The European left is in denial though.
After the collapse of the USSR its reflexive, pathological hatred of America came untethered from any anchor it might have had in the past.
To persuade people that they should fear the United States might be relatively simple, but to convince them that the U.S. is more threatening to their personal security-and by extension, the sustainability of their culture-than an Islamic supremacism flourishing in their midst is a tougher slog.
Believe me, it’s not pathological hatred. You would feel the difference if France as a nation hated the United States the way it once hated Germany.
What we have here - on both sides of the ocean if I may say so - is a mix of irritation at the other nation’s pretense to be right, many incomprehensions of the way the other nation sees things, a fierce sense of each nation’s identity, a common but different sense of some Historical mission, a fierce pride of what each nation acheived and how it achieved it.
To make a long story short, we are very much alike, so we make a point to put the emphasis on what little differences we have.