How can you deem Europe as not dependable based on what mostly amounts to studying two European languages? It's a continent of roughly 50 distinct nations, with almost as many languages and cultural distinctions, not to mention the huge political differences, even when in the same general ballpark, vastly overarching US political diversity (e.g. Danish Socialdemokratiet are something entirely else than the Swedish social democrats, who in turn are nothing like the German SPD).

Incidentally I'm reminded by how common this ignorant view of Europe and Europeans is with Americans, in how they either insist on or unfortunately misunderstand Europe as a single nation with near-homogeneity.

Europe isn't unified in the same sense as the US though, so this feels like a bit of an apples and oranges situation. Even though the US is varied geographically and culturally from an internal perspective, it's very much not in the sense of how the government conducts foreign policy and international trade. From the perspective of a European government pondering a trade deal, the differences between North Dakota and California aren't necessarily going to be super relevant, let alone the differences of various people within those states. This isn't really comparable to how things work in reverse; there's no "president of Europe" who can unilaterally decide to put a bunch of tariffs on anything imported from the US into Europe without regard to how it affects the individual member states.

News aside, surely you can see how the game is currently being dominated by the US and how Europe understands the current status - where the US is objectively a political antagoniser - as huge liability with potentially extreme consequences?

> those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an American

I think there's a misunderstanding at play here; in the vast majority of cases Europeans see Americans as reliable, cool-headed, friendly people. What they take issue with is the US' imperialist, heavy-handed, ombelico-del-mondo approach.

FYI, I'm not seeing how this relates to the story or discussion.

That might explain the current downvotes.

What you mention are your personal anecdotes while being mildly prolific in 2 out of many languages. Where I live, knowing fluently 4 or 5 is the norm and nobody considers themselves an expert on given country, even if its just another European country or even neighbor.

I've been to the US for couple of months working here and there, you folks are fine but I still don't get even after 2+ decades why you end up with such system. I don't mean the strengths, we all know them but the weaknesses which are all roughly solvable if enough focus is spent on them.

Utter disregard for the poor who are there to be exploited for life (or ignored like homeless), completely broken public education and medical system. From European perspective a proper police state - it was the first time I saw fear in faces of regular people from just a police car moving around the corner. Very high criminality of the 'heaviest' type. Also wars, those endless wars and their constant failures - what did Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan change for the better of people there or entire regions, apart from millions of civilians dead?

At the end, what Europeans care about is US politics, rest are details. We and rest of the world judge based on that. How that goes we all see these days.

> Your news routinely picks and chooses what to report on, leading to a slightly distorted understanding

You are not wrong, the european press hugely distorts and manipulates, but this is also textbook pot calling the kettle black: the american press is no better in that regard, and actually quite worse IMO. So this part of your argument is DOA.

> at least those who have never been here or taken the time to interact with an american

Now we're squarely in the domain of the unreasonable. The proportion of americans that have had an experience similar to yours is vanishingly tiny compared to the amount of exposure an average european gets to american culture (and I'm not talking about hollywod here).