Just my personal take -- I can't speak for Americans in general.

From my perspective, European politics has never really gotten away from the idea that there should be a ruling class and a ruled class. What those classes are called, and how one becomes a member of them, has changed over time, but whether you call it "the nobility" or "the politburo" or "the EU", the idea that there is a ruling class who make decisions with little or no accountability to the ruled class appears to always be there.

Unfortunately, we seem to be headed down that road ourselves. Pity, that.

The mistake most Europeans (and many Americans) seem to make is attempting to map American politics onto European notions of "right" and "left", so you get people doing bizarre things like equating U.S. libertarians with Nazis (because they're both supposedly "right wing", despite having absolutely nothing in common with each other).

My sense is that the difference between European "right" and "left" wings is the difference between being ruled by communist bureaucrats or being ruled by large property owners (nobles or rich people).

Some of us here don't like either of those ideologies. :-)

Hmm, "bizarre". I don't think so. More, "bureaucratic" on average.

Things which might have seemed "bizarre" to American observers of Europe in recent years: the nativist parties in the Netherlands and France, the superstition of the Italian court system in the Amanda Knox trial, Boris Johnson...

But those are all supporting characters, whereas I imagine that European observers of the US are focused on our central drama.

To me, it seems as if Europe (Germany and the UK, mostly) have drifted too far left. I'm surprised by what Churchill and Thatcher's country seems to be today. That may be my own prejudices and limited information. Most of what I know of Europe comes from limited visits and reading of American publications.

As an African observing the European political landscape I find it increasingly bizarre. Your politicians seem hell bent on destroying your culture with mass immigration policies and the general populace just seems to take it lying down. At least in America people seem to have more rights.