EU disconnects even more from reality

[August]

This is what happens when a people disconnects from their government. Decades of saying that the government doesn't represent the people has made the people apathetic and politicians bold.

Where are the protests? Where are the demonstrations? Complaining about it to a bunch of foreigners on this forum isn't going to force the changes you seek.

Like a local pol of ours said recently: “I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going. Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary.”

Now I didn't agree with his cause but you can't ignore his fervor.

[Hottentot]

Originally Posted by August

Where are the protests? Where are the demonstrations?

"Yeah, someone should really start one. I'd totally go there to speak up my mind!"

[HundertzehnGustav]

Thing is...
There is so much to take care of, and my day only has 24 hours and my pay is meager.
I am so busy doing my job and fixing the minefield that my private life is that i can not dedicate 4 hours a day on understanding how this EU thing works, and whom i should hang by his ba... Buttocks.
Dealing with the local politicians is what i manage at best, and even THEY write in a manner that i do need help understanding the letters.

[August]

If things are half as bad as Skybird claims I just don't see how you guys have a choice.

[HundertzehnGustav]

Its like a pyramid. the larger the base elements, the higher the higher ups are floating.
and man, are they floating! like balloons!
Its one of the reasons why I, for one am very EU critical.

but in this global world... how to do anything else than team up in order to survive? and the EU is , among others the effort to stand together in the competition for economic and military, financial , social (community) and intellectual assets.

small guy sees no option but to play that game, ignore the bad parts and hope for the best. While sometimes whishing it was 1995 again.

[Respenus]

@HundertzehnGustav

You are absolutely right in your assumption that in order to survive we need to work together, although precisely what form this takes is open up to debate, which I agree isn't done often enough. On this topic, I recommend work by Alan S. Milward, whose analysis of the reasons behind the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the first step toward the EU, points to the possibility to save the nation state in a completely new and hostile post WW2 environment.

I personally have to thank Skybird for introducing me to a more EU-critical stance. One doesn't have to reject it in order to question some elements and I dislike individuals on both sides of the debate that are completely inflexible and unwilling to see the other side of the coin. It is also true that the EU isn't debated enough, or more precisely, it is not presented in its true complexity. This will sound like elitist bull, but from my experience a lot of people change their opinion from a EU-rejection to EU-critical stance once you take the time and present and meat and the bones of how things are done in the EU, and not just the simplified, easy-to-digest morsels fed by the media. However, I also agree that this takes time and effort and most people will not do it. This is why, in my opinion, the EU is currently stuck between moving forward and lingering into obscurity. One part is the capabilities-expectations gap, another is the misunderstanding of the fundamental elements of EU policy and decision-making.

@August, things are bad in the EU right now, with unemployment and zero growth (outside Germany, Poland and some select few), but not with the EU as such, or that is what I would claim. The European Council (composed of Heads of State and Government) has taken on a leading role in the crisis solving, much to the detriment of the European Commission, which is supposed to represent the general interest of the EU and be the driving motor with its policy proposals. So in the middle of the crisis, we have minor institutional wrangling (although the president of the Commission has more or less accepted his role of subservience to the European Council) and the Parliament is being loud with its new found right to give assent on the new multiannual financial framework (consider it as the ultimate budgetary constraint for the next 7 years). Mix this with the crisis and the fact that the EU cannot do most if not all of the stuff the citizens want it to (like social security and rights) and that it depends on the Member States for the funding of its programmes, and you have a hell of time getting stuff done. This of course, reflect badly on the entire EU in the public, with the different relations and rules not being as clear on the first look.

So yeah, another fun day in EU-ville. Come join me for another exciting adventure

If things are half as bad as Skybird claims I just don't see how you guys have a choice.

If things were 10% as bad as Skybird claims I don't see how we would have a choice, but the claims are 95% rubbish.

but from my experience a lot of people change their opinion from a EU-rejection to EU-critical stance once you take the time and present and meat and the bones of how things are done in the EU, and not just the simplified, easy-to-digest morsels fed by the media. However, I also agree that this takes time and effort and most people will not do it. This is why, in my opinion, the EU is currently stuck between moving forward and lingering into obscurity. One part is the capabilities-expectations gap, another is the misunderstanding of the fundamental elements of EU policy and decision-making.

Thats the core of the issue, too many people seem to read a sensationalist piece of nonsense about bent cucumbers or banning balloons and simply believe what they read without question.
Unfortunately it tends to be the ones that swallow the simpletons media version which make the most noise.

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by August

If things are half as bad as Skybird claims I just don't see how you guys have a choice.

You're funny

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

If things are half as bad as Skybird claims I just don't see how you guys have a choice.

People in Europe and Germany are as much or as little "represented" by their voted politicians as in America. In other words: American politicians are as corrupted and disconnected as are European ones. In both systems you cannot get rid of the career guys, you can vote them out of office - and they keep popping up somewhere else instead, being pushed by their party's network. In both systems casreer politicians tell people they are from the people and for the people, and try to lure people into deeper dependencies from their party, by corrupting them with promises and so getting them used to benefits they gain from them - and so getting their votes. In both systems - is it really two different systems? - state and individuals live beyond their means and carelessly contribute to increasing the debt bubble. In both systems, political decision makers are mined by private lobbyists, and politics is in bed with business and banks. In both system this is a state of things that is not according to what the founding documents of nations or their constitutions want them to be. The discrepancy between what Germany is, and what is described in the Basic Law, is immense, and widening. The difference between what is in the American constitution and later attached documents, and the reality of politics and power in the US of the present time, is immense and is widening. By idea, the US is not any more free or more democratic, than many European nations like modern Germany, France, or Britain.

I never saw any justification in the way August makes it appear as if the Us were more free or democratic than many European states. On paper, the one is not more or less worse or good than the other. You will fail to demonstrate the superiority of the American constitution over the German one, or of the American pursuit of happiness over the German human dignity being inviolable, or over the French liberté, egalité, fraternité. And any such debate would be pointless today anyway, because our nations alltogether are no longer representing and living the principles they have been founded upon, once, a more or less longer time ago.

What politicians in America and Europe really live by, is the ruleset analytically examined and cold-bloodedly described by Machiavelli in his most profound book, the Discorsi. I highly recommend it. If you believe in political ideals, it will make short process of your ideals however. Power is not idealistic, nor is it moral. It is opportunistic, and pragmatic. In Europe. And in America. The rest of those noble ideas about today's politics is just good enough for the museums. - Mind you: Machiavelli did not advise what he thought was a good idea - he described what he observed. His approach was analytical, where as all others before him where idealistically when writing on the principles of politics. Others wrote what it should be like , ideally, Machiavellig wrote what in reality really happened. It is this misunderstandment that makes him so often and so massively misunderstood.

[HundertzehnGustav]

be4cause with open eyes, you see some inconvenient truths.
Things that make you mad...

So we have a bunch of frickin Liars "leading" us, a proper bunch of EU bureaucrats that are like leeches to the basic founding ideas, a set of lawyers and businessmen that sell the factories, while drugging us up with cheap Iphones and cheap Cars and the promises of cheap food, clothes and services.

While, dare i say, the dragon has awoken and the Beduin is counting his cash, The King of Russia is watching on silently and our American Friends have their own stuff and engagements to handle.

While The Europeans are breeding over financial problems and throwing punches at each other instead of standing together getting ready fro the onslaught from the outside.

How can this end well?

[mapuc]

Earlier today I read in the danish newspaper the same thing Skybird had linked to and was talking about

I was thinking about writting to this paper and telling them that it's a hoax and if they don't believe me they should visit this side, where there were a person that post a link and a story about it, but he was told that it is a lie/hoax

I think that our mainstrem media should be better than spreading these lies about EU, don't you think so too.

Markus

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

People in Europe and Germany...

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.

Earlier today I read in the danish newspaper the same thing Skybird had linked to and was talking about

You can find dozens of articles any day of the week, it doesn't mean they are true.

[Skybird]

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.

[Morts]

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.

Please dont use Skybird as the standard for Europeans.
And his rants really only represent a small portion of the people here.