I THINK HE MAY BE ON TO SOMETHING HERE: “Many Germans define themselves by their moral rectitude, as exhibited by their reckoning with the Nazi past and, more recently, by the government’s decision to accept more refugees from the Syrian civil war than any other Western country. Sloterdijk is determined to disabuse his countrymen of their polite illusions. He calls Germany a ‘lethargocracy’ and the welfare state a ‘fiscal kleptocracy.'”