EU disconnects even more from reality

[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.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I don't know if Europeans are "so hung up on you" as you naturally imply.

I didn't imply it, I stated it and from what I can see yes you are, or at least some of you are. The European peoples relations with the EU have nothing to do with us yet you feel it necessary to excuse your apathy by claiming that we're infected with the same disease. It's not gonna wash.

Maybe we Americans are blind but in our blindness we still have our hands in the game. Our politicians still have to tread a lot more carefully around us than yours do around you. You can't blame us for that.

[HundertzehnGustav]

Try and replace the word "excuse" by something like "describe".
I feel that Skybird wants to describe an image of the european peoples.

Not find excuses, for he offers a Book where a man takes thought, reasoning and action in his own hands, for his own sake, accepting the consequences of stepping out of the system and living on his own without the EU. The Global MoneyFlow.

That might help you gain an understanding of his post.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

I didn't imply it, I stated it and from what I can see yes you are, or at least some of you are. The European peoples relations with the EU have nothing to do with us yet you feel it necessary to excuse your apathy by claiming that we're infected with the same disease. It's not gonna wash.

Maybe we Americans are blind but in our blindness we still have our hands in the game. Our politicians still have to tread a lot more carefully around us than yours do around you. You can't blame us for that.

You have illusions about the state of things in your country. As we see it, corruption is AT LEAST as great in the US as it is here. Most of the lobbyists influencing decision makers in Brussel (insiders say there are 40-60 lobbyists per member of EU parliament), are representing American companies or US state offices. You are a very German, ironically: you represent quite strongly what usually is associated with the Germans: that the Germans are obedient believer of the official order and believe in the authenticity and legality of authorities and that things in reality of the state function like it is laid out black on white on paper. As I said before over the years: you mistake America as it is with what by the intentions 200 years ago it was meant to be. You refuse to realised the wide gap between the intention and the status-as-is. But the latter is what America really defines.

Not what we want to be, but what we really do is what defines who we are. The ideals expressed in old historical documents, and the contemporary present state - the latter is an insult to the first.

Has the military drilled you to be so uncritical towards your political leaders and establishment, so that you so notoriously mistake intention of the ideal with status in reality? I think so. Or is that a characteristic trait of yours that has drawn you to the military in the first? I have see your attitude towards your nation so very very often in professional soldiers, a certain kind of blind faith in one's country and leaders, uncritical and unreflective, no matter from which country. Germans, British, Americans, it does not matter. But I would hope and expect this to ease of a bit when one becomes older and has seen some nasty things. But well, everybody wants to believe he is on the side of what is good and what is the light, so maybe that is just a human basic attitude and to varying degrees can be found in everybody. If you want to sell war and soldiering to people, you have to be especially convincing in this regard, due to the matter war deals with.

"Nur die treuesten Soldaten schützen den Genossen Generalsekretär!" was an answer by a former GDR-security officer to a question in an interview. The Swiss guard is recruited from uncritical devout believers only.

Anyhow, this came in today: Es macht keinen Spaß mehr, Anti-Amerikaner zu sein.

Funny that even me thinks since two or three years that Obama-policy indeed is pure socialism.

Why is this so. Maybe because if both Europeans and Americans get lured by their corrupted establishments to move away from the democratic and free and liberal basic orders their states are founded upon, this is motivated by the same intentions of the establishments to accumulate even more corrupted power and deceive the masses over that. Same intention causes same design, and so both America and Europe become more and more equal in the way they are being distorted.

What comes it down to by the end of the day? When the democrats win an election and send a president, the corporations in the background stay in control and power. And when the Republicans win elections and send a president, the corporations in the background stay in control and power. Politicians come and go, the system stays. And that is not the system your constitution has idealistically "designed", but is an empty corpus that has been eroded and replaced with a different system that many people are not aware of, or prefer to ignore, and that has been designed by those in the background to serve their purpose and to safeguard them against the people. On how the US was meant, you must not argue with me, I have too much sympathy for that and agree with too much of that, and in the past 3 or 4 years have even moved more towards it. But in our amounts to which we see the difference between the idea, and the realised present status, we could not be more apart.

[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.

[August]

Originally Posted by Morts

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

I thought so. I have a bucket full of German relatives and none of them are anything like Skybird but you can't judge an entire people based on what your cousins are like.

[HundertzehnGustav]

True dat True dat.

and as with the media, it is with the people.
you have the lefties and the righties, the ones and the others, the same and the different.
Truth lies somewhere in the middle.