In the US, by contrast, I see one political power eager to give powers to their candidates which they would hate to give to the rival party. It's like they've forgotten that they are giving power to the Government, not to a party, and if the other party gets power they get those powers.
The USA is anti-government and authority, fundamentally from the beginning all the way through modern times. Freedom is colloquially synonymous with America and that's in contrast with government, "Live free or die" is the motto of millions of Americans and in various capacities, sometimes alliterated to on state flags.
Only in the USA, for US citizens. Outside the USA; not so much.
Germans do love their bureaucracy, but I get the feeling that's seen as a brake on the politicians; it's hard to make the bureaucracy change, so radical politicians can't do too much damage.
Yeah. When I think of the US and freedom, the first thing that comes to mind is "The country where you're not even allowed to cross the road."
On top of that, we have some misplaced idea that everybody must have a lot of local laws. We call it federalism, and it has some benefits, but I think we use it for far too many things.
Both things together make it very hard to reduce bureaucracy or offer digital services. It is very embarrassing.
This trait can be found all over the former Soviet Bloc, because we have had enough experience with either one or two homicidal authoritarian regimes (the Nazis and the Communists). That experience was paid in a lot of pain and blood.
Places like Sweden, the UK, Canada, Australia or the US, where governments within living memory weren't as oppressive against their own population, have a lot of naive people, "well, they mean it well".
In some ways, such healing is necessary, even though it comes with risk of repeating the same mistakes.
A week ago, I was in Zaragoza and there is a Goya Museum there. His prints of the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars are absolutely terrifying and ghastly. Today, the French and the Spanish people are on friendly terms. In a hypothetical world where the witnesses of such horrors still lived, those nations would probably be a lot less friendly and more resentful.
I can’t remember a single lesson which didn’t cover one of those themes.