The German Condition: A Brief Diagnosis
Few nations obsess quite like Germany about whether they are, in fact, the good guys. This is not entirely without historical reason—after a rather unfortunate mid-twentieth-century detour into unprecedented villainy, Germans developed what might charitably be called an acute sensitivity to their international reputation. Where other countries might shrug off criticism with insouciant nationalism, Germany responds with the earnestness of a reformed smoker lecturing everyone about lung health.
This peculiar national characteristic—this desperate need to be liked, to be seen as responsible, to demonstrate moral rectitude at every opportunity—has become so embedded in German political culture that it shapes everything from foreign policy to media discourse. When German politicians speak, they do not merely advocate for policies; they perform virtue. When German media report on international affairs, they do not simply inform; they position Germany within a moral universe, anxiously checking: are we still the good Europeans? The reliable allies? The champions of human rights?
Which brings us to the present moment, where this national tendency collides headlong with a world that has stopped paying attention to Germany’s carefully cultivated moral credentials.
When Everyone Talks and Nothing Connects
Consider the scene at Donald Trump’s second inauguration: the president-elect and his coterie of billionaires retreated indoors from the cold, while journalists huddled outside, earnestly explaining to cameras how Democrats would now restore faith in democracy. It was political theater at its most absurd—the subjects of the story absent from the stage, while the narrators performed for an audience that had largely stopped listening.
This vignette serves as an apt metaphor for the current state of Western political discourse, and nowhere is this more pronounced than in Germany. Here, government officials, opposition politicians, media commentators, and political pundits engage in an endless circular conversation about the same problems, ostensibly seeking the same solutions—yet nothing actually coheres. It is discourse as performance art, sound and fury producing neither insight nor action.
The machinery of democratic deliberation continues to operate, but it increasingly resembles a Rube Goldberg device that produces nothing but its own motion. Politicians identify problems without solving them. Journalists ask questions without receiving meaningful answers. Electoral campaigns become ritualized performances where everyone knows their lines but nobody believes in the script anymore.
The World Happens Elsewhere
Meanwhile, actual geopolitical developments—the kind that will shape the coming decades—unfold largely absent from serious German political debate. Venezuela’s authoritarian consolidation, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the simmering crisis over Taiwan, Trump’s bizarre fixation with Greenland—these are not treated as urgent strategic challenges requiring sophisticated analysis and decisive response. Instead, they serve as backdrop to the real show: the domestic political theater.
German media coverage constructs an alternative reality where the country’s self-image as a responsible global actor can be maintained without the messy business of actually wielding influence or making difficult choices. It is easier to discuss how Germany should be perceived than to grapple with how Germany should act. Easier to debate the proper tone of press releases than to debate the deployment of military assets. Easier to worry about whether Germany is sufficiently multilateral than to build the hard power that makes multilateralism possible.
This retreat into narcissistic introspection would be merely amusing if the stakes were not so high. But as the liberal international order that Germany has benefited from for seven decades shows signs of serious strain, the gap between German self-perception and global reality grows dangerous. The world does not care whether Germany thinks it is being good. The world cares whether Germany can contribute meaningfully to solving actual problems.
The Television Knows Best
German television—still the primary news source for a rapidly aging population—has perfected the art of creating a comfortable simulacrum of political engagement. Evening news programs present a carefully curated version of reality where German politicians are serious people engaged in serious discussions about serious matters. The format itself conveys gravitas: the anchorperson’s measured tone, the expert commentary, the cross-party debate segments where everyone agrees to disagree politely.
But this performance of seriousness increasingly masks a fundamental unseriousness about the challenges ahead. When coverage of international flashpoints becomes merely an opportunity to discuss what German foreign policy should sound like rather than what it should accomplish, something essential has been lost. When political debate becomes so focused on process, propriety, and positioning that it cannot address substance, the democratic machinery has begun to malfunction.
The fragmentation is complete: media creates one reality, politicians inhabit another, and voters experience a third. Everyone talks past everyone else, deploying the language of democratic deliberation while the actual mechanics of problem-solving atrophy from disuse.
The Crisis of Coherence
What Germany faces is not merely a crisis of policy but a crisis of coherence. When everyone discusses the same problems but no solutions emerge, when media representation diverges ever further from lived experience, when institutions tasked with democratic deliberation produce only self-referential cycles of commentary—the legitimacy of the entire system comes into question.
This matters because Germany’s peculiar historical burden means it cannot simply retreat into cynical realpolitik or nationalist populism without triggering precisely the fears that its postwar political culture was designed to assuage. Yet neither can it continue the current trajectory—a strange combination of moral preening and strategic passivity that satisfies nobody and accomplishes nothing.
The question that haunts German political discourse—are we the good guys?—has led to a paralysis where being perceived as good becomes more important than being effective. Where the performance of responsibility substitutes for actual responsibility. Where anxious self-examination replaces confident action.
Perhaps the answer is not to obsess less about Germany’s role in the world, but to obsess differently. Not whether Germany is liked, but whether it is useful. Not whether its positions are morally unimpeachable, but whether they produce outcomes that advance stability, prosperity, and freedom. Not whether German politicians sound responsible on television, but whether German policy actually works.
Because in the end, the world will judge Germany not by its intentions or its self-image, but by its effects. And right now, as everyone talks about everything and nothing fits together anymore, those effects are increasingly difficult to discern.
Germansplainer 
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