Americans get their views of the world mostly from TV and movies. Being separated by two big oceans from the rest of the world means we don’t get to rub shoulders with strangers too much. The result is those caricatures of foreigners we see on TV get seared into the our mind, even though they are often wildly inaccurate. The most obvious example is the way in which Germans and Germany are viewed by Americans. Germans are either avuncular clock makers or cold blooded automatons that are ruthlessly efficient.

Of course, Germans are mostly OK with this characterization as it works to their favor, except for the constant Nazi references. Having a reputation for exacting standards and ruthless precision is a good thing if you are in the business of making things like cars or machine tools. It also works when it comes to government. Most people, not just Americans, just assume that the well known German efficiency translates into making the trains run on time and keeping the streets clean and orderly.

The phrase “German engineering” has come to mean high quality and high precision, as if the Germans never made anything stupid or poorly designed. The Beetle was a cheap piece of junk for the most part, but everyone believes the Germans make the best cars in the world. Yet, the Mercedes C-Class is an unreliable jalopy that costs too much to buy and way too much to own. If Germans were anything like we imagine, they would have had the engineers who made those cars sent to a work camp in Poland.

Volkswagen used to have the reputation as the builder of solid, inexpensive cars for working people. Then they came out with the new Beetle. Their marketing efforts made VW the car of choice for hairdressers and homosexuals. If that were not bad enough, they are now accused of committing massive fraud that could be lethal for its North American operations. Not only that, these dummkopfs may have managed to set back the cause of clean diesel technology to the point where it dies out entirely. Way to go Germany.

Even if you want to dismiss this sort of bungling as inevitable, even for people generally good at making things, you can’t ignore the mass insanity that is the current German policy on immigration. Angela Merkel’s decision to unilaterally flood Europe with low-IQ barbarians from the Middle East is going to go down as one of the dumbest decisions in the history of Europe. The fact that the response to the predictable unrest is to turn Germany into a police state suggests the Germans have gone mad.

Calling Merkel’s Million Muslim invasion the dumbest decision means overlooking pretty much everything German politicians have done since Wilhelm I walked into the Hall of Mirrors. There’s any number of reckless moves in the Great War, including the decision to back the Bolsheviks in Russia. Of course, the all time blunder was putting the meth munching morons called the Nazis in charge of the country. Is there another country on earth with a worse record of self-governance than the Germans?

The fact that the Germans and their record of ineptitude are now in charge of Europe does not bode well for the Continent. The Greeks should have been expelled a long time ago, but the Germans insisted they remain and now that dumpster fire is about to reignite. Then there is the fact that the Italians are headed to a crisis and the French may be about to elected a populist government, mostly due to mad Merkel and her efforts to flood the continent with Muslims. The French wanted to build and lead the EU to defend Europe, but now under German leadership, the EU has become a suicide pact.

Getting back to where we started, Americans and most of the world, judging from the international press, have this view of the Germans that is wildly out of phase with reality. The bill of indictment against Germany being anything but a fountain of mischief is rather long. In a little under 150 years, a unified Germany has managed to cause more damage to civilization than the rest of the western people combined. The temptation has been to assign this to a small portion of Germans who are evil. What if Germans are simply stupid? Perhaps to be German means carrying a gene for reckless stupidity.

Whether or not the Germans are the Minus Race is immaterial. The point is we need to seriously rethink our image of the Germans. Yes, they made some of the greatest art in Western history, but then they will tried to invade Russia in winter. They make some of the finest manufactured good in the world today, but they have also elected a collection of suicidal lunatics hellbent on blowing up Europe. Germany may be the land of engineers and chocolate makers, but it is also the home of the world most dangerous morons too.