Quote:
Originally Posted by August
I thought this thread was about the people in Europe and Germany. Imagine my surprise when somehow you make this again a criticism of the United States.
I don't know if I really care for that. 
But let me try and understand anyways. Even if your comparisons were valid (and i'm not saying they are), are (Western) Europeans so hung up on us that you won't even rebel against your own corrupt system, unless we rebel against ours first? I'm not claiming this is so but you certainly make it sound like it is. |
I don't know if Europeans are "so hung up on you" as you naturally imply. Militarily, yes. Else - well, American finance and economic policy do not have the best reputation over here. You - your policies as well as your finance institutions - costed us too much recently. Not that they are flawless in the EU, they are not, and they are turning worse and worse. But the outbrake of the crisis 2007/2008 was triggered by events in the US, and global fiance system is tailkored according to American influence issued over decades, to design it so that the global currency flow patterns make America the benefitting centre (at least that was the past). Every empire does that designing the patterns and trade and capital flow such that they move towards the centre - the core region of the empire.
However. Apathy, phlegmatism, laziness and luxury, and allowing to get lured by politicians bribing voters with unaffordable "presents" to lure them into dependency from state and parties, do their part. That has little to do with relying on the US.
As I see and feel it, it is a form of a very subtle totalitarian tyranny that is being established. Yes, there is no black uniforms int he streets, and no torture and no family clan being in command. But there is anonymous pressure of what socially gets accepted as an opinion, and what not. Public campaigns if you violate the rules on what to think is accepted - and what not. Interest policies and finance policy massively expropriating people. Pseudo-elections between parties for which you can vote but who not really represent alternatives that would make a difference. And above all, the unfolding umbrella of power of the EU that projects its growing power and unfolds its internal functionality in ways that directly compare to how it was done in regimes like the USSR and East Germany.
With posters and demonstrations you do not get close to changing things. The revolt must start in the heads of people, in the inside of theirs. You cannot change the system from within anymore, it is designed to make sure you cannot dance inside of it if you do not follow its rules - decades of corrupt power have assured that. Justice serves that purpose. Policy.making serves that purpose. Depending on personal cliques and networks that bypass the formal democratic rules serve that purpose. In a corrupt regime running by rules of corruption you can only become influential if you become corrupt yourself.
Look at the example set by your own country. Your people believed the many lies and cheating of Bush and his gang. You got led around by rings in your noses, and you thought you were free. Some of you still think it was all okay, and that the system functioned. The fact that Bush is no more there, by others is seen as the evidence that it functions - ignoring that he was allowed the full legally possible 8 year term, and th network that brought him to power and the corrupted in-bed relationship between your politicians and your big business and finance lobby still being there. You want to know why Europeans do not stand up? Than just look at the example set by your own country and why Americans also do not revolt and do not stand up. Instead they still defend the state of things. With every voting in which they participate. It may not legitimize the person. But it legitimises a corrupted system - by submitting to its demand to play by its corrupted rules, or not to play at all.
The attitude in which to meet life under such circumstances, I found described very closely to my own feeling in "Der Waldgang" by Ernst Jünger. It deals with the inner attitude and possible resistance, first by said inner attitude then by practical deed, when being forced to live under increasingly totalitarian control by the state and its society. I am surprised that it apparently is one of his books that never got translated to English, at least I could not find any hint on that. Since you understand German a bit, read the comments on the german amazon site to learn more.
http://www.amazon.de/product-reviews...#RIJQFM1ACI4Z0
I find it difficult to explain in brief what it is about, and that is why Jünger did so by using metaphors, like a "ship on the ocean", thrown around by the waves while sailing on the surface of immense depth and monumental volume nevertheless, or, as the book title says, the lasting standards represented by the "forest" to which the outcast retreats when the tyranny facing him leaves him only this option, or compliance with totalitarian demands, and thus: submission to the regime. The man retreating into the forest", is the man claiming responsibility for his thinking and doing, not allowing this responsibility to be taken away from him, and not accepting to live by the rules demanded by him and thinking the thoughts society expects from him. The "Waldgänger" thus is the resistence fighter, who first resists inside his self, hidden from the world around him, but then, when the regime leave him no other choice than to make a decision to be "for it or against it", retreats, becoming an outcast by that, and thus necessarily form that on lives in violation of the laws of society, and accepts that his resistance now indeed could bring him into serious confrontation with most practical consequences with force, police, law, terror. Jünger has many facets and often is of greater depth than at first glance is evident, that is why he is so massively and very easily misunderstood as being a militarist and even fascist (which he never was and never wished to be, to make that clear). But he attacks certain inner weaknesses and tendency for self-damaging softnesses in the Western ideas of social and democratic societies that I fully understand. It is q very powerful book. And in a way, a very merciless book as well, seen from a certain perspective. I deeply appreciate the spirit of consequence and inner seriousness that it breathes.
Needles to say left-leaning softies, EUrocrats, and other social nanny fans and "milk drinkers" hate it. Jünger is much hated by many people in Germany in general. Because only few are for immersing deeper into his thinking - and then understand that what he is about is quite different from what he seems to be writing: militaristic glorification of war. Nonsense.
It seems I have a soft spot for authors that are easily misunderstood and are hated by the majority over here. Nietzsche. Machiavelli. Jünger.
