There has been much fanfare over the past week about a survey (Umfrage) of the American public that confirms a general affinity between Germans and their American cousins.
I am sure that it is a combination of factors, like many Americans having some German ancestry, military partnerships—at least an understanding—familiar products, like beer, food and automotives, that could have endured as a tacit acknowledgment, as I am sure it has for years. Slow-news days are probably also a contributing dynamic. Depth of knowledge and stereotypes aside—the thrust of the battery of interview questions and responses seem to mainly involve economics—I wonder if American public perceptions of Germans aren’t a focus, an ideal corrective lens for how they’d like to see themselves. Secure and stable and comfortably bourgeois without the outward signs of massive inequity or fanaticism or hysteria; socially and environmentally conscious yet relatively conservative and traditional without excluding other persuasions. It seems this way, at least. The two acts are not connected, but it really does seem the antithesis (and not a reciprocation or extension—perhaps rather a back-handed compliment), but it does seem strange that the European Union parliament moved to back accords (Abkommen) to share air-traveler data between Europe and the US. The American security apparatus will have fifteen years to ruminate over their guests’ profiles, but the judgment that this was not in violation of individuals’ privacy rights rather lowers the standard, instead of giving America a standard to aspire to.
