This, from a Continent of Neglected Geniuses

It’s everything you need to know about the German exception:

“While America’s super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever.”

PS: The word “Obama” cannot be found in this article.

As if all Americans were expected to somehow be easily categorized as the same, with neither accents, distinctions in income, or anything else. I know, I know... we’re a puzzle, aren’t we?

It isn’t really “concern”, it actually more of a case of Schadenfreude + worries that the people who traditionally buoy their economy by buying their overpriced rubbish, just might buy less of their overpriced rubbish. Since the usual tack of theirs’ is to take joy in repeating over and over, for ALL of the decades that I’ve been alive, that the American dream is finally dead!!!, it’s ridiculous to take seriously, even for a moment, anyone in Spiegel being “concerned” about Americans. The only time any of Americans’ dream weren’t dead, is when they would bloviate endlessly about its “dark side”, or for some other European-life-affirming disparagement. We struggle foolishly to achieve it, but it’s dark, evil, and doesn’t exist, unless it’s at the expense of the pure-hearted, innocent inhabitants of the Smurf village, like themselves. We’re just that stupid for wanting to improve our well being, as if no-one else does anything like it themselves.

From the article, one which anticipated non-existent resentment to Bill Gates for being so generous to assuming that “the recovery” has been actually taking place from the moment Obama took office:

Many Americans are beginning to realize that for them, the American Dream has been more of a nightmare of late. They face a bitter reality of fewer and fewer jobs, decades of stagnating wages and dramatic increases in inequality. Only in recent months, as the economy has grown but jobs have not returned, as profits have returned but poverty figures have risen by the week, the country seems to have recognized that it is struggling with a deep-seated, structural crisis that has been building for years. As the Washington Post writes, the financial crisis was merely the final turning -- for the worse.

And that’s just part of it, dwelling on opinions made on some kind of opinion data, and the like, citing noted data-donkeys like Ariana Huffington, and a variety of editorialist who cite the situation of the long-term unemployed as being “not seen since World War II”, while forgetting the late 70s and ignoring the full employment of World War II. In essence, this fool cites facts based on “this or that opinion writer/journalist said it was a fact.”

Don’t you think that, regardless of bad news being real, but even that being mangled by -bad journalism- is a sign of an even deeper, less fact indicated malaise? A crisis of the soul? An unknownable unknown? Or, in short, the Spiegel writer’s lazy ass standards?

What the non-journo opinion writer can’t quite square (or admit to,) is that the recession didn’t really get bad until get bad, and unemployment didn’t really rise until Obama stepped in bewildering businesses with his “help” by adding to their mandates, tacitly threatening de facto nationalization of one sector of activity after another, etc., etc.

Thanks for nothing, you ignorant oaf. Didn’t you realize that all those people (almost all of them European,) who though they were “giving us lessons” in how to do this their way just like to hear the sound of their own voices declaring that they’re right?

In short, Thomas Schultz, and the rest of the writers of the European media: you loved Mr. Obama so much and wanted to see him elected... why don’t you take him home with you and put him in charge?