Thoughts on Europe
The bass line on Korn’s “Here to Stay” makes me want to destroy stuff. Man, I LOVE it. Seriously, download that song, turn the volume up, and tell me in all honesty that it doesn’t make you want to:
- Punch a hole in the drywall,
- Headbang like Jason Newsted, and
- Bomb the living shit out of Iraq.
You can’t! It’s like a chemical reaction! So it’s the soundtrack in my life. That, Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” and Pinback’s excellent album Blue Screen Life.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit of late about Europe. I think one of the things that this war in Iraq (and the ongoing brouhaha) has done is expose the ugly side of Europe. It’s not the “civilized,” morally superior continent it would have you believe. Allow me to explain.
Europe is a ragtag bunch of countries with a long and sordid history. Most of them colonized the Third World, and we all know that wasn’t a nice thing to do. Thing is, they don’t seem to feel too contrite about it; they’d rather just not talk about that chapter in their history. To Europe, those former colonies are like the strange member of the family that you don’t mention at the reunion. Everyone knows about him, but you’d rather not talk about him. So they leave their sordid history be and try to continue on, never really owning up to their past.
Then you’ve got the problem of war. Europe is good at it. Those Germans — they tried to take over Europe (and the world) twice — twice! — in twenty-five years. Pretty ambitious, don’t you think? Only European countries have ever threatened the world.
And then there’s the America problem. Well, fuck. Problem is, we’ve got a leg-up on these old farts in several areas. First off, we had to save them from themselves twice — it was that bugger Germany causing trouble. Then we had to help out in the Cold War — and wouldn’t you know it, we won that one too. And then there’s the embarrassing fact that our Constitution is older than any of our venerable old neighbors’ across the Atlantic — that’s another body blow.
Whew. So that sucks for Europe. In the aftermath of WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, our old buds have had to do some adjusting. Their first task was to absolutely beat any world ambition out of those Germans — and damn, whatever they’re teaching in the deutsche Schule is working. Those kids can spot neo-imperialism with the best of them, and guess what? America is the bully these days! So the Germans hate us. The indoctrination has worked. A strange brew of hardline pacificism imposed on those brutal Aryans has evidently taken in the younger generation.
A second problem was the loss of moral credibility of Europe. Now c’mon, each time these guys have almost destroyed the world, it’s taken America’s intervention to save their asses. Their screw-up was our gain. So what was the solution? Join together, of course, and try to regain some semblance of credibility through the United Nations. Of course, ironically enough, many of the member nations of that body are former colonies (i.e. plantations and raw materials suppliers on a huge scale) to old Europe. But no matter. The UN has become the perfect vehicle in the post-Cold War to oppose the superpower status of the U.S. No matter that the UN hasn’t accomplished anything of note. No matter that it failed miserably in Somalia. No matter that 800,000 Rwandans died on its watch. It’s the United Nations, right? And we should respect it, right?
So that’s Europe. A Europe that needs America to intervene to save Europe from itself. A Europe that resents America because as a former colony, its power has grown to outstrap that of the entire EU. A Europe that has conditioned the very idea of war out of its youngest generation, and in so doing forgotten the lesson that war can very well be necessary: ask those in Poland on September 1, 1939. A Europe so abhorred by its own self-destructiveness that it will beat so-called brutality out of its young and make them into spineless wimps in the process. A Europe that has no concept of its own past: a Europe that fails to acknowledge its disgusting colonialism and the failures of its darling UN.
And so, I must confess, this war has afforded me an important insight: Europe in no way holds the moral high ground.