One of the problems with oppositional behavior is that, while you may think you’re in control, you’re not — you’re just in constant reactive mode. Thus, if you ask me to sit down and I reflexively refuse to sit down (“you can’t boss me around”), I’ve ceded a form of negative power to you. My own wishes are no longer part of the sit down/stand up decision. Your wishes, and my unthinking, unreasoning need to oppose them, are the only ideas on the table.
As I mused when I returned from Europe, I wonder whether some European decisions arise from a reflexive anti-Americanism, rather than from any genuine European desires and impulses. The example I chose was cigarette smoking. I know from speaking with Europeans that they enjoy denigrating Americans for their anti-smoking drive, a la “you foolish, naive Americans with your health obsession” — never mind the fact that it seems as if every German hotel and town advertises its contribution to “wellness” in the form of spas and suchlike.
Because smoking is expensive (insofar as it costs smokers lots of money, costs health-care lots of money, and costs businesses money to repair fabric literally damaged by smoke) and unhealthy, there are no good rational reasons to cling to smoking, only irrational ones. I posited that one of the European’s irrational reasons wasn’t just their “culture,” but was an affirmative desire to distinguish themselves from callow, health-obsessed Americans.
My theory that Europe is driven by anti-Americanism, rather than by affirmative European desires, got a boost today when I read Pamela Meister’s article “Europe’s Anti-American Blinders.” (Meister blogs at Blogmeister USA.) In it, she takes my half-formed, unresearched theory, and develops it into a full indictment of Europe’s America problem. Although I think the whole article is well worth reading, these two paragraphs are the money quotes for me:
Twice in the twentieth century, Europe nearly committed suicide. Both times Americans jumped in to bail them out, at huge personal and national cost, something which must eat at their psyche – the colonial upstarts who dared to create a new world had to come to the aid of the old. Those classless, cultureless, money-grubbing Americans had to go in and do a managed intervention, keeping Europeans safe from themselves and a now-collapsed Soviet threat. (That American money, while considered to be dirty capitalist spoils, also comes in handy, too.) Guilt in their complicity in the mass murder of European Jews who contributed so much to their culture and the world at large – Albert Einstein, Marc Chagall, and Niels Bohr, to name a few – keeps them from admitting to the fact that the bias is still there, ready to boil over at any moment. America’s steadfast support of Israel, therefore, is another bone of contention.
Europeans, weary after centuries of warfare, want to believe in utopia. So their governments created cradle to grave social programs to keep the people happy, to keep them from asking too many questions. In a sense, not much has changed since the days of the lord and serf. They downsized their militaries, putting all their stock in diplomatic solutions, forgetting their past success with negotiations with Hitler. Criticizing American policies and American missteps allows them to forget their own. Squealing about the “torture” of terrorist detainees at Abu Ghraib allows the French to ignore their alleged involvement in the Rwanda killing spree, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in only 100 days. It allows the Dutch to bestow honors to troops who failed to protect nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys, killed by Serb forces that overran Srebrenica in July of 1995. And Belgian and Italian soldiers, sent to protect Somalia under the umbrella of the U.N. in the late 1990s, were said to have raped and tortured those wretched people – facing only fines and dishonorable discharges for their crimes.
I think my instincts were right and that Europe isn’t acting in this brave new world, it’s just reacting. And as long as it’s merely reacting, it’s not thinking about things nor is it taking responsibility for its conduct.
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Have you ever noticed that in the course of a post that has a specific direction, one line, that is not necessarily the point, will stand out and you just have to comment on it?
“you foolish, naive Americans with your health obsession”
I read an article some time back where the author was writing about the differences between attitudes in England and America. One point he made had to do with views on health. Specifically, the author said that in America, when someone dies, there is the inevitable “he was overweight, didn’t exercise enough, drank too much, smoked, didn’t take care of himself,” etc. In England, when someone dies, the attitude is, “everybody does” without offering possible excuses as to why it happened. Supposedly, this is why light beer doesn’t sell in England–the general attitude is if you gotta go, you may as well enjoy your time beforehand. Along this same line, I heard a quote the other day that resonated with me, “If I had known I was destined for an early demise, I would have eaten more butter.” Well, here’s to butter and full-calorie beer (although I do exercise daily.)
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BW, this is worth reading. I do suspect that recalcitrant Marxism and a like religious belief in social theory (to which expat referred in one of his posts) powers much of European life.
You would have met, Bookworm, intelligent Europeans in your holiday journey. Did any distance themselves from the thinking of their controlling elites?
I gained a bit of hope from the fine link Bookworm provided earlier concerning Australia’s methods of terror control. The English site she linked had most of the Brit commenters fully supporting Australia. Some Brits also denigrated UK’s current cultural thinking.
A fine post, Bookworm. I would only have edited the very last line as follows: “And as long as it’s merely reacting, it’s not thinking (they don’t need to think…) about things nor is it taking (do they have to take…) responsibility for its (their) conduct.” The European mindset is all about not having to confront unpleasant realities, thereby making them ever more likely to happen.
Forget the cutesey semantics.Words are meant to be profund not confound. Let me cut to the chase . . bottom line . . blah blah . . . Europe is a SHEOCRACY . . run by a bunch of uptight “girlie men”(Arnold rocks) who sit when doing # 1. Whereas Americans persue happiness (which I think they interpreted to mean make $oney anyway they can ) and carry guns just in case the governmet gets uppity or anyone else. Don’t mess with or test them or bye bye (Japan and Saddam ) Hey that rhymes . . now I’m being just plain silly.
This was a great article. A couple of extra points:
Europeans tend to have a utopian attitude toward the EU that prevents them from recognizing its democratic deficits. The former German president and chief judge of the high court published an article on this last Sunday. Eight of 10 laws passed in Germany are simply implementations of EU regulations. There is practically no debate. Furthermore, to avoid public scrutiny, individual countries get the EU to enact measures that they know would not pass in their own parliaments. The parliaments are presented with a fait accompli and a deadline for turning these EU measures into national law.
I watch a lot of parliament debates on Germany’s C-SPAN equivalent, but on those rare occasions when something from the EU parliament is broadcast, I can barely watch. Why? Because of the horrible simultaneous translations that are transmitted at about the same loudness as the original speech. This is just a bottom up observation about how difficult it is even for interested people to follow EU happenings. The language differences mean that these happenings are “interpretted” by local MSM.
Meister cited the Abu Ghraib scandal as an excuse for ignoring Rwanda. It’s even worse than that. About a year ago and EU group reported on the horrible detention conditions for asylum seekers in the basement of the Palais de Justice in Paris. We are talking rats, violence, suicides. There were no covers on Der Spiegel, no demonstrations by human rights activist outside the French Embassy, and no follow up reports. The Europeans don’t want to know about their own failings. They need the feeling of moral superiority.
BTW, expat is a she.
Here’s a question for you expat, given that I “left” Europe many years ago whereas you have boots on the ground: I have a theory that political and historical cultures are like viruses – they imbed in societies and can be covered up for a while when societies are dynamic, but re-emerge when societies’ “immune systems” are weakened. Is European democracy disappearing as it reverts back to its historic aristrocratic hierarchies by default (with the EU bureacrats as the new aristocrats)? Here’s another one – are the verbal emissions you cite deliberately garbled in order to lull the electorate to sleep as their rights are taken away, one by one?
Expat, no way? A she? Come on ; )
I never would have guessed, and I’ve been reading your comments on and off again for awhile now.
Thanks for giving us a worm’s eye view into the disaster machine. It’s good to correlate things data bits for later on.
While reading Gates of Fire, my views on feminity and masculinity was modified a little bit. It isn’t about girly men. Feminism doesn’t mean you have to be weak. Although feminists perhaps may have a different view of things.
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The letter “X” soon may be banned in Saudi Arabia because it resembles the mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.
The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
The commission’s damning of the letter “X” came in response to a Ministry of Trade query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman for a new service carrying the English name “Explorer.”
“No! Nein! Nyet!” was the commission’s categorical answer.
Why?
Well, never mind that none of the so-called scholars manning the upper ranks of the religious outfit can speak or read a word of English. But their experts who examined the English word “explorer” were struck by how suspicious that “X” appeared. In a kingdom where Friday preachers routinely refer to Christians as pigs and infidel crusaders, even a twisted cross ranks as an abomination.
So after waiting a year, the Saudi businessman, Amru Mohammad Faisal, got his answer: No. But, like so many other Saudi businessmen who suffer from the travesties of the commission, he seemed more baffled than angry. He wrote letters to Saudi newspapers to criticize the cockamamie logic. An article he wrote appeared with his photograph on some Arabian Web sites. It sarcastically invited the commission to expand its edict to the “plus” sign in mathematics and accounting, in order “to prevent filthy Christian conspiracies from infiltrating our thoughts, our beliefs, and our feelings.”
Danny,
It’s hard for me to generalize on your virus theory, but in German there was a conscious effort to seek German identity in Kultur after WWII. This gave the Kultur types far too much power, which allowed them to propagate their “deep” intellectual constructs as truth and intimidate the average folks. There is certainly a nostalgia for Germany as the land of thinkers and poets (Denker und Dichter). Part of the 68 rebellion was against rigid social forms, especially in the universities. However, they simply installed another upper class (radical artists and writer, professional protesters and do-gooders) without seriously analyzing what keeps a society together.
With regard to the disappearance of democracy, I can’t say for sure. The French and the Dutch did reject the EU constitution and people are starting to stand up to the PC police on multiculturalism.
The language thing seems to be a problem no one worries about. They use English mostly in Brussels for practical reasons, and they insist on national languages formally for reasons of national pride. I don’t think anyone cares about communicating with the people. I do think EU matters get more coverage in some of the smaller countries.
Hi BW,
I stop often to read, but don’t get to comment. Busy, busy stirring up my own trouble.
Anyhow, I thought you might find this site interesting:
http://www.earthchurch.wordpress.com
Take care,
-Jack
Danny, I think there’s something to your virus theory. Sounds a lot like a recent comment by conservative radio host Michael Savage, who tagged Islamism as a “retrovirus” that only infects a body politic when its immune systems (meaning especially courts, police, and the education bureaucracy) are weak.
Bookworm, your smoking example resonates, too. This is such a great blog.
democracy itself is a virus.