Blake Snow

writer-for-hire, content guy, bestselling author
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Tagged Europe

Which is better: America or Europe?

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America has power, confidence, and chaotic opportunity.

Europe has rules, restraint, and denial.

Both claim moral superiority.

Both avoid their ugliest truths.

The US has more innovation, cultural influence, and upward mobility, especially at the top.

Europe enjoys more tranquility, social safety nets, and nicer infrastructure.

The former rewards winners hard and punishes losers harder. Dream big!

The latter is great if you’re average, unlucky, or risk-averse. Dream small!

You pick.

10 uncomfortable truths about Europe

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  1. Europeans are less optimistic about the future. Centuries of war, collapse, and rebuilding produced realism bordering on pessimism. Many Europeans expect decline and focus on stability rather than growth.
  2. Europeans don’t want to “lead the world.” There’s little appetite for global dominance. The goal is usually to avoid past disasters, maintain quality of life, and avoid extremes.
  3. Europe is post-imperial and deeply insecure about it. A lot of moral superiority is compensation for lost power. The confidence is curated; the anxiety is real.
  4. Europe loves rules more than people. Process often matters more than outcomes. You can lose your livelihood to regulations while everyone shrugs and says, “That’s the system.”
  5. The social safety net can quietly kill ambition. Security is real but so is stagnation. Risk-taking is culturally discouraged, and failure carries long-term stigma.
  6. Elites are deeply insulated. Political, academic, and media classes live in bubbles far removed from working-class neighborhoods—especially regarding immigration and crime.
  7. Europe benefits enormously from global inequality while condemning it. Cheap labor, outsourced suffering, and resource extraction are invisible luxuries. Moral outrage costs very little when someone else pays the price.
  8. Europe is afraid of both change and decline. That contradiction fuels paralysis. Radical reform is feared but so is doing nothing. So the continent drifts.
  9. Europe criticizes US imperialism while enjoying its leftovers. Europe scolds America for wars and coups—while benefiting from NATO protection, US security guarantees, and global stability they don’t pay for proportionally.
  10. Europeans think they’re the “adult in the room.” They smugly see the US as a reckless teenager without restraint— themselves as more principled but without power or teeth.
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My latest for Paste: “Since yearly records first began in the 1960s, no other continent welcomes more traveling Americans than Europe. Roughly half the size of the US with almost an equal number of countries as we have states, Europe is a convenient, safe, and diverse way to expose yourself to a lot of foreign cultures (and languages) in a short amount of time.

Thanks to a strong dollar, Europe is also a lot more affordable now than it’s traditionally been. As with all continents, however, Europe does a lot of things differently than we do here at home. Whether you’ve visited before or are planning your first transatlantic visit this year, here are some of the bigger dissimilarities you need to understand.”

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Adolf Hitler: Top 10 facts

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I recently visited Berlin for the first time to commemorate the 30th anniversary since the fall of the wall. While there I took several fascinating tours of this war-torn, politically complex, once divided, but now peaceful capital. (Incidentally, Berlin unexpectedly became one of my favorite European cities—right up there with Rome, Ljubljana, Budapest, and Paris.)

Although I’m usually not a history buff, while touring the capital I was struck by the swiftness of Hitler’s dictatorship, which was as breathtaking and brutal as it was conniving and sabotaging. Upon returning home, I was coincidently introduced to Secret Hitler (a very fun board game), which further piqued my interest in the reviled dictator.

To that end, I downloaded his personal biography (Mein Kampf) and read his entire Wikipedia profile. Here are some of the more interesting facts I’ve learned so far about the most hated villain the world has ever seen: Continue reading…

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Tucson courtesy Shutterstock

Excluding my non-bylined or ghostwritten commercial work, here’s what I published recently:

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World travel: 7 things to do on 7 continents

Credit: National Geographic

What luck we have. Not only were we born on the most marvelous planet in the observable universe—not to mention the only habitable one out of gazillions—but the one we did inherit has seven distinct, magnificent continents.

Picking just one experience from each that best personifies the greater landmass is an impossible job, not to mention totally unfair. But life isn’t fair. Nor is this column. If you need someplace to start when attempting to bag all seven continents, make it one of these iconic and universally well-rated encounters.  Continue reading…

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Courtesy Andy Feige

Courtesy Andy Feige

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