One of the biggest advantages of not living in the USA is the open skies of what's going on in the world. One of the biggest disadvantages of living in Europe is that you have to too often deal with a lot of distracting nonsense that is called European politics.
Let me set something straight right here at the outset: I'm a HUGE fan of Europe. I'm a less avid fan of the EU (as it is currently being practiced). And, I'm downright put off by what we've been up to as of late.
Europe/the EU was (and could be) onto something BIG. Americans should appreciate it, but they don't (primarily because they don't understand their own history let alone anyone else's). The world is changing, folks, and the notion of the EU was light-years beyond anything that's been even suspected since the American Constitution (which my countypeople, I'm sorry to say, have managed to brutally murder, dismember and bury ... but that's another post for another day).
For those of you who haven't grokked it yet: the nation-state is an obsolescent model. It's available cheap at the discounters. The more nation-state you try to live, well, the less it's going to work. And that is precisely the problem.
Europe is being destroyed, hollowed out from within, by those very viral forces that inspired its creation in the first place. Given the short-sighted and self-serving interests of the US' "vital interests" and global hegemony, given the readiness to reduce everything to ashes before the "other guys" get even a little piece of the action, the recent squabbling amongst the so-called member states can be seen as little more than an irrational fear that their "Rich Uncle" is not going to include them in his will.
The Poles don't want refugees if they're not Christian (though which flavor of Christian they never said). The Hungarians don't want refugees if they just want to go to Germany anyway (and a whole lot of kindergarten strife is called to mind). The Austrians don't want refugees because, well, I don't know, because they're Austrian. The UK doesn't want refugees because they can't come to terms with their own Commonwealth (first they gave everybody they oppressed Commonwealth rights, and now, Lord forbid, a whole lot of them are sympathizing with other oppressed British spin-offs). The wannabes in the East are taking their lead from the whiners (or to be properly British, the whingers), and it's tearing all of us apart.
It's been said that you can't fly with the eagles if you're scratching around with the chickens, and I can assure you, the chickens are the majority. But no matter ... nobody ever got fat feeding off of eagles.
It's time to simply face the facts: the British no longer have an Empire, and they no longer have much of anything to say. The Americans love them because they think there's a language connection. They are, geographically, European, but love that stroking the Americans give them, but it certainly isn't because the Americans like them. You can't demand to be special any more than you can demand to be respected, however: either you've earned it, or you're just another sad soul who just wants to be loved. Right now, the Brits want what the Germans call "an extra sausage". But, there is no extra sausage, there are only the ones that we have and we can all share them or we can't.
I say, if we all want to eat, that's just fine. If somebody at the table wants more than everybody else, they're at the wrong table.
No, Europe is anything but perfect because what it was intended to be has been compromised by what some want it to be. It's time to grow up and decide if you want to be part of the future or a beacon of the past. That's the choice the Brits get to make in June. I wonder how they'll decide.
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