The ego on those people, it never fails to amaze me, condescendingly judging entire continents with thousands of years of history.
I'd personally add that there's a huge problem if you work in industry here and your CV doesn't have a simple path that always pointed in the same direction. Experimentation is almost culturally forbidden.
Let's be serious a second, Europe has been around for a while now, I really don't like people who know very little of the context calling shots as to who's in and who's not like their opinion matters. It's like those articles with European "thinkers" condescending to the US because they don't have a proper social security safety net or affordable health care, it's ignorant.
Leading Europe in terms of denuclearization and the green economy, on the other hand, is just not an accurate read of the situation. Yes Merkel shut down the reactors and insisted on green energy. Now Germany emits more CO2 than before due to the need for lots of coal burning power stations to provide base load. From an environment perspective it was a disaster.
Germany does well, for sure, I'm not criticising it. But it gets a lot of uncritical press too, especially with respect to its economy.
The hubris is as disgusting as the person's end game is obvious.
This narrative actually reminds of https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot...
As a general rule the higher your perceived status the more criticism you get.
Another example would be Elon's Twitter spat. Some random dude on the Internet gets into it with another random dude on the Internet and calls him some bad names and nobody cares and nobody takes it seriously, but when it's two high-profile people it's an international story.
It isn't just a "distortion" or quirk. It's a social obligation that goes a long way back. The new American billionaire would do well to remember that their state of privilege comes with a whole new set of do's and don'ts that if they were smart they would pay a good deal more attention to.
The fact that many of the founding father's abhorred the idea of an aristocratic class developing is beside the point. If these magnates wish not to live under the microscope, them mayhaps they should look into actually doing something about the positive feedback loops they have exploited to get to the point they are at.
I'm sure the labor force would appreciate the wage growth, and an end to under the table non-compete clauses, and forced arbitration clauses.
More than anything else though, you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of someone dismissing the millions who do not share his politics as "establishment" in the middle of a discussion about his donations and advice to the President...