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Twin peaks model:
US society is deeply divided, especially during the election campaign.
But there is no democracy without a real center.
Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP / Getty Images
It is bitter to watch someone who was once revered as a role model deteriorate.
It makes you sad and angry, and sometimes cynical.
America was a benchmark and a point of reference.
Whether the country was admired or despised, the United States was the vanishing point the rest of the world was fixated on.
Angela Merkel once said that she was the first to move to the USA in the summer after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The fascination of the West did not come from Bochum, but from New York, San Francisco and the vastness of the plains.
America!
Prosperity, justice and freedom, not without flaws, and yet: unlimited possibilities.
For a long time it was said that Europe should become more American.
Winston Churchill envisaged the United States of Europe, a formula that has been repeated by many.
Only the real existing Europe was not the US of E, but the EEC, EG, EU, Euro zone - technocratic entities.
Former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet has repeatedly calculated that structurally, it is not that different from the USA.
But the numbers didn't help.
What Europe lacked was the myth.
The ghost.
The story.
Who would shout "Born in the EU"?
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