Predictions of European failure can serve the political needs of American critics.

Evidence

There therefore exists in the American political culture a significant branch of opinion that finds reassurance in evidence that Western Europe is a failure. There well may exist serious European faults (e.g., sluggish growth rates, persistent structural unemployment, seeming incapacity to make a real contribution to global security). At the same time, there may be reasons, embedded in political views existing independently of objective assessments of the actual state of affairs, for Americans to adopt a pessimistic view toward Europe. — Michael A. Reynolds and Thomas D. Grant, The Future of Europe and Its Muslims, 226

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the demand side of doom-mongering — which audiences buy which European-decline narratives and why the evidence rarely matters.
• XREF: Connects to the learned pattern that manufactured external enemies alternately take domestic and foreign forms (Strangers in the Land) — Europe as a stand-in target for domestic ideological disputes.