FROM HIS VANTAGE POINT in Berlin, Hans Santner says the United States appears almost unrecognizable from the nation he’s watched for so long from afar. The retired 76-year-old Briton who has lived in Germany for 23 years says he’s never seen Americans warring with each other the way they appear to be today.
“It seems like it’s completely different to World War II,” Santner says. “People may have been on different sides but it felt like they were all fighting for what they believed in, together. But this seems to be total mayhem in all directions and very confusing.”
Rent asunder by a summer of racial unrest, a raging pandemic that caught the nation unprepared, and a political system that seems to reward division over unity, the United States appears unrecognizable to many in the industrialized West and to allies that once followed in America’s footsteps.
