the Aegean than in Berlin, or retire on the Costa del Sol rather than in Bremen? For all the angry op-eds about the unraveling of the EU, no one quite walked us through exactly what Germans do each day that makes them different from other Europeans \u2014 although most who have visited Athens and Munich, or walked through Rome and Copenhagen, or sat in a caf\u00e9 in Madrid and Frankfurt might be able to offer journalists some help. Of course, throughout 2011, I did read clever essays advising readers about how not to walk into this trap of believing in archaic and stereotyped notions like national character when some esoteric and almost unfathomable \u201creal\u201d cause (Thucydides\u2019s\u00a0aitia<\/em>) far better explained the differences.<\/p>\n Iran: If Only\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Iran was another incomplete story this year. As the year ended, the Iranians were once again, in North Korean style, sounding off about their great navy closing the Strait of Hormuz, attacking \u201cforeigners\u201d and all the other 1% probability nutcakery that responsible powers must nevertheless prepare for.<\/p>\n Oh, the efforts we go through to explain Iranian hatred of America, as we search endlessly for the \u201cmoderates\u201d and remain puzzled over how in the world anyone\u00a0could not like Barack Obama<\/a>\u00a0[2].\u00a0Ad nauseam<\/em>, we hear of 1953, Mossadeq, and the Shah \u2014 never that we originally found ourselves involved in Persia not for oil (cf. the British), but in World War II to supply communist Russia against the Germans, and then afterwards to ensure the Russians did not do to Iran what they had done to most of Eastern Europe. From 2007-2009, we heard from Obama about reset and dialogue with Iran, and \u201cface-to-face\u201d negotiations. And we got all that and much more.<\/p>\n Four or five \u201cdeadlines\u201d for Iran to cease work on the bomb were ignored. Obama not only was silent when nearly a million protested in the streets of Teheran against the theocracy in spring 2009 (one of the great blunders in American diplomatic history), but he even tried to contextualize his silence with, of course, oblique references to Mossadeq who, like Allende, is forever frozen in leftist amber to be hung as a locket next to the heart. The last three years of reset with Iran had followed thirty years of hostage taking, Hezbollah\u2019s murdering of Americans, subsidization of terrorists to attack Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, and various efforts worldwide to hamper US interests.<\/p>\n Why do the Iranians do these things, year after year? To paraphrase Dirty Harry, \u201cBecause they like it.\u201d And, of course, it pays. Take away the bomb threats, the terrorism, the hatred of the US, and Iran would be an oil-rich Turkey or a bigger version of Kuwait, in the way that Costa Rica is not Cuba or Laos is not in the news like North Korea. Influence, attention, the spotlight, fear, honor \u2014 these are not inconsiderable stimuli.<\/p>\n That fact does not mean we must be at war with Iran, but that the government in Teheran has similarities with other violently anti-American regimes in North Korea and Cuba that have long bitter histories with America, a deeply entrenched sense of victimization, and a wildly inflated notion of their own importance \u2014 and who all find \u201coutreach\u201d and \u201creset\u201d a sort of weakness to be despised rather than magnanimity to be appreciated. In short, if Iran were to normalize relations and call off its endless religious war against the West, then hundreds of thousands of otherwise incompetent religious hacks, who are now wealthy and powerful at the helm of their police state, would have to go back to ranting and panting at mini-skirts from the mosque as they returned to the dole. Constant near war is what enriches them, and so why would they give that up for an empowered, free populace and a watchdog press?<\/p>\n Miles To Go<\/strong><\/p>\n We are now into our twenty-third year of our long struggle with Iran \u2014 or around 1972 in Cold War chronology with the Soviets. I would imagine that we might well have another fifteen or twenty years to go before that rotten regime finally collapses. In short, the story of 2011 was, again, that the Iranian government hates us and always will until its own incompetence finally destroys even a huge oil exporting economy \u2014 about fifty years in normal dictatorship collapse time (e.g., 1979-2029).<\/p>\n Ah \u2014 Those Damn Records Again<\/strong><\/p>\n There were lots of incomplete stories on the domestic front. From time to time, the media caricatured Rick Perry\u2019s Texas A&M\u2019s aggie Cs as proof that he was \u201cdumb.\u201d Recently Chris Matthews (but, of course) derided Mitt Romney\u2019s privilege by comparison to Barack Obama, \u201cwho busted hump\u201d to get into prestigious schools and Harvard Law. (\u201cBusted hump\u201d is now to follow \u201ctingle\u201d from out of Matthews\u2019 creepy Freudian recesses?) Remember in 2008 that John McCain\u2019s lackluster US Naval Academy transcript was supposed to offer proof that he was always an unserious and irascible sort. But the media never finish this silly go-all-the-way-back-to-college narrative by producing Obama\u2019s straight As \u2014 to remind us how brilliant academic achievement has now continued with inspired White House leadership.<\/p>\n Why is this?<\/strong><\/p>\n First, the minor, peripheral reasons. The media were burned with the George Bush \u201cdunce\u201d stories of cheerleading at Yale \u2014 when it was revealed that both his SAT scores and GPA were as good or better than John Kerry\u2019s. The media also believe that the Ivy League is a certifier, not an institution, of higher disinterested learning. The point is to get in somehow and get out any way possible stamped with the brand \u2014 not what you did in between (unless you are a nucular Bush). Most accept that if one is not in chemistry, engineering, math, etc., then one can coast in the humanities or social sciences in the Ivy League without a lot of work. Flunking out as a sociology or political science major at Yale or Stanford is a lot harder to do than flunking out with the same major at Ohio State or Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.<\/p>\n Or is it that Obama was a straight-A student and is holding back on the release of his transcript for the right moment to embarrass critics, in the way he did the sudden \u201cbirther\u201d Donald Trump? Are the hidden straight As a complex political IED that will blow up in the face of any who jump upon it? Not likely, but to be fair I had to raise the possibility.<\/p>\n All of which gets us to the real story that was never reported on:<\/p>\n 1) Barack Obama simply does not expect to follow normal political customs and traditions because he knows the media do not expect him to: he will not release the transcripts because he does not have to and it is his pleasure not to, in the way\u00a0he did not worry about explaining<\/a>\u00a0[3] his near worship of his racist pastor of twenty years, or being the first to renounce public financing of presidential campaigns in the general election, or the first nominee in recent memory not to have released his medical records, or the first to have raised $1 billion dollars in private cash, or the first to have played 90 rounds of golf in his first three years in office. All of these may or may not be real issues, but they have always been real issues to the press and suddenly are no longer such \u2014 and Obama not only knows it, but enjoys knowing how the media\u00a0exempts rather than audits him<\/a>\u00a0[4]. Does a Chris Matthews understand just how much contempt Obama has for someone so sycophantic as himself?<\/p>\n 2) The second reason may well be that Barack Obama really did not \u201cbust hump\u201d to get into Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard, but in fact coasted the entire time. In other words, the record does not reflect an A-\/B+ student whom affirmative action consideration can boost into the Ivy League, but perhaps a C+\/B- (or worse?) student whom even \u201cdiversity\u201d usually cannot. That would prove embarrassing in the sense that the myth of Michael Beschloss \u201csmartest president ever\u201d might be endangered (remember, PJ readers, the media, not us, iconize long ago college grades). A lackluster academic record might as well bring up the entire topic of affirmative action in a way not heretofore discussed. Finally, a dismal transcript might offer perspective on the Obama method of rhetoric over achievement.<\/p>\n At some point the Republican nominee will produce his entire medical and college records and matter-of-factly expect Obama at last to do the same.Watch the hysteria that follows<\/a>\u00a0[5] \u2014 for 24 hours. (Or would it be better for a Romney or Gingrich to say, \u201cOf course, my medical and college records remain off-limits as is now the custom, and by the way, I will not be taking any federal campaign financing funds with all their bothersome attached strings\u201d?)<\/p>\n What We Owe<\/strong><\/p>\n But the big story of 2011 was debt, as in $16 trillion of it at home, a bankrupt European Union abroad, and a number of blue states \u2014 California, Illinois, New York \u2014 struggling under burdens of pensions, public employee salaries, entitlements, and the flight of higher income earners. There was a pattern here, right?<\/p>\n No one in the media connected those dots that Plato and Aristotle did long ago from their own observations of radical democracy: the \u201cpeople\u201d \u2014\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>, the\u00a0d\u00eamos<\/em>, the\u00a0ochlos<\/em>, whatever \u2014 inevitably vote themselves entitlements that they cannot pay for and then in vain damn the shrinking number of those who can pay for them for a while longer \u2014 while questioning the entire premise of a system that allows some to have more than others. Under Obama we piled up a new $4 trillion in debt. The media was content to say that it was Bush\u2019s fault, given that the latter did the same thing \u2014 but it left out\u00a0two key \u201cbuts\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[6]: one, Obama did it in three years, not eight; and, two, Obama added to an $11 trillion existing debt, not a $7 trillion \u2014 a consideration in the modern age of interest.<\/p>\n The subtext of the Simpson-Bowles commission was not just that Obama picked a committee and then ignored its findings, but that even the recommendations of this responsible commission were too timid: under their suggestions, most of us would never see a balanced budget in our lifetimes (e.g., over the next twenty years). Dream up the most stringent austerity program that is politically viable, and it is far too little and too late. So we wait, hoping that near zero interest rates will allow us to borrow even more.<\/p>\n In short, every time we promised the Pakistanis more money, each time the president promised more unemployment insurance and food stamps, at every evocation of a new element of the Dream Act, at all the fury over the number of F-22s to be built, no one said, \u201cHmm, all on borrowed money.\u201d (To be fair, Ron Paul said just that [but unfortunately a lot of other things as well]). The media simply did not tell the public that we have collectively taken out a huge adjustable rate mortgage to pay for our daily consumption, and that each day we are going to have to eliminate more expenditures to service the interest.<\/p>\n Why the silence? Are the numbers simply too staggering to get a handle on? Is the reality too depressing? Or is there a sense that as we reach the unsustainable $20 trillion at last \u201cthey\u201d will cough up (gorge the beast to ensure higher taxation?), as deficit spending is not the end, but the means, to ensure full income redistribution? Or perhaps at some point, our technocrats will remind us that \u201cthey\u201d who have raised the bar on the rest of us, the 1%, the corporate jet owners, and the millionaires and billionaires, already have money. So are we, the 99%, forced to pay interest to \u201cthem\u201d (whether Americans or not) who don\u2019t need it? In the manner of the Chrysler creditors, perhaps we can run through the list of holders of US debt, and decide whom and whom not should be paid back.<\/p>\n The Ministries of Truth<\/strong><\/p>\n As a general rule, when you watch a story on CBS, listen to NPR, or read theNew York Times<\/em>, assume that the news is prepped in such a way as to suggest the opposite of what really happened. As for German dominance \u2014 mercantilism, reactionary financial ideology, and cultural insensitivity over patterns of consumption and lifestyle should not reflect any larger truth other than in the game of capitalism some like a few German bankers put \u201csuccess\u201d at a higher premium than did others. Who is to say it is better to count money in the bank on a Friday afternoon than to enjoy an outdoor glass of wine and conversation?<\/p>\n Moderates in Iran are still struggling with the legacies of colonialism and US imperialism and so, on occasion, lash out in ways that sober and judicious Westerners must contextualize as we slowly rebuild trust through dialogue and consultation on shared issues of concern.<\/p>\n Straight-A students do not rub in their genius by releasing their long ago and now irrelevant college transcripts that would only prove what we already know and bring needless humiliation to lesser folk; those who are fit and trim really do not have health \u201cissues\u201d in a way those over sixty-five do, and therefore properly spare us the boredom of learning what we already know. As for those who cling to these birth-certificate-like obsessions, they should confront honestly and openly their own fears and prejudices that prompt such conspiracy mongering about Obama.<\/p>\n As far as debt goes, money, like the speed limit or changing hair styles, is simply a construct, a \u201ckeeping track\u201d system that is always fluid and so can be at times modulated and redefined by our custodians to reflect social and cultural justice, whether by debt restructuring, various \u201chair-cuts,\u201d inflation,\u00a0quantitative easing<\/a>\u00a0[7], or renegotiation. $5, $15, $25 trillion even are just the score-keeping of blinkered, emperors-with-no-clothes card players who pile up their winnings, oblivious that their chips at some point have to be cashed out \u2014 and by those who might just see them as little more than red, blue and white plastic.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The German Stereotype There were lots of stories that left a lot unsaid. The Germany\/EU debt imbroglio was one of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[78,145],"tags":[233,12,115,42,345,1023,1015,1050,317,1039,1044,1056,67,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-jf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8681,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-three-crucial-factors-to-maintaining-the-peace-in-europe\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":0},"title":"The Three Crucial Factors to Maintaining the Peace in Europe","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 25, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online The bailed-out Greeks are still broke. Now their islands are flooded with a horde of migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Spain, Portugal, and Italy are almost in the same boat. Their shared Mediterranean traditions \u2014 and vulnerabilities \u2014 are far different\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/european-culture-in-danger-from-migrants-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1318,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-hundred-years-german-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":1193,"position":1},"title":"The Hundred Years’ German War","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. 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\n
\n[1] adjudicating the history of Europe:http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/articles\/286734\/new-old-europe-victor-davis-hanson<\/a>
\n[2] could not like Barack Obama:\u00a0http:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/david-gregory-defends-president-obama-against-rick-santorum%E2%80%99s-accusation-of-appeasement\/<\/a>
\n[3] he did not worry about explaining:http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/07\/20\/how-the-wright-free-zone-was-built\/<\/a>
\n[4] exempts rather than audits him:http:\/\/directorblue.blogspot.com\/2011\/12\/oh-irony-it-burns-obama-campaign-rips.html<\/a>
\n[5] Watch the hysteria that follows:http:\/\/bigjournalism.com\/rfutrell\/2011\/12\/29\/cnn-and-wolf-blitzer-call-for-presidential-transparency\/<\/a>
\n[6] two key \u201cbuts\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/rogerkimball\/2011\/12\/31\/obamas-political-blitzkrieg\/<\/a>
\n[7] quantitative easing:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/11\/13\/ben-bernankes-made-up-money\/<\/a><\/p>\n