Whenever an American is required to go out into the provinces, he is inevitably forced to hear some harangues from the locals about the doings in the Empire. Europeans believe themselves to be worldly sophisticates and they invest a lot of effort into maintaining that delusion. At this point in history, it may be the only thing Europeans are good at doing. They really are a bunch of ridiculous posers and they are so endlessly smug about it. This suggests it is a studied and cultivated habit, not just a weird quirk.
In Iceland, I was subjected to a long boring lecture by an Icelandic woman over the wonderfulness of open borders. She was unaware that I am a FOP (Friend of Pepe) so she was operating under the impression I was sympathetic. It was hard to keep a straight face, given that Iceland is a rocky island in the North Sea. Even if they welcome the world, the world will not be moving to a barren moonscape that is cold in the dead of summer.
Open borders is a strange religion with many in Europe. The news is a pretty much just a non-stop celebration of open borders. They talk about it with such reverence, you could be mistaken for thinking “open borders” is the new name for God. Today the news is celebrating the first anniversary of Alan Kurdi, the hoax perpetrated by the Western media to help sway public sympathy for allowing in a billion Muslims. The news, of course, still maintains it was a real story, which is like watching people talk seriously about Big Foot.
On SkyNews they had one of the typical panel discussion things that American news channels like so much. It was, of course, a multi-culti festival of virtue signaling. All of them had on their serious face as they competed for the title of most pompously pious on the subject of migration. One of the people was a middle-aged honky with the title “comedian” which was the only thing funny about him. The others were brown women representing both diversity and girl power
The moderator, to his credit, brought up the fact that most people just saw it as virtue signaling. The unfunny comic looked as if he was about to have a stroke. If he did fall over, it would probably have been the only time he had made anyone laugh. The African woman next to him then explained that she did not understand the phrase virtue signaling, so she went into a speech about her virtue.
The backdrop to much of this is Brexit. In the run-up to the Brexit vote, the remain side was at great pains to show the issue was about economics. Now that they lost, they are sure it was about xenophobia and racism. They carry on like Brexit is going to return the world to the Dark Ages. One of the Girl Power! Trio on the set went on a rant about how awful it was going to have to show her passport when traveling to Europe. She made it sound like customs was the showers at Auschwitz.
In a conversation with an Irishman and another Icelander at breakfast, I was told that nationalism was the worst thing since the other worst thing and that open borders has made the peace in Europe. The absurdity of this was amusing for a bit as the two of them competed with one another as to who was the most ridiculous person in the room. Finally, I had enough and reminded them that Europe was at peace because the US kept the peace.
That went over like a Hitler salute and the reason is many Europeans have come to define themselves by their relationship to America and Americans, or at least what they imagine to be America and Americans. The median age in Europe is 38 so few living Europeans have known anything other than life in the American Empire. As a result, the culture has changed to reflect this reality. Dependence eventually creates a dependency culture and that’s the culture of Europe today.
You’re only half-right about American power being what keeps Europe together. It was also fear of the Russians.
True, without American support, Western Europe would have fallen, piece-by-piece, to the Soviets. Probably even Britain, though it pains me to admit it.
But without the Soviet threat, Western Europe would have long since rebelled against its protectors, as it has been increasingly doing since the Berlin Wall came down. Things are a little fluid right now, but if it weren’t for the resurgent Russians and the threat of Muslim terrorism, then Europe would be continuing its Bush-era pivot away from the US, which would eventually cause a break between the two. Now imagine that there had been no Soviet Union. Do you think European nations wouldn’t have tried America’s patience past its breaking point by now?
My conversations with older Brits – not necessarily those who actually remember the war – often reveals a lot of resentment towards Americans, and an unwillingness to accept that we’ve had to rely on them. I’m susceptible to that myself. But it’s just pride. For all the pro-European, anti-nationalist sentiment, these are still proud old nations that can’t bring themselves to admit that they depend on American protection. It takes the fear of what might happen without that protection to tamp down that pride; without it, they’re as surly and resentful as a grounded teenager.
Not Europe but still very pertinent to this discussion
http://judgybitch.com/2016/02/11/the-existence-of-canada-as-an-independent-nation-is-nothing-more-than-a-polite-fiction/
This statement is perfect example of the difference between German and American leadership –
“I am the party chair, I am the Chancellor. In the eyes of the people, this cannot be separated. And therefore, I am of course also responsible,” – Chancellor Merkel at the G20 in Hangzhou, China.
Good luck finding a president or governor or senator or congressperson in America who would take responsibility for anything that goes wrong in your country. You rant about open borders, while over 11-million Mexicans have already crossed into your country. When that number drops to zero, then perhaps you can tell us how to do things.
Please – it’s the pot calling the kettle black.
I’ll have you know that “the pot calling the kettle black” is our national pastime.
Hahaha…Excellent! 🙂 Are you still allowed to call a pot “black” in America without causing a trigger alert? Enjoy your Euro trip. Lots of great places to see and enjoy, especially if you avoid where the tourists go.
Best retort I ever heard to the Euro-centric is; “What part of Europe ARE you from? The part whose butt’s we saved or the part whose butts we KICKED?”
“One of the Girl Power Trio on the set went on a rant about how awful it was going to have to show her passport when traveling to Europe.”
We already do have to show passports when entering the Schengen zone from the UK, with some exceptions (e.g. I’ve flown from UK to Spain with no check on entry) and sometimes within the Schengen zone, even several years ago before the migrant crisis picked up. I was asked for my passport on trains in Austria and Croatia in 2009.
Similar to the border wall discussion in the US (walls exist in large parts of Texas and California), people are debating policies that already exist as if they don’t.
Yugolslavia was a country without inner borders. It fell apart in a disgusting civil war nevertheless.
Their elites dull their senses with subsidized booze and fill their free time with metric futbol. Good luck talking to one of the elites, though.
Been there, heard all that “cowboy American” stuff. Right after that came the “Why don’t you Americans get busy and fix this” stuff. I love Europe but twice in a hundred years and 25% of our defense budget for 70+ years afterward is quite enough. Time for all those 38’s to learn something.
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I have cousins in London, Dublin, Zurich, Constance, Paderborn and Paris. All of them well educated, successful, intelligent, all of us in our late fifties or early sixties.
It is impossible for me to discuss politics or economics with them without someone getting enraged or amused to the point of laughing out loud. Many of them have offspring living here in Canada or in the USA. All of the offspring, every single one, takes my side in these discussions.
The Atlantic is much wider than it appears.
Alas, PJ has joined the cheese eating surrender monkeys…
P.J. O’Rourke:” I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton, the Devil We Know
Sure, Hillary is the crone in crony capitalism. But Donald…”
I guess he wanted to keep his NPR gig.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/11/p-j-o-rourke-i-m-endorsing-hillary-clinton-the-devil-we-know.html
P’J O’Rourke’s classic on the Euro Weenies, from the mid-1980s. Of course, we have become much more weenie in the past 30 years as well.
———————-
Among the Euro Weenies
“…Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about
“Your country’s never been invaded.” … “You don’t know the horror, the suffering. You think war is…”
I snapped. “A John Wayne movie,” I said. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think life is a John Wayne movie – with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something, Mister Limey Poofter? You’re right. And let me tell you who the bad guys are.
They’re us. WE BE BAD.
“We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended
from a stock-market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars.
We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in the Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go.
“You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get out hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying ‘Cheerio.’ Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fcuk longer, and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in New York than king, queen, and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and siht them out before lunch.”
Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this was Europe. He
just smiled his shabby, superior European smile.
From PJ’s excellent Euroscreed it appears little has changed on the Continent. If anything, a great number of Euroweenies act as our millennials do. As our gracious host is want to say, “this will not end well.”
Hmm. I was about to say “Pfft, maybe in the 1940’s Americans were still like that, but now they’re as soft and mushy as the rest of us.” But a little research shows I’m wrong. Why, P.J. O’Rourke himself is the very picture of fire-breathing, frontier-pacifying American masculinity. I take it all back.
“To try to do something which is inherently impossible is always a corrupting enterprise”– Michael Oakeshott European sophisticates are making Adolf look like a visionary. They say a man can be largely defined by what he would fight and die for. The European version of that is reduced to what cause they would commit suicide for.
Apparently there was so little going on in England 12 (or so) years ago that an ASTONISHING number of London Brits deemed themselves expert in plagiarizing (debunked in practice)economic theory.
Generally, they were NOT amused at my “So far left you DRIVE there…” attempts at levity.
Oh dear lord, you didn’t watch SkyNews did you?
Like Al-Beeb, Sky loves to play at political discussions, and as always can’t wait to have a “comedian” in the middle of it all for reasons best known to themselves. These are people who are imagined to have a cutting-edge intellect when in fact they can’t even tell a joke (I tend to bore people by telling a tale of listening to one of the BBC’s arts programs when they had one of these “comedians” taking part in a serious discussion about writing. The best this muppet could offer was to say he hadn’t read the book under discussion because “I didn’t like school, know what I’m saying?”)
So SkyNews, who I can only assume think they are even more PC and therefore more holy than the BBC, trots out the same parade of wankers that the corrupt Biased Bullshit Corporation loves to do.
As for America keeping the peace, please don’t give up on us Europeans yet. A lot of us know full well that without the intervention of the States we would all be speaking German rather than, at least until some Tory finally invokes Article 50, only speaking it unofficially.
We do know that America keeps the world’s peace, which makes it really annoying that so many of you Yanks keep trying to vote in politicians who don’t know it.
PS: the “I don’t want to show my passport when going on vacation debate” was summed up to me by one woman who imperiously told me before the referendum that the biggest issue facing Britain was freedom of travel in Europe. I responded by saying the biggest issue facing Britain was unelected Belgians making the laws of our nation. She went quiet after that, but I bet she still voted Remain.
SkyNews sounds like an equivalent of Fox News. They play at being different, but their money comes from the same George Soros as all the rest of the Alphabet networks.
Sorry to disagree. Not that I care all that much for FNC, but SkyNews is the twin of CNN … joined at the hip. Dumb and dumber so to speak.
To be fair, I don’t have a television anymore, for several years, so SkyNews and CNN and Fox and whomever are way past me recognizing them anymore. Did SkyNews, like CNN, keep quiet about Hussein’s rape rooms, ignited gas garlgles, or wood chipper atrocities in exchange for sweet, sweet “access” to the regime?
But of course they did keep quiet. That and their tie to Hollywood always showing CNN as the “news source” in movies is what keeps them in people’s mind map of any news relevance. I suspect more people see the CNN logo via movies than actually watch the network.
Kudo’s on ditching the boob tube!
Was recently in London; the city was full of arabs and their females were totally decked out in their robes ; only their eyes visible.
Unless the Brits get their act together, you guys will be all living under Sharia law.
I remember drinking with a bunch of Irish, and a buddy from Texas, somewhere out in the sticks of County Something-or-Other. After a fifteen minute lecture on our dumb hick ignorant foreign policy — and nobody lectures like a drunk Irishman — Paddy turns to the Texan and asks “so do you like ride a horse to work or what?” He was serious. Six guns, big hats, and J.R. Ewing — this was the 21st century, and that was still their impression of the American Southwest. I’ve gotten smashed on Guiness, and they’ve watched Walker Texas Ranger, and we each know an equivalent amount about the other’s culture… but only one of us will admit it.
First thought was the hilarious Kevin Kline line from “A Fish Called Wanda”. “Ohhh you British are just soooo superior. Well you know where you’d be without the good old U S of A? You’d be smallest fucking colony in the Soviet Empire…” On a more serious note, just finished George Friedman’s “Flashpoints, The Coming Crisis in Europe. He talks a lot about “borders” and how few have really gone away…all the locals do is play along with the EU fantasy during the day and sharpen their knives during the night.
When I think of Europe I think of the medium being the message. Everything they say and do, including their ridiculous “sophistication” results from their smallness both morally and physically, in relation to America. Junker says borders are the worst idea of all time. He’s from Belgium, a small and nothing country. Now that they are a union (sham though it may be) they feel a little better about themselves. The only exception is Great Britain. They have some justified pride in their heritage and their accomplishments, hence Brexit, a separation from the fakers and posers and losers on the continent. Open borders is going to cause the next world war. The question is not will we save them the next time, but are they worth saving.
Perceptive on that bit about open borders causing the next world war. WWI was preceded by unprecedented cosmopolitanism, and WWII and the Cold War was a continuation of that. The entire twentieth century of violence was a result of overly interlocking economies which is being recreated with universal Keynesian central banking. These motherfuckers talk diversity till their blue in the face but everyone has to march by the beat of the same fucking drummer, even in finance (do I hear an echo?). Friedman and Schwartz won a Nobel Prize for their monetary history of the US. The most important passage gets ignored. Just imagine that instead of this referring to the Fed that they are talking about the international system of central banking: “The existence of such a financial system is, of course, the ultimate explanation for the financial collapse… since it permitted those circumstances to have such far-reaching consequences.”
Z has discussed this recently. The concentration of financial decision making in the hands of a few “experts” has shown to be simply stupid. As long as there are small problems they seem smaller in a big system. When problems become systemic effects are magnified.
I personally think that the solution is to denationalize currency by repealing legal tender acts. The situation would be reversed. Instead of a race to devalue their currency, nations would compete for others to want to use it because it is most stable or increasing in value. Inflation is theft from the common man. Governments should not be free to steal from their citizens.
The answer is no. France has a very serious Moroccan (you know, cheap labor) problem. The second generation Moroccans, born in France, to be more specific. Scandinavia? Who cares.There is a wide corridor, from Greece to the Baltics (which may include the western half of Ukraine), run by govts with some common sense. They are worth the cost and effort. Germany may wake up. Perhaps Poland will pick up a strip if they don’t.
Did the Iceland lady also tell you about their big historical event? When Barbary Pirates invaded them in 1627 and kidnapped a couple of entire villages into slavery? When we visited Iceland a few years ago that was still a big topic of discussion.
They also showed us their (ex-)whaling fleet, that was permanently tied up to the piers — bcecause Green Peace forced them to shut the fleet down.
They also bragged about not having a navy.
A few of us Americans on the bus said that maybe if they had a navy they wouldn’t be having their people kidnapped by Moslems and the whaling industries getting pushed around by ragtag hippies.
The Arab slave traders also sailed up the Thames River in England and kidnapped townsfolk to enslave them.
See “White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam’s One Million White Slaves,” by Giles Milton.
The present day Europeans will wake up when their only recourse is war (the shooting, civil war sort).
Apparently, only the Poles, Swiss, Hungarians (and maybe the Austrians) realize the immigrant muslims represent an existential threat.
The French may wise up and elect Marine Le Pen as their new president. It is almost incredible, given the numerous terrorist attacks in France – ALL carried out by ethnic sunni arabs – that the French have not taken more drastic measures as well as electing representatives that will end the sunni arab terrorism ( by engaging in mass deportations of ethnic sunni arabs, French born or otherwise).
I’ve gone a round or two with a Brit but the most naive of the bunch are the Swedes. They are convinced of their superiority, like a 3 year-old who has figured out that you really didn’t steal his nose. They lectured me on the scandalously low taxes they pay here in the States– where they were trying to start a business– because it’s the only virtue they’ve been introduced to in Sweden:75% taxation. They are quite proud of it, but they still come here to actually make money, or save the world, or whatever it is they imagine they can make besides smooth furniture.
I’ve a number of friends I met from Scandinavia who match the same description. Ready to brag on how great Sweden, Denmark, etc. are but they are in the US to make money they cannot make back home without it being taxes to death. When I point this out to them, I get wry smiles and semi-admissions that America really is far, far better at creating opportunity than the Scandinavian model immediately followed by a comment about how money isn’t everything. Of course, the people I’m talking about are all maritime attorneys and professionals making at least $400,000 per year.