Stephan Ricther's German perspective — regarding American societal dysfunction — is it overblown?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

15 October 2017

 

 

Caveat

 

What follows is probably best grasped by Americans who have lived at some length in Europe. Comparisons are best done by people with something valid to compare.

 

 

Even if we were willing to understand the choices, would we act?

 

 

The Globalist's editor, (German) Stephan Richter said that:

 

 

Having lived in the American capital for thirty years . . . I was recently asked . . . how to save the transatlantic relationship . . . .

 

“This is basically impossible. . . . American society would have to be salvageable.”

 

[E]xistence of an American “society” is increasingly becoming pure fiction.

 

A significant share of the people living in today’s United States lacks the will to live together.

 

[T]oday’s United States is increasingly becoming synonymous with grotesque levels of inhumanity.

 

[H]alf a century after the allegedly fundamental civil liberties reforms, black citizens are now shot down by the police as if they were prey . . . .

 

[T]he Republicans, consider it a national sport to deny poorer Americans access to health insurance . . . .

 

[T]he “winner takes all” mantra explains why the American dream is increasingly becoming a nightmare. The widespread use of opioids among those who are not well off speaks volumes.

 

[T]he Civil War, officially ended in 1865, continues . . . .

 

As if that weren’t bad enough, the United States is the leading industrial country in which close to half of the population rejects many forms of Western rational thought.

 

[I]n the rigorous rejection of universally accepted empirical facts . . . evolution and climate change — the Republican half of the American population has more in common with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other fundamentalist Muslim countries than with EU Europeans.

 

[W]e cannot really be surprised that the United States is more and more characterized by tribal structures, similar to the ones that . . . shaped Afghanistan.

 

What the Las Vegas incident will once again prove . . . is the futility of the belief in sensible reform.

 

This basically shatters the long-held belief . . . that Americans are dynamic, modern and capable of change.

 

[T]he people in the rest of the world are well advised to focus more on their own paths.

 

© 2017 Stephan Richter, The American Un-Society, The Globalist (13 October 2017) (excerpts)

 

 

Chanting "USA" in rebuttal only demonstrates Richter's point

 

Racism, tribalism and fundamentalism-based stupidity do characterize large swaths of American culture.

 

Equating the United States to tribal Afghanistan and medieval-acting Islamic autocracies is startling, but insightful enough to justify some self-analysis.

 

 

The moral? — A conundrum

 

Self-reflection would require us to act marginally civilized in the first place. That's a huge task in a culture in which "close to half of the population rejects many forms of Western rational thought."

 

We Americans could argue in (morally complacent) self-defense that brainlessness is not a barrier to world domination. Granted. But brainlessness is a detriment to domination's long-term maintenance. And that is where we are now.

 

Ergo, Richter's advice to other nations to go their own ways. The United States has virtually no (morally and intellectually defensible) societal merit left to emulate.