A Sackful of Wrong

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There were some ah… interesting comments on the post two days ago. That’s counting the ones that were approved. The ones that weren’t approved weren’t not because I thought we couldn’t debate them, but because they showed either such a bizarre misunderstanding of this community or of history or (for the win) both that they were either trolls or people I didn’t want to get in under the radar next time.

One of the for the win ones was the one who said that Salazar was recently voted as one of the best Portuguese of all time, and seemed to believe I’d been an enthusiastic supporter of the revolution and/or that the fact that people vote someone now dead almost sixty years as “one of the greatest” a big accolade. To clarify, Salazar was better than sliding into communism. That’s it. But when I say we were “poor as Job” that’s on whose head to lay it. He wasn’t a fascist, which is how American history books describe him. No, wait. He wasn’t a fascist in the sense of hating the Jews and standing with Hitler. He was a fascist like FDR in the sense of controlling every facet of the economy, starting the welfare state (national health care AND social security), crony capitalism, and a misguided and backward mercantilism.

Overthrowing the regime would have been a good thing, (only it wasn’t his regime anymore but that of his chosen successor under whom I suspect Portugal would have been a kinder, gentler version of China today and possibly very prosperous, if still soft-fascist) if the Junta that overthrew him hadn’t contained at least communist under orders from Moscow. As it was, Portugal swung the other way so fast that it gave me a good understanding of how socialism is the soft slide to communism; communism corrupts a country to get in; and I want nothing to do with either. It made me a determined anti-communist, which has cost me something, not the least in terms of career here, where “communism” is hip. Oh, and that swing destroyed the Portuguese colonies in Africa which were handed on a platter to Russian front groups. For that alone, the revolution as it happened and when it happened was a very bad thing. Talk to Peter Grant for details. It doesn’t mean that the previous regime was wonderful. What you get there is the equivalent of Russians pining for the tzar because what followed as so unimaginably worse. But it doesn’t mean the tzar was wonderful. (And in Portugal what followed was paradoxically better in material terms. Which, btw, if nothing else is an indictment of the ancient regime, because if euro-socialists can manage your country finances better than you can, whoa, dude.)

I didn’t approve that one because Portuguese history has been discussed here before and it profits nothing except when I see we’re making the same mistake. Portugal has now been more or less absorbed wholesale into euro madness which means what worked about it has ceased to work, and what never worked in Europe has filled it with wrong. That is their problem, not mine. It is the problem of Europe too. My prediction, enshrined in a future history I use as a yardstick for the space operas and which is now 20 years old, is that it will end in blood. Civilization isn’t created or controlled by laws but by culture, and though some generations of Europeans have been raised in subjection to a bunch of arbitrary international socialist rules, that is not what Europe IS.

Americans who go there and actually hang out with natives on equal terms are often shocked at the startlingly racist, sexist, xenophobic things Europeans say and aren’t ashamed to display in public.

That is European culture. I’m not judging here. I’ll just say it wasn’t for me, and so I left. The European union is a veneer applied on something much older and more powerful. Despite fast transportation, etc, the Europeans of today remember their parents and grandparents talking about beating up the guy from over the ridge who came to court “their girls.”

I found myself the unwitting cause of one of these disputes while taking a walk with a friend in the village, on a summer afternoon when my parents weren’t at home.

Note I walked in the village all the time, often in short-shorts and that this time I was wearing a dress, and that this was the only time this confrontation happened: village cohesion was already weakening at that time.

We must have been about fourteen which means that while Mr. Hormone had come calling and I had at least one seriously platonic crush that had led me into writing rhymed and metered sonnets, neither of us were thinking of boyfriends yet. This is because we were on the university-track and getting married before 22 wasn’t happening.

Also in my generation there were maybe two or three boys in the village who might have reached-up to my social level (and my friend’s) but they weren’t considered close enough to our class for our parents (yes, in Europe that matters. Sorry, but it’s another of those things that it’s hard to explain to Americans. I suspect it still maters, though now I’m too far away to be sure.) It’s not that such matches didn’t happen, but I knew if I were interested in one of them I’d have to fight my parents (and my friend’s parents would probably just stare in frozen horror.) and I didn’t like any of them enough for even a pretend-dating that would bring that on my head.

Anyway, we went for a walk. The details are fuzzy, but I think she was staying with me for the weekend while my parents were out, and we’d got bored or cabin-fevered and went for a walk.

A bunch of guys on motorcycles started calling things out to us. We treated them as we’d been taught, and as I still treat importune strangers – you let your face go impassive, and you pretend they’re not there. – In the village that would have made the guy slink away in shame, but these unspanked babies decided to follow us on our walk, back home. This was, mind you, a matter of maybe a mile at that point. We went into my parents’ home, closed the door and didn’t go near the windows. We were both a little unsettled the same way I still am (though I’ve been hardening myself) by rudeness, because it hadn’t come in our way before.

The idiots stayed outside screaming things and revving up their motorcycles. (I’m going to assume, right now that either wherever they came from had no women or that they’d heard something about all the women of the village being sluts, and believed it – which showed a level of stupidity rarely found anywhere.)

Note here that my aunt next door, a woman who had an unerring ability to take a situation by the wrong end, later told my mother that my friend and I had “encouraged” these boys, because otherwise why would they stay outside “for upward of an hour.”

Anyway, the idiots stayed outside… until word got around the village, when a bunch of village boys gathered in front of the house and started a fight, at which point the interlopers, motorcycles less than shiny, skiddaddled out of the village.

My mom in the round of gossip the next day told me why the boys intervened.

I was grateful, in either case, but they weren’t defending us because we were innocent (we were. I don’t think we even looked at these guys until they started up) girls being harassed by louts. Oh, no.

They got in a fight and sent these guys packing because they were “strangers” by which I mean they were probably from ten miles away, and “we can’t have strangers come courting our select girls.”

No one had taught that to that generation of boys. They might have heard a story or two from their parents, but the bonds between village youths were no longer what they had been in my father’s day when I suspect they’d have been classed as a gang (or the army of a city state. Whichever.)

But it was still there.

I could be completely wrong. There have been large population movements around and things are even looser. On the other hand, I hear the same spirit in the comments of shop keepers.

I suspect Europe will convulse and throw out both out of the continent immigrants and anyone perceived as a stranger, which will vary from place to place.

This doesn’t mean it will go back to some form of pure race. Pure “nationality” in Europe is a myth. It exists only in the sense that people believe it exists. In reality there have been periods like this all along where people from outside the area flooded the area. It was usually caused by or ended in tears.

I think it will end in tears and blood and that at the end of it Europe will still be Europe, although there’s a generation there who will need to be very fertile if some places are to stay viable.

I think Russia’s chest pounding is the beginning of the ball, and though they’re as importune as those boys who followed us on the motorcycles and though in the end what they will spark is a convulsion that will tear Europe into the pieces it was before the euro-delusions and/or into new and different pieces (because Europe is at its heart clannish and clan and nation don’t always coincide.)

But that’s part of my future history (where they then try to grow people in vats, to make up the difference in population, but that’s the sf bit.)

Will it come through that way? I suspect so. Things tend to happen in the world stage according to very deeply-laid patterns of culture and behavior. This is something we Americans – people of the paper and the rules – tend to not fully get.

I suspect Europeans will go back to their foundational principles, and so will we. Those are very different from each other and very different from where we’ve got, and a lot of blood will be spilled along the way, as the top-down regimes encouraged by mass industry fracture in the age of distributed producing.

That’s part of what we’re seeing. These transitions are always unpleasant. The blood is always part of these transitions, too, as is the words and the philosophy lagging the actual change.

Slavery wasn’t abolished until it had been superseded by industry (as someone pointed out here, slavery is not economically practical. But it is psychologically practical in that when there’s work no sane man will want to do for money, slavery or serfdom exists.) The “liberation” of women didn’t happen until infant mortality was so low that we could afford to have women have only one or two kids, instead of the ten or so you used to need to raise one or two.

Explanation lags change, always. Which is why communism is still around and still vocal: a philosophy created at the dawn of the age of big machines.

It is a dead philosophy walking, but to make it fall over will take blood. Because it always does, to kill zombies.

(Btw, to the extent history has a direction it is a direction imposed on it by technological development. Some forms of interaction and government are more appropriate to the level/type of technology. Hence, in the day of vast factories and concentration of the means of communication the conflicting philosophies were all to an extent top-down. As were the dystopias extrapolated. To make this clear, to understand the errors of thought in 1984, imagine a Heinlein character dropped into it. The progressives never got that. They froze mentally in the early 20th century, thus believing the arrow of history is a thing and it always points to them.)

Having touched on relations between men and women – a great part of the “wrong” in the comments was men who thought men were worthless (!) and men who thought men should “control” women, for an ideal state, both of which are somewhat bordering on the insane – I was going to go on to explain how civilization to be successful consists of both genders and all humans controlling THEMSELVES.

But that will wait till tomorrow, as I have a book to write. This is the new policy, btw. Wrong in the comments of commenters that were pre-approved before, or that seem substantial enough for you guys to enjoy chewing, will be left for the Huns to play with. If I feel I must answer I’ll do so in a post.

I’ll still answer comments, but I can’t be drawn into arguments of any length, if the books are to get written.

 

230 thoughts on “A Sackful of Wrong”

  1. My prediction, enshrined in a future history I use as a yardstick for the space operas and which is now 20 years old, is that it will end in blood. Civilization isn’t created or controlled by laws but by culture, and though some generations of Europeans have been raised in subjection to a bunch of arbitrary international socialist rules, that is not what Europe IS.

    I agree, and the reason why I think it will end in blood is that the lawful order is failing so miserably at enforcing the law equally and fairly. This leaves it down to a question of whether the natives or immigrants will get their way by force — and the natives outnumber the immigrants. And control the military.

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    1. Of the people I know here the university educated tend to pay at least lip service to the ‘citizen of the world’ and ‘we owe it to them’ – them meaning third world people, especially the immigrants – ideas, and there are enough who seem to fully believe them.

      But even with lots of them it seems to be just lip service. And the blue collar people are often at least suspicious, and sometimes openly hostile when they think they can talk without problems (problems like risking their jobs).

      Add to that the fact that especially the immigrants from those areas of the world with very different rules also do have a tendency to act badly in noticeable numbers – street violence and rape news often specifically mention if the perpetrators were native Finns, and we read them like the Soviet citizens used to read Pravda, if what the perp looked like is left out the general assumption is ‘immigrant or alien’ because most times, if further news come out, that turns out to be true.

      And yes, Finnish men rape too. But they tend to rape women they know. Street rapes, when some strange man attacks a woman he has never met are something which have started happening more as our population of immigrants has gotten bigger. The actual numbers may not be all that big, but the fact that they do happen often enough to be noticeable at all is very likely bad news. For the immigrants.

      And yes, there is anger, and suspicion, for now it’s mostly under the surface, but it is there. And it might not take all that much to make it boil over some time in the not all that distant future.

      Especially since right now the general impression the ordinary people here get is that both the people in charge and the people who write the news seem to be both trying to understate and downplay, and sometimes hide, the problems there may be, and – most important – aren’t seen to be doing anything effective to solve them, beyond talking a lot, especially about things like racism which seem like an attempt to shift the burden of finding the solution to those same ordinary citizens many of whom are already feeling insulted over the fact that all these strangers have come here and now seem to be acting as if they own the place…

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      1. And my personal opinion: immigration is good, mixing ideas and people is generally good and no civilization can survive well without at least some of that happening. But right now right here it’s being done wrong. You should not make the natives (especially natives who still are as tribal as Europeans are) feel as if they are the ones who are asked – or told – to adjust and bend over to accommodate the newcomers. And now and here that is pretty much the general impression we get. It doesn’t even matter whether it’s the truth or not, with these things it’s the impressions which matter.

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        1. Immigration is not especially nor particularly good. Mixing people is only good if they adhere to an idea/culture that is good. Otherwise, throughout history it’s a recipe for trouble and war.

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          1. I guess I do believe in the idea of hybrid vigor. And ‘when in Rome’, or the way immigration was done in USA during the 19th and early 20th century seems to work pretty well. When people who move somewhere go with the idea that they are the ones who should adjust, and become not just citizens on paper but people of that country in their attitudes too. But when it’s people moving somewhere but expecting to remain as they were in their original country, with no real changes, and worse, perhaps expecting that the people of the new country are the ones who should adjust, no, then it usually doesn’t work all that well if at all.

            And of course it depends on the attitudes of the people in the new country too. If the new people and their descendants will always be seen as the strangers, no matter how well they behave and how much they try to adjust, well, of course then it doesn’t work either. But those countries do seem to have the tendency to end up stagnating.

            So I think the long term healthiest alternative for a country is probably to be one which is willing to take immigrants, but also demands the willingness to adjust to its culture and mores – and laws – from those immigrants.

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            1. As has been said, what we’ve got, right now, is not immigration. It’s the large scale migration of a society that doesn’t share our culture, and doesn’t, by-and-large, intend to.

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              1. And it’s a “sent” migration – the countries these folks are from are basically exporting them en masse.

                I wonder if the lessons from the current anti-cartel folks in Mexico (which reportedly includes folks who’ve lived up here, got all contaminated with usaiian ideas, and then went home) are penetrating upwards, though: By exporting their hopeless they are in effect supplying us with a pre-acculturated guerrilla army for overthrowing their societies. I doubt the ruling classes would enjoy it if the US were to adopt a policy of “Hi, sorry, no, you can’t come in, but here’s an AK with five mags, a thousand rounds of ammunition, info on a dead drop where you can contact our in-country Green Beret detatchment, and enough cash for food and a bus ride home – go back and make there look more like here.”

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                1. Sadly, I’ve heard that the Mexican government turned on the anti-Cartel people again not long after essentially okaying them.

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                    1. Gee a government turns on its people after they disarm. Who coulda guessed that would happen. Except, you know, Mason, Jefferson, Washington and Paine

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            2. Y’know, maybe hybrid vigor is the right way to look at it?

              The way it (generally) works is that you introduce a little of a different strain into the group you’re trying to strengthen– say, every third time you replace a bull, it’s a different but desirable addition.

              Crossing two “pure”– first generation crosses– will make a mess, unless the populations being crossed are both entirely desirable. (This will eventually result in a new breed for cattle or similar creatures.)

              If a population is stable enough it can stagnate– then a small amount of new blood, any new blood, will help you.

              From what you describe, the issue is that the cultural breeding is assuming that ALL possible crosses are good.

              Say, like the hobby farm down the road that’s confused that their “milk cows” aren’t giving very much milk, when they’ve been using whatever bull was cheap for breeding– so the cows are about half beef now, and not much good for either.

              The “product” of a culture is the kind of situation that the folks living in it get; I rather prefer even the worst parts of the US to ISIS controlled areas, but I can sort of see how very small amounts of genuine psycho threats would make a culture stronger.

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              1. “Say, like the hobby farm down the road that’s confused that their “milk cows” aren’t giving very much milk, when they’ve been using whatever bull was cheap for breeding– so the cows are about half beef now, and not much good for either.”

                :)

                When I worked on a dairy farm they often would breed their heifers to an Angus bull, because they have smaller calves and this is easier on the heifers for their first calf. The owners would always keep a couple of these calves each year to raise for beef for themselves and their kids, the rest went to the sale. But I do remember them selling a couple of heifer calves two some Seattlites who moved to a ‘farm’ ( I think 10 acres) down the road a ways, and those Seattlites were going to raise those heifers and milk them. We all got a good laugh out of that.

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                1. Sad thing is, my parents have tried to explain to them what they’re doing, but… well, they want what they want, and mom considers it a victory that she managed to talk them out of buying their own bull. Just one. To keep until he died of old age*….

                  For some reason the leap between “breeding a bull to his daughters, grand-daughters and great grands” and what their folk-genetics knows of the human version just doesn’t happen….. (since cows are already relatively inbred because they’ve been carefully selected, it’s closer to what TV genetics assures us would be the case for humans, in addition to just being icky!)

                  *obviously, part of this is for the peanut gallery.

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                  1. “To keep until he died of old age*….”

                    Let me guess, if these people comprehended the meaning of the phrase, “judicious culling”, they would be horrified.

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              2. We had a successful wave of immigration during the 19th century and early 20th, people who came here to work and because they saw business opportunities, and after we got our independence refugees from Russia. But apart from those Jews who have kept their religion, and a small population of Tatars, they assimilated, and even with the Jews and Tatars the main difference is just the religion. Their descendants may have some family traditions dating from their origins, but otherwise they are just Finns, not people who just happen to live in Finland.

                And those older immigrants did start several highly successful businesses which still exist and are now thought to be something essentially Finnish.

                That is, I guess, what I think when I say that I believe in hybrid vigor.

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          2. Am I the only one who remembers when much of the left was against imigration, from any country to another, because it eased the pressures that would, they hoped, lead to government mandated population control? Asimov was against imigration.

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          3. Immigration is like salt. In moderate amounts it adds flavor and spice to an otherwise drab meal, in copious amount causes inedibility and eventually fatality.

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        2. Immigration isn’t necessarily good. Immigration and INTEGRATION can be good, if the culture being integrated into is good. Immigration with reverse integration (natives integrating into the immigrants; usually conquerors, culture) can be good if the native culture is subpar enough. But Immigration without integration of some kind is like mixing oil and water; what you usually get is the Balkans.

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            1. Some countries around here could probably use some. Instead we seem to be getting enclaves of strangers who seem rather happy to stay as strangers, unless they are complaining that the natives are not welcoming enough or attacking those of their own who actually are trying to become locals.

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      2. They’re not acting like they own the place. They’re acting like they’re renting the place and have no plans to stay on past the end of the lease. If one assimilates, one takes ownership in one’s new country. If one doesn’t assimilate, one treats it like a rental. And it shows.

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        1. Yes — just read Victor Davis Hanson’s articles about life in California’s agricultural regions to realize that. But, then, did they behave any differently in their homelands?

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      1. Well, and this is part of what I want to tackle. In many ways we have acted sanely and rationally a lot of times. Civilization improves. I’m sure that Elizabethans would have considered Babylonians savages. And oh would we ever consider Elizabethans savages — or insane, or low class, or…. — but the choices were made as a group to move away from savagery and towards civilization. (And yes, part of it was the tech.)

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        1. Yep. I think the tendency to look around and see insanity and irrationality (to extend the theme) is one of the driving forces of cultural evolution (and subsequently the evolution of civilization). In that sense, it’s to the good.

          But — we are remarkably sane and rational compared to various historical periods. Likewise, this is a near paradise in any long-term evaluation.

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      3. That’s a good point.

        Here’s examples of my thinking:

        If my neighbor triples his wealth and solely because he does my standard of living increases even by a fraction of a percent, I should be happy.

        Or if my neighbor is down on his luck and I give him some of my surplus and he then refrains from disruptive behavior caused by a desire to survive, that is saner and more rational than just ignoring him.

        Or if some aspect of my neighbor annoys me — maybe his race or religion or the that he’s loud– and instead of letting it show I give him a smile and treat him friendly and end up with a trusted friend, that would be the rational choice.

        Even finding a wallet and returning it full would be the rational choice as if everyone did it social trust would be gained. The more social trust the fewer laws and the more happiness.

        If everyone took care of those out of luck and that those who got this care acted grateful and didn’t pretend it was “a right” and realized that they had some kind of an obligation not just not to be a burden but to return the favor down the road, a lot of our problems would go away.

        But these are choices and the choices and very easily go the other way and in miserable societies they more often do.

        The damming thing is that there are forces in our culture that actually encourage the wrong choices.

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    2. note I didn’t say people would. I said that civilization consists of controlling yourself. Usually because that’s the behavior that pays, not because it’s “rational” or “sensible” or even “the right thing to do.” But it pays either in non-ostracism or in actual money.

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      1. To sort of quote Milton Friedman, it is not that civilized men are good and do the moral thing, it is that they are human and have incentive to do the right thing

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        1. But only as long as the society they live in puts a value on the right thing and the government doesn’t distort incentives to make doing the wrong thing more “profitable” to the individual.

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    3. The sad thing is that if everyone acted sanely and rationally the world would be a near paradise.
      ———————-

      Well, yes… and no…

      That works so long as certain non-people elements remain stable. But when they don’t…

      As an example, the Roman Empire was brought down, at least in part, by massive numbers of people showing up on their front doorstep. There’s at least some evidence that the reason why these people were suddenly relocating was because their homelands suddenly became too cold to live in. But the problem with relocating is that you need a place to relocate too. Good places (and even mediocre places) tend to already be occupied by people who weren’t going to be able to take care of that many new mouths. The people already living there tend to object when you inform them that they’re going to have to feed tens of thousands of new mouths. So one nation took a second nation’s land. And the second nation took a third nation’s land. And so on, until you had these displaced nations turning up on Rome’s borders. The Romans, of course, kept telling each of the nations, “Guys, you can’t live here. We already live here, and we can’t absorb so many new people all at once.” But the fact of the matter is that there was no where else for these groups to go. So wars were fought, and Rome eventually fell.

      In each instance, most of the people involved were acting in a “sane and rational” manner. It’s just that “sane and rational’ manner meant that bad things had to happen to someone else. Who exactly that someone else was going to be wasn’t set in stone.

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      1. I’ll concede you have a point. Ethics change when lifeboats hit the water.

        But crisis end, and the real problems concerning the fall of Rome didn’t happen until a few generations later. The Gothic Wars had a far, far higher death toll than the barbarian invasions and they could have been avoided with a little bit of sanity.

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      2. The people already living there tend to object when you inform them that they’re going to have to feed tens of thousands of new mouths.

        Possibly part of the problem is that such an expectation is at best incomplete, and probably wrong?

        The new people weren’t just mouths that expected to be fed… if anything, the problem was probably more like “both wanted to continue to behave as they previously had, but in a different area.”

        If “both sides” had tried to find a better solution, it probably would’ve worked, at least fairly well– those who were previously hunters doing part time in the raising stuff category, melding what they know with what’s already there, with a more slight pushing on down.

        …..

        Of course, the MOST rational way of dealing with “those people are in my way” is to kill the people. Then you get their stuff AND they won’t bother you any more.

        Reason is kinda like science/technology– your starting place will GREATLY change the results you get.

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        1. The new people weren’t just mouths that expected to be fed… if anything, the problem was probably more like “both wanted to continue to behave as they previously had, but in a different area.”
          ——————–

          imo, a lot of it does come down mouths to feed. If you’re living in town of that era, and a group of people roughly the same size as your own population suddenly shows up, then food suddenly becomes very, very important. After all, without the farming techniques that have been learned since then, you’re probably not bringing in much more than what can be comfortably used to feed your own community. And a group that big will overhunt the surrounding lands in very little time. If you try and take care of these people, then there’s probably going to be a lot of starvation when Winter arrives.

          Though the whole “continue to behave as they previously had” attitude is definitely not going to help matters.

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        2. The new people weren’t just mouths that expected to be fed… if anything, the problem was probably more like “both wanted to continue to behave as they previously had, but in a different area.”

          Ayuh – we have the same problem heah in NC with Damn Yankees and Halfbacks; I gather folks in Colorado are experiencing similar problems with Californians.

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          1. I was at a Bronco game at the new Mile High a few years back, way up in the nose bleeds. There was a group of people in the middle of the section who were obviously not paying any attention to the game, just talking amongst themselves. (No clue why they paid good money to ignore a game but who am I?) The one time they actually got excited was when someone in the section lit up a cigarette. (The smoking ban had gone through not too long before.) After they’d whined for a while, someone finally yelled “GO BACK TO CALI YOU F***S!” They shut up for the rest of the game.

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  4. Yes it will end badly. The fact is the larger the group the less it will display any intelligence. It truly is a reverse relationship. Your motorcycle riders were a big enough group to be somewhat dim. Brussels and all the bureaucracy have grown to be big enough to be dumber than a slow rabbit having a bad day.

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  5. Think globally, act locally.
    Global – survival as a species with as few wars as possible, but when you must fight win and win quickly.
    Local – keep house and home together and food in the pantry. Provide support to immediate and extended family and your circle of friends and acquaintances on a sliding scale. The closer to you the more you care.
    It does strike me that America’s greatest pride and perhaps biggest mistake is in that we have more than once been the greatest power on this Earth and never ever even considered going Roman and taking it all over. Would have solved many of our current problems, but I am certain created ever so many more.

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  6. I read a book a little while ago that described the idea of the EU as a “unification project launched by eminent and creative thinkers after the Second World War based on the idea that Europeans should find better things to do than to keep slaughtering each other.” The writer was of the opinion that not slaughtering each other was a really good plan, but EU bureaucratic socialism was not, and that unless things change, Europe will slide into poverty. Now, I’m hoping it doesn’t slide into yet more slaughter, in the east anyway.

    “Americans who go there and actually hang out with natives on equal terms are often shocked at the startlingly racist, sexist, xenophobic things Europeans say and aren’t ashamed to display in public.”

    I lived a year in Northern Europe –granted, it was 25 years ago, I was 15–and I was indeed shocked. And the same people who would talk about Asians or Middle Easterners in shocking terms would then turn to me and tell me about how racist Americans were and how awful it was that we were so racist.

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    1. This is because our press portrays us as racist, and they IMAGINE it must be worse than they are, of course. Yes, they’re still like that. You can add homophobic to the equation, too.
      The problem is not-slaughtering can’t be imposed from above. Or given humans, possibly at all.
      I suspect it will be all of Europe, not just the East.

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    2. They don’t see their prejudices as racist, the see them as rationally derived from observation. I’ve had some of those conversations, they’re tiring.

      And as Sarah notes, they buy the media hype. They believe we’re arbitrary in our hate, and thus racist.

      :|

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      1. And, as Sarah has pointed out before, their media downplays their warts, so they assume we must be much worse than what is portrayed in the media, even though our media trumpets our faults everywhere rather than downplaying them.

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      2. And a part of that problem, dammit, is that for nearly every stereotype there is a small but vociferous group that appears to have dedicated considerable time and effort to living down to that stereotype.

        There ARE Islamic men who behead people.

        There are Long Island Jewish women who are never satisfied with the service in any restaurant (my mother-in-law was present at a table of such when a headwaiter actually did as “Was anything all right?”.

        There are black gangbangers who behave like chimps (chimps are mean) on crack.

        And I have absolutely no explanation of this

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                1. yeah. There’s different ones for the seasons. I’ve always liked fall, because when I was a kid, we got roasted chestnuts (we got to roast them, even as kids, on pine needle piles, so fun) and we got grape harvest and it was my birthday.
                  I miss grape harvest and stomping grapes. Ah well.

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      3. “They don’t see their prejudices as racist, the see them as rationally derived from observation. I’ve had some of those conversations, they’re tiring.”

        I’ve made the same arguments as those Europeans at times. I am NOT prejudiced against any race, on the other hand I am prejudiced against certain cultures, and believe any rational person who would bother to observe those cultures would also be prejudiced against them.

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        1. Except, that’s not the argument they make.

          I agree with you, there are detrimental cultural traits, things that should be recognized and pointed out for the dead-ends they are. Things that should be kicked out of civilization and left to die. Calling those things out has nothing to do with race and the knee-jerk tendency to decry cultural criticism as racism is willfully ignorant and damaging to the long-term viability of our shared American culture and the success of civilization.

          But that’s not the argument those I talked to made. That’s a nuanced argument. I was faced with stark declarations irrespective of culture (though derived from cultural observations). For instance, Chinese-Americans (I hate hyphenations, but it’s a functional system) whose family have been in the States since the gold rush: Recipient of just as much scorn as somebody born and raised in Beijing.

          Now, to avoid falling victim to my own argument, I make no declaration regarding all of Europe. It’s simply an observation that despite the assumptions of many (in Europe and out) about the superior civilization of Europe they’re as human as the rest of us. Subject to the same series of human faults.

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          1. Fits with what I know. Since I know, and know of, some actual racists personally – like in people who seem to assume all Africans, especially the majority with high melanin contents in their skin, are mentally inferior to Europeans (they don’t even seem to allow for the existence of the bell curve in abilities) instead of just disliking their cultural traits – and considering the fact that I don’t have all that large a group of friends and acquaintances and I mostly hang out with a group who are what you Americans call liberals I’d assume they are not all that scarce here.

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          1. I’d like to think it’s born of a desire to see ourselves honestly and to strive to be better. A cultural tendency to self-evaluation.

            But I don’t think I’m quite that optimistic, at least as regards anything remaining of such a birth manifesting over the length of my life.

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          2. And the Aussies. And to an extent the Canadians.

            Then ask the question “which countries have a press that is *least* controlled by the government”. And do account for the Europhila amoung the sorts that count this stuff.

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        2. Our elites (most especially the Media component) view us with disgust, like an unfortunate nouveau riche relative — they want what only we can provide but they can’t stomach our (lack of) manners, dining preferences, manner of dress or entertainment, nor our methods of addressing problems (we tend to solve, rather than accommodate, them.)

          We are their geeky nerdish kid sibling who they are forced to take along into the greater world, no matter how much we embarrass them. That is why the MSM typically hides the identity of perpetrators when they are members of a victimized sub-class — why you never find a “D” when reading of a corrupt politician who is not a Republican, why you never find the perp’s race in the description unless that perp is white (or white Hispanic) — even though it pains them greatly to have to simplify the news in order to prevent their unevolved siblings from jumping to wrong conclusions.

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          1. BTW — ever notice the Media never edits itself to ensure “victim” groups don’t feel endangered and inclined to riot? In fact, they approve of victim group riots and stoke them on, probably as a warning to the awkward sibling of how serious our transgressions have been.

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            2. Now, now. Minorities in the US do not “riot”. They “protest”.

              Never mind that they’re shooting, looting, and torching. That’s a “protest”.

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              2. If things get really out of hand they “demonstrate.”

                Where I grew up “demonstrating” was generally expressed as, “showing your @$$.”

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  7. I, by the way, was listening to a lecture by Ralph Raico on Fascism the other day. Outside of Germany’s Fascism, which was given it’s anti-semitic tone by its ruling clique, Italian, Spanish and apparently Portuguese fascism was national, not racial in nature, and focused on ordering society. Raico points out that the rise in Fascism was specifically done to block the rise of what was seen as that specter of Communism stalking Europe, and to end the disorder and the violence of the uprisings that the labor unions and revolutionaries were trying to use to overthrow the governments: the argument was that where the old lassaiz faire system brought about unrelieved suffering and the last war, and Communism brought violent upheaval and the atrocities seen in Russia, Fascism promised a “third path” (which always makes me think of the path to Elfland somehow) to avoid the one option and forestall the other.
    Of course, it is interesting to note that all the Fascist states later became deeply influenced by Communism anyways. Not sure if that is a result of losing in WWII, or the fact that once you have a totalitarian state that controls the economy, it is hard for the person on the street to see the difference besides the color of the posters and the slogans.

    If you are interested in Ralph Raico, anyone, this lecture one was 30 minutes long and can be found on Youtube with “thoughts on Fascism / Ralph Raico”. His lecture on Bismarck and the welfare state is also fascinating.

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    1. I will note Portugal wasn’t even a member of the axis. It was neutral and the only reason to be neutral WAS sympathy with the allies. Because with Spain that close, it couldn’t possibly declare for the allies.
      Again, Salazar was fascist like FDR. He just didn’t die quickly enough for the country to recover/find its footing, and the country had no tradition of liberty and no constitutional guarantees.

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      1. And in fairness to Spain, if Franco had allowed Hitler to attack Gibraltar, which he adamantly did not to Hitler’s great ire, we would have likely lost the war.

        So if Portugal declared for the allies, Spain would have likely been forced into the Western front which nobody wanted — except Hitler.

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          1. –Which is why I get upset when history books say Portugal was part of the axis. —

            You should be upset about it. It’s a bizarre claim. It would be like saying Ireland was part of the Axis. In fact, Portugal supplied far, far more (maybe infinitely more considering) practical help to the Allies than Ireland.

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        2. IIRC part of Franco’s problem was that Spain had just got finished fighting a very nasty civil war. Spain wasn’t in the best of shape of getting involved on either side of WWII. Note, passed on Franco’s later actions (ie allowing power to go to the King after his death), I suspect that he’d been more likely to support the Allies than Hitler. The best available evidence is that he strongly disliked Hitler but Spain wasn’t in the best shape for opposing Hitler.

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          1. My understanding (certainly not authoritative) was that Franco was a sincere Catholic who disliked Hitler because Hitler was anti-Catholic but recognized the reality of his power and proximity, and the debt he owed for the support the Nazis gave him in the Spanish Civil War. And, of course, he hated the communists more.

            Franco also let Spain be a place of refuge for Jews.

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            1. Yes, Portugal did the same. My mom’s comment when I was dieting as a kid was always that I looked like the German Jewish refugees debarking in the train station when she was a kid.

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          2. I think it’s one of those things you can argue all night.

            I guess the clincher would be that whoever got the bomb first was the winner regardless of what happened to Gibraltar.

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            1. For a certain value of “winner”. The evidence suggests that Hitler was quite willing to let everything burn down around him as “punishment” to his fellow Germans for “failing” him. There was no Hirohito-equivalent to reign things in as happened in Japan.

              An A-Bomb campaign against Germany would likely have been very ugly.

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              1. Germany is also very small. Granted they had spread over a much larger portion of Europe, but you really don’t need to take out the whole army. Finding out where Hitler was (as in a close enough area to hit with an A-Bomb) really wasn’t all that hard in an area that size. Take Hitler out (something you DIDN’T want to do with Japan, different cultures) and hit a couple other significant targets (Berlin?) and they would likely either surrendered or with Central High Command decapitated, dissolved into enough chaos to be overwhelmed with conventional forces much easier than they were without the nuclear option being used. If you are confident that they can’t develop the bomb soon enough to retaliate, and you don’t want to lose that many conventional forces, just fight a holding action until you can produce enough bombs to level their homeland.

                On the flip side, saying whoever developed the A-bomb first was the winner on the European front is rather disingenius. The European front was won before we deployed the bomb.

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              2. Well, it’s difficult to conceive of a non-ugly A-bomb campaign.

                The thing is, getting the Nazis to hang around long enough to get them into deliverable Uranium or Plutonium weapon time period almost presumes that Hitler needed to already be out of the picture at or just shortly after the launch of Barbarossa. Anything earlier and the Germans would have not invaded Russia at all, and much later and he’d already screwed things up completely, with only the long ride to the end remaining.

                There was no chance of getting deliverable weapons done any sooner than they were, as the limit all along was supply of enriched Uranium and Plutonium. What the Manhattan Project delivered was pretty much the best case, unless somehow the whole mass production effort would have been started years earlier.

                Plus, the B-29 program, which was of a similar scale to the Manhattan Project, wasn’t able to deliver bombers with the payload to carry nuclear weapons very much earlier than it did. I thing the Brits had a version of the Lancaster that could have been modified enough to carry one, barely, but again not a whole lot sooner than 1945.

                If Hitler dies of a stroke just after the invasion of Russia, the Germans have a chance to make that deal with Stalin that he offered, or possibly knock Russia out by being less stupid and driving for Moscow, or even fighting to a defendable standstill. If they managed to avoid losing so many men, take the Ukraine and then continue around the Black sea towards the Middle East, where they had a boatload of sympathizers, the war could have easily lasted at minimum one year longer.

                On the other hand, if the Brits hadn’t had North Africa to argue for Churchill’s “soft underbelly” campaign, the Italy campaign could have been avoided completely, and the pressure for a cross channel invasion would have been pretty darned high in the summer of 1943. Again, though, production constraints on things like landing craft wouldn’t have allowed it to be as big, and a successful landing in northern France in 1943 would have shortened the war.

                On the gripping hand, if the Nazi’s had developed an atomic bomb, they would likely have used it tactically to stabilize their Russian front, and also to attack the Normandy beach head or as a can opener for the Bulge attacks, but they didn’t have anything that could deliver that kind of payload weight long range, and so likely would not have zapped London. A revenge nuking of liberated Paris does strikes me as a Hitler nuclear targeting decision.

                If you really want to play games, you can posit Hitler’s plane crashing in 1941, he goes into a coma for several years, then comes out of it in time to make new bad decisions in the late war period.

                Bottom line, though: With Hitler calling the shots from June of 1941 onwards as in our timeline, absent grossly bad decisions by Stalin or the Western Allies, the Nazis weren’t going to be around long enough to get nuked.

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                  2. It’s already been done: Look up Stuart Slade’s “The Big One.” Basically, it marries AWPD-1 (the Army Air Corps war plan for Europe if the UK wasn’t available for basing) and the atomic bomb.

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                2. IIRC, according to William Manchester (‘The Arms of Krupp),the Ukrainians and Georgians initially hailed the Germans as liberators. A more reasonable Germany (i.e., less driven by racist ideology) might have easily reaped far more benefit in that role than they did as occupiers, giving rise to tantalizing alternative scenarios.

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        4. Franco wanted support and guarantees the Reich was not willing to promise, Hitler wanted military support to storm Gibraltar and the Canaries that would have bled Spain’s army white and I believe that Franco did not think that his control over Spain would have survived any victory even with German support. So both sides went home and claimed victory.
          (there are other takes on this by the way, this is pretty much from Spanish historians who got their degrees in the 70’s, so you can see there might still be some bias)

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      2. Spain? Why couldn’t they declare for the Allies because of Spain? Spain was most stalwartly neutral. It conceded a few mineral rights, but it refused to either seize Gibraltar or even let German troops through Spain to seize it. After the tide turned, Franco even gave support to the Allies.

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        1. Sigh. Franco and Salazar both gave some support to the Allies, but please note that Franco WANTED to throw in with the Axis (so far as we can tell.)
          Remember I saw different accounts. Maybe mine were wrong, maybe yours were.

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          1. That nasty Civil War was fought with German planes and weapons supplied to the Nationalists and Soviet planes and weapons supplied to the Republicans. And the Condor Legion actually manned by Germans. Though the Republicans probably sided with the Communists to a greater extent than the Nationalists or Franco sided with the Nazis, and Franco had to have thought, I have to accept German help. No choice. My picture of the Spanish Civil War is largely based on my knowledge of which weapons went where. Both sides had a heavy supply of Winchester lever action rifles, from where, I don’t know.

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            1. Different kettle of fish. Yes, Franco TOOK Axis help. The question is whether he GAVE help to the Axis.

              There was a German general who attributed their defeat to Franco’s lack of support.

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              1. Yes, and Churchill was very grateful for what he called Portugal’s so-called neutrality. The Portuguese government turned a blind eye to the Calcutta Light Horse raid on a German ship broadcasting British ship locations from a Goa harbor, and the Goa newspapers published nothing about the raid except the British Government’s false cover story.

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                1. Of course Goa and Portugal turned a blind eye. As the Indian Army proved later, Goa could have been taken in an afternoon if the British felt like it. And technically the Germans were violating their neutrality but Goa didn’t have a way to back up an order to desist other than rowing up on a dark night and chalking graffiti on the hull.

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            2. they were manufactured in Eibar by Garate, Anitua y Cia. on a Winchester design. For a bit they were also made by the Government arsenal as a stopgap because of a delay in production of the Mausers. They were called “Tigres” and were in 44-40. They were used by “police” and non-military forces.
              I have major bones for Spanish firearms. sorry, it is an obsession of mine

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          2. If he WANTED to, why didn’t he? There were periods when it looked like Hitler would roll over Europe like a steamroller crushing ants.

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            1. Look, Mary, what I heard is that Portugal couldn’t take one side because of Spain. In fact, at one point apparently the Axis threatened to bomb Portugal because my mom remembers being issued sticky plastic for the windows because “the Germans will bomb.”
              Also Portugal was coming off a bankruptcy in the thirties, so help would be limited. Mom remembers supply trains sent to both sides with writing on the side saying “leftovers from Portugal” This was resented, as they were starving.

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          3. I’ve read that one of the reasons Franco decided not to support the Axis was that an old friend persuaded him that allying with Germany was a bad idea, and this old friend happened to be the man Hitler sent to persuade him to ally with Germany: Adm. Canaris, head of German Military Intelligence.

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              1. I’ve never seen any confirmation on the ‘spied for the British’ part. Now, considering he joined the plot to overthrow Hitler early (and was eventually executed for it) and was working heavily against orders by trying to keep Franco out of the war and smuggling Jews out of Germany, hating Hitler is a reasonable supposition.
                Not all of the foreigners backing Franco against the communists were Nazis and other similar anti-communist Socialists. World War 2 is full of strange bedfellows alliances. You get countries like Finland which sign on to the Axis specifically because they hate Stalin (for grabbing a chunk of their country) and areas like the Balkans where the ancient cultural rivalries remained more important to the locals than the war of ideologies and nations raging around them.

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            1. Er…
              Or as a idiot phone operator informed me back in the day, when I couldn’t get through to my parents, and called the operator (yes, the dark ages.) Of course, you can’t get through. There is no nation code for Portugal. Portugal is a city in Spain.

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              1. Please believe I was just kidding you. Although if not for the lines of Torres Vedras, it might all have been France

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                2. You post made me realize that almost everything I know about Portugal comes from Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels or this blog.

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                  1. I also know nothing of Portugal after the peninsular campaign except that they export wine and space princesses.

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                  1. I worked for a Harvard graduate who thought Portugal was in Central America. First generation of college students of the Lunatics in Charge of the Asylum generation.

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                    1. You can always tell a Harvard man …

                      BTW – what school was it that gave Obama his law degree? I understand that the only way to flunk out of there is by deliberate effort, and even then it takes some doing.

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                    2. At least they actually speak Portugeuse in South America; which is more than can be said for either Spain or Italy.

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          1. I heard that was a case of Franco getting rid of kook-balls that supported him. IE he wasn’t going as far as they wanted so he sent them off to fight the Soviets.

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            1. Maybe, OTOH, I read somewhere that most of the Blue Division survived and its officers ended up being the leaders of the Spanish military.

              I’m inclined to be sympathetic to Franco because the left really, really hates him and he was less of an ally to Hitler than the Finns or the Vichy French, even.

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              1. Nod. It’s the idea that you can judge a man by his enemies. [Smile]

                He also gets (as I said earlier) a plus on how he arranged things in Spain for after his death.

                IMO Spain’s return to democracy was due to his actions.

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              2. IDK, when you’re got the Soviets on one side, and the Nazis on the other and your only assets are some cross country skis and brutal winters I’m inclined to cut people some slack. The French OTOH…

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                1. The start of the war wasn’t as cut and dried as the later parts of it were. Remember that in 1939, the Nazis and Soviets were comrades in arms, and fought alongside each other to dismember Poland.

                  Given that, when Nazism and Communism went to war with each other in 1941, Churchill could have pushed to support the Germans over the Communists. The war had started over Poland, after all, and both German and the USSR were responsible for dismembering it. Churchill didn’t, obviously, no doubt in part because Great Britain had been fighting Germany in France and elsewhere. But even if Great Britain hadn’t, Churchill seems to have seen Nazism as the bigger threat. And Hitler could never quite understand that.

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        3. Franco sent the Blue Division to fight on the Eastern Front with the Germans. They were under Spanish command, but wore German uniforms and used German equipment. German generals considerred them almost the equal of a German infantry division. They stayed on the Russian front until early 1944 when Franco started withdrawing his ties with Hitler.

          He once told the American ambassador that the war was actually 3 wars – A commercial imperial war in the western front that Spain had absolutely no business getting involved in, a war on Bolshevism in the East that Spain had a moral imperative to assist Germany on, and a war in Asia that had Spain supporting the USA in it’s defense of Phillipino Spanish culture from the Japanese barbarians.

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      3. And I was being sloppy. Not only was Portugal neutral, it was also one of the major points of communication and discussion (and espionage) between the Axis and Allies

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    2. Raico points out that the rise in Fascism was specifically done to block the rise of what was seen as that specter of Communism stalking Europe
      —————-

      Perhaps in some instances. But the book “Liberal Fascism” points out that Mussolini started out as a Communist (and was even praised by Lenin)… right up until he realized that peasants in a small Italian community couldn’t care less about the International Struggle Against Oppression. Nationalism, on the other hand, was something that those peasants could understand and get excited about. As a result, Mussolini started the shift toward what would eventually become Fascism. And Fascism, of course, drew its name from the Italian word for a bundle of sticks.

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        2. Saw a carving of a fasces at the Capua amphitheater. My reaction alternated between “cool” and “oh, god” as I tried to figure out whether it was Imperial or Fascist.

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          1. one of the coolest angels pictures (statue) in morguefile (free stock site) strikes me as the wrong kind. Let me see if I can find it. He’s holding fasces. And I learned the fasces story as a child. And also the story of the mother who asks the highest reward for her sons, so they’re both struck dead. Roman-descended cultures. Sigh.

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      2. Mussolini was an opportunist. He started as the communications director and editor of the socialist paper “Avanti” (Forward/vorwarts) and at one point was also anti-colonialist. When he lost that gig he tried to start his own party but didn’t get anything going. He then joined the Fascist movement and pushed to the top. At the beginning he was, among other things anti war, but this did not set well with the industrial north that wanted to sell arms, so he flipped….essentially Mussolini tried to trim his sails to the prevailing wind but he basically turned into a flopping rag. His Fascist state was incompetent to run a lemonaide stand, his military was royally confused about everything, and the only thing they did well, according to some Luftwaffe soldiers in N. Africa who had to depend on them for security, was make good sub-guns.

        To say that Mussolini intentionally developed a party that would do anything but put Mussolini in power is a little strong. I will admit I may have misspoke there, and I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be more clear:

        Fascism was consciously developed and accepted as a way to forestall what was seen as the inevitable success of International Socialism and all the death, misery, poverty and disruption that it had proven itself to be capable of everywhere it had been tried.

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          1. Because the “American” Progressives loved Mussolini. They declared him — and Hitler — to be the model of the “third way”. Neither capitalism (liberty) nor communism; it was all their power-mad fantasies in a pseudoscientific wrapper.

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          2. I used to think Clinton was more akin to Mussolini than our current affliction. Alas I have come to the mind-boggling conclusion that Clinton was actually more competent than either Mussolini or our current affliction.

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          4. Yeah, but Mussolini actually had some charisma. Obama puts me in mind of a college lecturer. One of the bad ones, stuck as an adjunct in some humanities or social sciences track, unable to get a tenure track position, unwilling to admit that he’d probably be making a better living in a white collar job (or even as a barrista!) than as an adjunct. He’s been giving the same old boring lecture for years, without any real enthusiasm, and belittling or flunking students who don’t go along with the excrement he’s shoveling.

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  8. Sarah, I know you probably dread plot bunnies as much as any writer. I have difficulty visualizing a Heinlein character plopped into 1984. Would you find it in your heart to perhaps consider penning such a tale, or supervising the task undertaken by one of your minions? I think such would be a tonic against the cultursmog of dystopia and would strike a blow for Human Wave SF

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    2. Part of me would rather see a Poul Anderson character instead… can you see Flandry or van Rijn taking on Big Brother?

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        1. Hmm… I don’t think I ran across that way back when I was on my Anderson kick. I’ll have to look it up… thanks for mentioning it!

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  9. To make this clear, to understand the errors of thought in 1984, imagine a Heinlein character dropped into it.

    What would it take for you to write that book?

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      1. Why does this remind me of the 12 days of Christmas?

        Three books for Baen,
        Two others books,
        And a poke next year if you remember.

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  11. Americans who go there and actually hang out with natives on equal terms are often shocked at the startlingly racist, sexist, xenophobic things Europeans say and aren’t ashamed to display in public.

    It’s funny. Of the people I’ve routinely associated with over the last five years or so, there have only been two who routinely used ethnic slurs in normal conversation.

    Both (a husband/wife combo) are rabid progressives. Apparently, they believe that all they support absolves them of racism or something. In fact, it was hysterical when they lashed out that those of us who refused to support Obama were racist.

    I wonder if that’s part of the issue in Europe?

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    1. Progressives were the ones who brought in segregation in America. And Marx and Engels believed there were world-historic people who would bring about the revolution. As for the others, their historical task was to perish.

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  12. Sounds like dark days ahead for Europe, and for the world. But I can believe it. (Unfortunately.)

    “It made me a determined anti-communist, which has cost me something, not the least in terms of career here, where ‘communism’ is hip.”

    I would love to learn more about this. (I’ve only been reading According to Hoyt for a few weeks; I suspect that Mrs. Hoyt has already expanded on this theme in previous blog entries, but I’m not sure what search terms to use to find them. I understand that Mrs. Hoyt is saying she can’t answer all comments directly, or she wouldn’t have any time to write, which should of course be the priority, but I wonder whether another commenter here could direct me to one or two of her older blog posts on the subject. I would be much obliged.)

    What I especially want to know is more about what it’s like to be a writer who has trouble getting published, or whose works selected for publication are unfairly edited, or who otherwise has serious career trouble because of being insufficiently leftist or insufficiently intellectually fashionable or otherwise “politically incorrect”. I’ve heard people allude to it (Mrs. Hoyt more than once here, and Adam Bellow in his explanations of why he is trying to create Liberty Island), but whenever I then tell friends of mine (even fellow conservatives) that the publishing/fiction world is biased against conservatives and libertarians, they sort of don’t believe me, and since I’m not a writer myself and don’t personally know anyone in the industry, I can’t tell them concretely what it’s like to face that uphill battle, because I don’t really know, either. Where can I go to learn more about this? Concretely, what do those interactions look like, what are the costs of being a conservative or non-leftist or non-conforming writer? (Again, much obliged to anyone who can point me in a helpful direction.)

    “. . . while Mr. Hormone had come calling and I had at least one seriously platonic crush that had led me into writing rhymed and metered sonnets . . . .”

    Pretty adorable!

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  13. When the creation of the Euro was announced, I said to a numb of friends that I had to wonder whether it would become a valued collectable or the new Confederate currency after the collapse. Many of those friends expressed surprise at my attitude, and asked me on what I was basing my pessimism, to which I replied that I would believe in a Union including both France and Germany AFTER they had fought their Civil War, and not sooner. They asked me if I really thought the French still hadn’t forgiven the Germans for WWII. I replied that so far as I knew the French still hadn’t forgiven the Germans for siding with Wellington against Napoleon.

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  14. That was certainly my impression. I’ve visited Europe twice. I’m only semi-literate in that I only speak or read english, but I got a surprising number of people to talk to me. My impression was that, broadly speaking, Americans were more welcome than Europeans from other countries.

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    1. There will occasionally be an interesting poll along the lines you describe. Typically, they’re most useful for learning that yes, Europeans really do think that the French are smelly.

      :P

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      1. *mournfully* Imagine being armpit height to the majority of the populace in a crammed Metro car, and a sharp turn in the line shoves you nosefirst into a man whose body odor is like that of a pile of rancid blue cheese, sour wine, and fermented sweat.

        The taller American friend I was with at the time said I looked nearly literally green.

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          1. I can’t tell if this is a joke or not, so I’m going to rather densely point out that I think she was referring to public transit, such as a bus, not a Geo Metro.

            If this was a joke, just ignore the lunatic flailing his arms in the corner, shouting foolish things. :-)

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            1. I debated adding a /sarc/ tag, and decided everyone would get the joke and that would just make it fall flat. Obviously I was wrong. :(

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                    2. It would probably be very amusing, but the body count from you killing all the people who assumed you were a child with a toy car would probably be a tad troublesome. :-)

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    2. Maybe that’s because Americans eventually go home (playing off of the reference to the Norman’s above)?

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    3. Its been a few years since my last trip there, but I was surprised at how enthusiastically we were greeted as Americans in Prague / Czech Republic.

      Although at the National Museum in Prague, as we were standing in line for the usher to take tickets, it was obvious that he was trying to guess each visitor’s nationality and greet them in their language. After a series of “Welkommen” for Germans, “Welcome” for a british couple … I handed him our tickets and got “Bienvenue” in return. My wife didn’t stop laughing at my expression for hours.

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        3. France, Gaul, whatever – I say he was just guessing where each person in line made the most money, and it’s hard to argue he was wrong there, Imperator.

          Of course, he should have said thankyeekindly in ancient Gaullish, but that woud just have been showing off.

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  15. …crony capitalism…

    I hate that phrase.

    No, really. It’s an attempt to denigrate Capitalism by attaching it to what is essentially a fascist economic system.

    Americans who go there and actually hang out with natives on equal terms are often shocked at the startlingly racist, sexist, xenophobic things Europeans say and aren’t ashamed to display in public.

    Some of the most racist crap I ever heard came out of the mouths of some aussies in the Outback, and when called in it they claimed that (a) they were justified because… and (b) that we were worse. When it was pointed out that there were similar circumstances here, it was still “you guys are worse”.

    Actually, that’s not true. Some of the most racist crap I ever heard spewed was out of the mouths of some Union Thugs in STL. With Obama bumper stickers on their trucks.

    No one had taught that to that generation of boys.

    No one has to. It’s tribe. It’s in the blood.

    The trick is making “tribe” big enough not to too much warfare, but cohesive enough it doesn’t break down.

    I think Russia’s chest pounding is the beginning of the ball, and though they’re as importune as those boys who followed us on the motorcycles

    Wasn’t that one of the issues leading up to WWI? At least according to something that’s up on my web browser at home Russia was starting to emerge as a challenge to Germany, and they didn’t like that &&etc.

    and though in the end what they will spark is a convulsion that will tear Europe into the pieces it was before the euro-delusions and/or into new and different pieces (because Europe is at its heart clannish and clan and nation don’t always coincide.)

    The problem with Progressives is they think they are superior people and that everyone else has the same opinion as they do.

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  16. though in the end what they will spark is a convulsion that will tear Europe into the pieces it was before the euro-delusions and/or into new and different pieces (because Europe is at its heart clannish and clan and nation don’t always coincide.)
    ——————

    This has already happened in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Putin appears to be trying to undo the latter. And it’s currently on the ballot in Great Britain.

    The ETA in Spain, and the Chechnyan Separatists in Russia, are both elements of this as well.

    Of course, as Nagorno-Karabakh shows us, even when the split isn’t resisted, these things are never simple.

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  18. No, not one Heinlein character; imagine a hundred Heinlein characters dropped into 1984.

    I’m just imagining the sheer havoc they would wreak upon the orderly world of 1984. It would be the sound of millions of wrenches being tossed, stuck, and occasionally genuinely accidentally dropped into the gears.

    Remember, there’s never just one.

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  20. “Americans who go there and actually hang out with natives on equal terms are often shocked at the startlingly racist, sexist, xenophobic things Europeans say and aren’t ashamed to display in public.”

    Amen to that.

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