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Of course, European states were not neutral during the Cold War. For some weird reason they wanted not to become Russian vassals (and Eastern European countries followed suit as soon as they could).
But: being aligned with the US does not mean you have to be subservient or bound in any way. As you mentioned, France even left NATO for a time. Vassal states usually cannot do that (see again the Cold War for examples: Poles, Czech and Hungarians were very much not allowed to break free from Moscow).
We may be fighting over semantics here, but I think this is important. Are you member of a club you can leave anytime? NATO and EU are such clubs. Or are you bound to a pact where you get violently suppressed the moment you want to quit? Warsaw Pact was such a thing.
This is a hypocritical take. You're specifically using the cold war as an example and claim that US vassalage is better and not actually vassalage compared to the Soviet Union. That just isn't true.
Also you cannot just leave NATO. Leaving the EU is hard, but at least still possible. For explanation please look at the elections results of the past decades of any western country. You'd get a whopping 80-95% across the board for pro-NATO parties.
If a country were to somehow still leave NATO they'd likely face a quick invasion unless they lower themselves to ally with Russia and get guarantees.
As for the Cold War politics worked differently on both sides. The American hegemony is less implicit but still exist through it's prevalent cultural hegemony. Consent is manufactured to stay aligned with the US up to this day. You can see this influence in official government policies, in the mass media and in the education system.
"You CANNOT just leave NATO ! Because you do not WANT to leave NATO !" is โฆ quite a galaxy-brain take.
Yes, manufactured consent is unfortunately rather indistinguishable from people having their own opinions, and if any opinion can be "manufactured", you get to circular reasoning like "your not leaving NATO proves that you are actually forbidden from leaving".
This is pure semantics.
If you can never vote for leaving NATO, then you factually cannot leave it.
why would i not be able to do that? you underestimate the amount of political freedoms we have.
Because the political system doesn't allow for it. I'm sure you don't want me to repeat myself, but it's not possible to just elect a party who would want that. Look at the election results of past decades. You'll see the vast majority of any parties that make it into parliaments are pro-NATO. You cannot democratically beat that.