Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, Germany, is in crisis. President Biden’s ecocidal sabotage of NordStream 1, with the abject acceptance if not full-on collaboration of Europe’s comprador leaders, robbed it of the cheap energy which kept it competitive. 1 As Europeans pay through the nose to stay warm and put food on the table – or in the case of a burgeoning precariat see their children shiver and go hungry 2 – firms go under or relocate in the USA. Since Europe has little to trade and long ago ceased to feed itself, while sunset on Western supremacy erodes its ability to extract global rents from finance capital, its prospects seem bleak. Indeed, the one thing Washington can rightly claim as an unalloyed gain of its backfired war against Russia is a downgrading of Europe’s standing in the USA from junior partner to semi-colony.
But, hey, look on the bright side! Europeans can be thankful for the wisdom of their humble EC president. Here she is in September 2022, taking just eighteen seconds to share her searingly profound insights on how things stand in the Russian Federation.
I guess that’s my monthly sarcasm ration spent. Is she a US agent or plain stupid? Like so many others of her globalist ilk, she has a huge sense of entitlement. In a September post I wrote of the betrayal of European interests by leaders who, as Canadian academic Radhika Desai said in reply to her interlocutor:
… have been through the US ideological factories … the think tanks, the annual meetings etc. You know, the Leaders of Tomorrow programs for which these people go to the USA on junkets, and become part of a network of leaders with a similar understanding of what is to be done, both domestically and internationally. People like Starmer, Macron, von der Leyen and Annalena Baerbock … they belong to these circles. So in answer to the question – why are European governments acting manifestly contrary to the interest of their economies, their people etc? – the only reason I can find is that the people Washington has groomed have taken power in major European capitals.
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- I don’t say the Nordstream 1 explosions – understood on grounds of means, motive and opportunity by all with a mental age of twelve or over to have been perped or ordered by Washington – are solely to blame for Europe’s woes. The causes run deeper, and point to decades of transition into financialised economies as manufacturing went to the cheaper labour pools and business-friendly regimes of the global south. But the Baltic bangs and more broadly the costs of Europe’s war – reckless gamble, US pressure or a bit of both? – in the Ukraine synchronised and exacerbated the consequences.
- Those who think they can avoid the fate of their urban compatriots by cultivating land in the sticks show a touching faith in rule of law durability. A fortnight of food scarcity would send bands of townies deep into the countryside; hitherto law abiding folk now tooled up with kitchen knives and pick handles.
Call me alarmist but at the pinnacle of my nightmares is the collapse – post WW3, post environmental catastrophe or post economic betrayal by hubristic dim-wits like Ursula – of the rule of law. We do so take it for granted.
Too many people have a tendency to follow the example set by those at the top of the hierarchical structure.
In a culture awash with a plethora of daily examples of those who self-define themselves as our betters, picking and choosing when, where and if rules, laws and due process apply and don’t apply – from the drumhead style trials of a Labour Party Discipline process now transferred to the Governance of the Country where allegations are sufficient to determine automatic guilt to the open threats of the “Rules Based International Order” to invade The Hague and punish countries for complying with an arrest warrant to the outlawing of criticisms of The Official Narrative – the rule of law is already seriously compromised and fraying at the edges if not starting to come apart.
Add in the forced replacement over several decades of collective and community values* by the joined at the hips ultra individualism of Thatcherism and its woke twin, and matters will most certainly turn ugly in a system rapidly starting to unravel.
*Take a look around, for example, at the majority of those in your local community (wherever you are) who are giving up their time for collective voluntary activity. Staffing the voluntary libraries to keep them open; running the food banks; organising the chapel luncheon clubs; keeping the local community centre open with its summer, autumn, winter fairs, bonfire night firework displays, Christmas carol tours etc; those involved in the local Tenants and Residents Association, Clinical Care Groups, Fair Trade etc etc etc.
There ain’t many, if any, spring chickens to be seen from younger generations. And as time takes its toll, as it does, there are less and less stepping into the breach. And as a consequence, things we got used to and took for granted start to fold and disappear. Replaced by the grabbing atomised libartarian individualism envisiged by those such as Ayn Rand.
Pang of guilt. A stint at a food bank or similar would do me good.
As for the youth of today, I guess that’s what forty years of no such thing as society does. Especially when combined with a sense of affluence, less secure than many realise, born of property ownership in a FIRE economy.