Different perceptions between Germans & Americans in 2020: Germans are optimistic, Americans pessimistic

[This is quite an interesting set of assessments of what people inside Germany and inside the USA feel. It is good that Germans are more optimistic, but it is scary if that optimism is based on Liberalism and more multiculturalism. The author of this might even be a german, judging by the email. It comes from a newsletter called Defence and Freedom. The writer is also not keen on the right wing. But the various comments and views herein make for interesting reading. Jan]

There’s an interesting article in the Technology Review July 2020 (German edition) about perceptions in Germany and the U.S..
Polling shows that the share of Americans who are content with where their country is heading hasn’t been greater than 50% since 2004 and has dropped to 20% this summer.
Meanwhile, 78% of Germans are confident that Germany will succeed in the future and only 16% are pessimistic. The German optimism has actually grown during the Corona crisis, and it was pointed out that the Germany government can still dish out extra billions to push what’s believed to become technologies of the future amidst a near-global fiscal crisis.

My guess is that the 16% look like a circle in a Venn diagram with those people who think that voting for extreme right wingers is a just dandy idea. The far right has been shown to be fearful in many scientific studies. The fear of change and of ‘others’ is not exactly a signal of great courage, after all. In other words, far right wingers are fearful pussies, but I mentioned that a couple times already.

The cultural influence of the United States with its fashion of apocalyptic movies, TV shows and ‘dark’ movies, comics et cetera doesn’t seem to be powerful enough to coin German perceptions.

I can tell that there is cultural influence and political influence, but for about five years I haven’t seen any big American motifs getting picked up in Germany other than by Neonazis. German Neonazis gratefully pick up whatever nonsense the American right wing distributes in the internet no questions asked, but other than that? I can’t recall any American lead in anything other than IT buzzwordery ("SaaS", "Cloud" et cetera) that’s basically just sales talk.

There has been very little discernible influence from most other regions as well, except maybe a little K-pop.

I am convinced that cultural affinity can make allying easier and cultural convergence can help fortify alliances. The latter is probably the reason for NATO’s survival and unusual prominence.

More attention on the other European nations could help Europe to unify (how good or bad that would be is another topic). A parallel outlook or development can surely help countries to stay partners. The U.S. and Germany appear to go into opposite directions in some regards, and I’m sure we have a similar widening schism between Mediterranean and Central Europe/Northern Europe.

This could spell trouble in the (very) long term.
Governments are and will be trying to address completely different (perceived) major problems, failing to arrive at a consensus and thus failing to cooperate. A disunited West could fail to keep neutral countries from entering a Chinese (or later Indian) sphere of influence and so on.

And talking of the United States, a country in pessimistic (and frightened) mode might be enticed to spend even more insanely on the military and get trigger-happy when spooked again. An American-Sino war is a really really bad case possibility, and it could be sparked just as much by American fears of losing status as by Chinese jingoism and revanchism. I suppose that this possibility exists regardless of which party controls the White House.