Time to go? It was I think, never time to come in the first place.
I think this enterprise was doomed to fail because the local cultures in Europe are so different. Greeks are not Germans, and are not about to become Germans. Germany is not about to hire a wave of Greeks to do its white-collar work. People stay in their countries, which do not change in industrial capabilities, and the working-age population is shrinking anyway, so who is going to build anything? Specifically with Greece and Germany, I've been told that Siemens made out OK, because Greece was given loans especially for buying Siemens equipment---but whoever owned the Greek debt... owns an IOU from Greece and its economy. Makes our present American Chicago-style cronyism seem charmingly, almost sweetly innocent by comparison.
I wonder if the educated class sees it this way. Moving around America, I am surrounded by the clever people, many with Ph.D.s, with remarkably similar opinions, and a lack of either opportunity or desire to look at hoi Walmart-shopping polloi. An aristocracy of the university faculty lounge. Among these, perhaps a Greek and a German aren't so different, just different passports.
It's less that the faculty lounge-lizards don't see any difference, than it is that they see themselves and their intellectual peers with different accents as a sort of supranational elite' which transcends anything as petty as national or cultural differences. Which they regard as stupid peasant parochialism.
Conversely, they regard the Untied States, arguably the most cosmopolitan culture ever seen (you, David, and I could be defined as prima facie evidence of that), as hopelessly "parochial" for the exact opposite reason. Instead of localized cultural rivalries based on national identity and ethnicity, America has been the eponymous "melting pot" from the start. Which offends them no end, in the name of "multiculturalism" ("all cultures are equal and good, except Western cultures, which are inferior and evil").
(Incidentally, my family tree would give most P.C. types a seizure. The family name is West Country English, but there's also German, French, Romanian, and Native American in the mix as well.)
The faculty lounge elite' seek to make all differences dissolve, except insofar as they can exploit them to gain power. ("Follow us and we'll take everything from the [insert name of group here] and give it to you.")
The European Union was their Great Experiment in creating a European equivalent of the United states, except with Soviet-style central control as opposed to actual democracy. And with national and ethnic identities used as wedges to play each individual segment off against the other ones to ensure that only they had, and kept, power.
Metternich and his cronies tried something similar in the post-Napoleonic period. It ended abruptly, and violently, in 1848, oddly enough at the hands of the philosophical forebears of the present lot of "intellectuals".
Of course, they don't believe it could ever happen to them, because no one would ever dare do to them what they do to others.
Funny thing- Robespierre and Marat thought that, too.
2 comments:
Time to go? It was I think, never time to come in the first place.
I think this enterprise was doomed to fail because the local cultures in Europe are so different. Greeks are not Germans, and are not about to become Germans. Germany is not about to hire a wave of Greeks to do its white-collar work. People stay in their countries, which do not change in industrial capabilities, and the working-age population is shrinking anyway, so who is going to build anything? Specifically with Greece and Germany, I've been told that Siemens made out OK, because Greece was given loans especially for buying Siemens equipment---but whoever owned the Greek debt... owns an IOU from Greece and its economy. Makes our present American Chicago-style cronyism seem charmingly, almost sweetly innocent by comparison.
I wonder if the educated class sees it this way. Moving around America, I am surrounded by the clever people, many with Ph.D.s, with remarkably similar opinions, and a lack of either opportunity or desire to look at hoi Walmart-shopping polloi. An aristocracy of the university faculty lounge. Among these, perhaps a Greek and a German aren't so different, just different passports.
Sergej;
It's less that the faculty lounge-lizards don't see any difference, than it is that they see themselves and their intellectual peers with different accents as a sort of supranational elite' which transcends anything as petty as national or cultural differences. Which they regard as stupid peasant parochialism.
Conversely, they regard the Untied States, arguably the most cosmopolitan culture ever seen (you, David, and I could be defined as prima facie evidence of that), as hopelessly "parochial" for the exact opposite reason. Instead of localized cultural rivalries based on national identity and ethnicity, America has been the eponymous "melting pot" from the start. Which offends them no end, in the name of "multiculturalism" ("all cultures are equal and good, except Western cultures, which are inferior and evil").
(Incidentally, my family tree would give most P.C. types a seizure. The family name is West Country English, but there's also German, French, Romanian, and Native American in the mix as well.)
The faculty lounge elite' seek to make all differences dissolve, except insofar as they can exploit them to gain power. ("Follow us and we'll take everything from the [insert name of group here] and give it to you.")
The European Union was their Great Experiment in creating a European equivalent of the United states, except with Soviet-style central control as opposed to actual democracy. And with national and ethnic identities used as wedges to play each individual segment off against the other ones to ensure that only they had, and kept, power.
Metternich and his cronies tried something similar in the post-Napoleonic period. It ended abruptly, and violently, in 1848, oddly enough at the hands of the philosophical forebears of the present lot of "intellectuals".
Of course, they don't believe it could ever happen to them, because no one would ever dare do to them what they do to others.
Funny thing- Robespierre and Marat thought that, too.
cheers
eon
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