Germany’s next Olympics and its Olympic vision of itself and the image it wants to project to the world will not be on display during the Winter Olympics of 2018. Today they came in second and lost the bid to Pyeongchang, South Korea.

Perhaps one of the reasons it was rejected is that Germany is going through an identity crisis. It doesn’t know what image it wants to project of itself. If it had gotten the nod, it was going to use the 1972 Olympic facility in Munich as the center for the next Olympics in 2018. That alone doesn’t speak of any vision at all. It just speaks of the past. And apparently green protestors were objecting to hosting the Olympics on the basis that it wasn’t eco-friendly. That speaks of a bunch of neo-hippies who’ve decided not to worry about their image but just to coast for the foreseeable future.

Germany hosted the Olympic Games twice during the twentieth century, once in Berlin in 1936 and again in 1972 in Munich. The first occasion was obviously a way for Adolf Hitler to show off the Third Reich to the rest of the world, especially England. The French team gave the Nazi salute as a tribute to how well Hitler and his economic ministers had dealt with Germany’s economic woes and brought it back as an industrial giant to be reckoned with.

Munich in 1972 was a time to showcase the “new Germany” and focus on its miraculously quick comeback after its defeat in World War II.

What is Germany now? It might focus on its lead position in the EU and its new currency, the euro. But instead all too many Germans have succumbed to living in the land of the Lotus-Eaters. They let the United States have the vision for them. They worry about was is green, philosophize, and cop out of any political vision or responsibility.