[Skybird]

"There are times in history when 'optimism' simply means cowardice and irresponsible dazzlement, whereas 'pessimism' at least allows us the possibility to meet what is unavoidable in an honourable attitude and with open eyes."

David Engels on the decline of the EU, and the decline of the first Roman republic. I think if you ask him, he would mean the US with this as well, the whole Western civilization and culture, that is.

Greetings from Spengler.

On the German president elected:

Walter Schleichmeier is a very bad choice for the post of federal president, on the other hand the last one was not better either. Schleichmeier still wants to create an artificial retort identity that gets imposed on people from top to bottom, with universal, non-individual (regarding history and regionality) and politically correct blueprint "values" from the social-egineering high security lab, that are more about not excluding foreign identity-forming values than about accentuating one's own values and characteristics - and this is what has brought the EU into the crisis of people not trustign it anymore. As president should especially focus on the historically grown identity of his people - the one whose descendants we Westerners all are and that formed us as well as people of given local regions. The Eu instead wnats us to abandon our European heritage, and wants us to think of ourselves as EUpeans. But "European" means a history of Platon and Aristotle, the church, the colonial and imperial age, the Romans and the Greeks and all of them having formed up our identity to wehat it is today, depsite the local, regional, national differences. The Eu stands - for what? A test tube theory of some social engineers writing down a still birth of a Eu constitution that orginally should at least have referred to the importance of the ancient Greek fundament of our philosophical tradition, but that then was deleted due to a concern that foreign cultures - that are not us - could feel excluded, confronted, offended, or whatever. So after bitter fights a suggested preamble with an old Greek quote was skipped, and all references to the role of the Christian church for European history also were deleted. - Schleichmeier, on his behalf, already this evening was instead babbling - he loves to babble and form an important face to that - again about the general unification value of the EU's test tube value and surrogate identity it wants to gift Europe with. Oh thank you so much for it. Reality-denying blokeheads like you have made Pegida and AfD great.

Not my president, thanks. As a foreign minister he was a loser, not putting a single ball, and wrongly assessing every single critical event and every crisis erupting during his time in office, he has misjudged really everything he was confronted with, just everything. As president at least he cannot do damage anymore, the post is almost meaningless and compares to film festivals - where film makers and actors meet to celebrate themselves and tap each other on their shoulders and reassuring each other how very great they are.

What these people, these politicians consider to be a vivid, living participation of the people, compares to the arranged youth celebration parades that we have seen in the GDR. Sterility instead of spontaneity, infatuation instead of clear sight, obedience instead of self-responsible consideration and choice/decision.

Und dann diese herablassende Oberlehrerhaftigkeit und Selbstgefälligkeit... uaaah. Cruel.