Schadenfreude

Tom Kando

Schadenfreude: German. Pronounced 'shahd'nfroyduh'. Meaning: "Pleasure derived from the Misfortune of others." Tendency of many people on both sides of the Atlantic.Europeans love to exaggerate America's troubles, and vice-versa: I get e-mails from European friends and relatives constantly asking me how I manage to survive, while my country is falling apart. They write things like, "We hear about California. Boy, you are in real trouble over there! Your budget deficit, your drought, your fires, your earthquakes! How can you stand it there?"

When the Northridge earthquake hit in 1994, some Europeans called me up to make sure I was okay - in Sacramento, 700 kilometers away!

During Obama's presidency, the NRC Handelsblad, one of Holland's premier newspapers, published an article predicting that Obama's policies would probably fail, saying that the US was on the verge of total collapse.
The Europeans most eager to see America fail tend to be on the Left. So that's one side of the story.

Here in the US, we do the same thing in reverse: A few years ago Time Magazine wrote that California's economy was so bad that it was beginning to resemble France (Oh my, not that! I thought, guffawing)

Some time  ago, Pepperdine University held a conference on "The Collapse of Europe." Professors presented papers predicting Europe's imminent demise. For one thing, the Continent's population was declining, necessitating mass immigration from Muslim countries. This was bound to transform Europe into a Muslim theocracy.

For many years, a popular term in some circles in America has been "Eurosclerosis." This refers to the belief that Europe is over-taxed and under-productive, and thus will soon be very poor.

A few years ago, Rush Limbaugh said that most lower-class Americans are far more affluent than most upper-class Europeans.

The Americans most eager to see Europe fail are on the Right.

What both anti-American Europeans and anti-European Americans have in common, is a total disregard for facts, and a refusal to check out reality by traveling across the Atlantic. You see, they are both already convinced that they know the truth about how bad the other side is, and they adamantly refuse to have this certitude shaken by paying a visit to the other. Some of my American conservative friends tell me, "I know how wretched life is in Europe, I was there in 1950." And my European friends tell me "I know how terrible things are in America, I watch 'desperate housewives' on TV."

I must confess, sometimes I'll give a tit for a tat: When my Dutch friends asked me how I managed to survive the Northridge earthquake some years ago, I retorted, "How did you manage to survive the Bosnian war?"

Anyway, I find this funny, and I hope you do too. It's not a tragedy. The bright side is this: the reality is that both Americans and Europeans are doing a hell of a lot better than they think of each other.
leave comment here