I think that, in a way, the developing immigrant crisis (look at the problems at Cologne on New Year's) is going to be a good thing for Germany, forcing them to determine what parts of their heritage are worth standing up for after all. The Greek crisis was also an example of Germany standing up for themselves; I think that, if you ask the Germans, they've made as much restitution for the Nazi period as it's meaningful to make (look up the details, they're pretty formidable), and at this point improvident foreigners looking for handouts and talking about Hitler are just engaged in bullying.

In the long run, I expect Germany to survive, but I'm not making the same bet on the US. I'm planning on moving from the US to Ireland at some point; I don't really want to be here, or to make my children be here, for the chaos almost certain to ensue 40-50 years from now. (Or 10-20 years from now, if we end up with President The Donald and he keeps his campaign promises.)

>I'm not making the same bet on the US

As The Economist put it, America has "friends to the north and south and fish to the east and west." If anything truly threatens the US, it is ourselves. The idea that anyone could sustain supply lines to invade the States is out of their mind or has fallen asleep too many times to reruns of Red Dawn.

There were plans drawn up by the UK for conducting warfare in N. America, with the specific aim of countering a US invasion of Canada, the purpose of which would be to deny the port of Halifax to the Royal Navy. During this time, Canada drew up contingency plans for invading the US and fighting off an invasion. Britain hoped that the Canadians would be able to defend Halifax, but had no plans to bail out Canada in this circumstance. The US drafted a plan for the invasion of Canada, while the UK drafted a plan to defeat the US Navy at sea.

I think there's a Nova episode about all this.

I don't watch trash. It's precisely ourselves that any threat will come from; I expect that the current environment of political upheaval will only get worse.

What exactly is wrong with the current passel of immigrants to the States?

It's not the immigrants that I'm afraid of; it's the locals. The Scotch-Irish are being shunted aside by the march of history; their cultural values, especially their economic improvidence, keep them from getting into the mainstream (read _Albion's Seed_); and they're not going to go gently into that good night. As Christian belief declines in the Scotch-Irish parts of the US, Nazi belief grows. (I have personally seen an aspiring pastor with a tattoo on his arm incorporating both the cross and the swastika, who saw no contradiction between the two.) Things are going to come to a head -- either in fierce government repression, or in uprisings or civil war -- and I don't want to be collateral damage when they do.

Perhaps if there were some sort of party that could rise to prominence on a platform of making Germany great again?

Even more effective if the supposed reasons for non-greatness are one or more groups of faceless Others, within and without the country. Someone could go far in politics this way, with convenient scapegoats they could promise to drive out of the country, and perhaps even build a wall for keeping them out. Not that that would ever happen nowadays, what with millennia of history to learn from...

Sadly I think you're right. A reflexive anti-national shame is probably the cause of the myopic dream of multiculturalism, where culture and ethnicity and very old instincts about judging people who look different from you don't matter anymore, now and forever.

It's almost as if some Germans are so ashamed of their national past that they would rather see nationalism eliminated entirely than to accept the messy world as it is.

Ironically, I am now realizing how much of a burden that ideology is being forced on much of Europe, not necessarily the same way that the Nazis conquered Europe, but in the same insistence that they are ultimately right.