The antithesis
Europe just isn’t one of the cool kids any more.
The European Union is, in many ways, the antithesis of the principles that Mr. Trump and his colleagues are championing. The bloc is built around an embrace of international trade based on rules. It has been at the forefront of climate-related regulation and social media user protections.
Well rules are for peons. The best people do whatever they want all the time, because they’re the best people. Regulation and protections are horrible things, because they hinder the best people for the sake of peons.
If the relationship between the United States and Europe were merely transactional, it would be relatively easy for Europeans to just spend more on the military and give Mr. Trump some sort of victory, said François Heisbourg, a French analyst and former defense official.
But in Mr. Vance’s speech attacking European democracy in Munich, let alone in the newly public exchange, the distaste for Europe is about more than transactions. “Vance was quite clear: We don’t share the same values,” Mr. Heisbourg said.
But (dropping the sarcasm for the moment) that’s not US v Europe so much as it is Trumpians v less horrible people. Lots of us do have values that align with European democracy.
Just not quite enough of us to keep those monstrosities out of government.
These people have no sense of history. If there’s one thread running throughout most of recorded history, it’s that there’s going to be war somewhere in Europe. And in the 20th Century we learned that when there’s war in Europe, the US is going to be sucked in. Which is why we helped set up the whole post-war political and economic system. A continent of democracies, mostly united in the EU and NATO, is a security guarantee for the US. It’s why the few wars that have broken out in Europe in the past 80 years have been localized. It doesn’t matter whether “we” share their values or not; the fact that they share those values keeps us safe. And if that’s not motivation enough, they should consider this: a peaceful Europe is a great vacation spot.
Well yes, but how many Americans leave the country or even their state? I would like to visit other countries and the like but I’ve only left Oregon three times in the last decade. The parochialism of Americans is impossible to overstate.
Pretty sure Vance and Trump and most other high-level administration officials have traveled abroad. They aren’t, or at least shouldn’t be, parochial.
Oh yes, people like tRump and Vance travel abroad, but only so they can:
Tell Italians only Starbucks makes real coffee and only Olive Garden understands Pasta.
Tell Spaniards to stop speaking Mexican and speak English.
Remind the French that it’s only because of America they don’t speak German, forgetting that their Civil War would have ended quite badly had France not dissuaded Perfidious Albion intervening on behalf of the Confederacy.
And to stomp all over the rest of Europe in their loud shirts and louder voices, driving away the locals and the more genteel tourists from elsewhere.
A totally parochial and isolationist RUSA would be a good thing.
My, what a sophisticated analysis.
Ophelia, don’t take it personally. I did write people like tRump and Vance. I did not say all American tourists.
Rev David, don’t patronize me. I didn’t say you said all American tourists, I said what a sophisticated analysis. It’s not that I took it personally, it’s that your sketch is crude.
crude…but very amusing