Europe So Far Away

I have a letter from my father awaiting a reply. He wishes to talk by correspondence, he says. Which is fine. I do get we’re both somewhat death and talking to each other on the phone is more difficult than in person.

The problem is that the older he gets the tinier his handwriting, to the point he can cram a normal letter on the back of a postcard. And I’m in the dreaded lands of presbiopia. So I didn’t understand ALL of his letter, only parts of it, enough to get the gist. (And he’s going to be strangely discommoded by mine, because my handwriting used to be merely ugly, but — in case you don’t know this — each country has a distinctive cursive, and my cursive changed with time. now it’s caught in an unholy land between Portuguese script — a lot like old German — and American Script. Not only does it remain the same insane scribbling hand I always had, but now there’s not guarantee of any given letter being rendered the same twice. (If you ever compare my signatures, you will see.) This means I often take notes while reading a book and then sweat trying to interpret what I wrote. This without the charming spelling issues which were always bad and are now worse.)

Most of it is, as it should be, family stuff and a lot about how much he misses mom. Some is world affairs, and I’m afraid being a wretched creature I’m going to have to answer those. Oh, he’s mostly worried not combative, but–

This is in a way an attempt at explaining what happened between Europe and America and why it’s much worse now than it’s ever been.

First, guys, since most of you are born and raised in the US you need an explanation dad probably doesn’t require. It’s like this:

Europe never loved us. Some Europeans did but those of us who did were always an odd bunch and this put us at odds with all other Europeans. They tolerated and encouraged the Soviet Union in the hopes it would “Show up America.”

If I had to guess, since I wasn’t around two hundred and fifty years ago, it started with the certainty that the republic would fail, since it negated the forever European way of living, then moved on to being upset we didn’t. And the fact we saved their asses twice didn’t help at all.

As Heinlein says in Stranger, all “thank you” implies some amount of resentment. Okay, I’m not sure that’s true, because it’s not what I experience. Mostly from me all thank yous involve some number of confusion and fear of trespassing.

But I think the difference is that I was taught how to accept help/charity BY HEINLEIN. I’m not so much accepting help/charity, as I’m taking what I need right then, and it flows outward again when other people are in need. So I’m just borrowing, and pay it forward.

And therein lies the rub. Our intervention in the long war of the 20th century was never paid forward by Europe. it just didn’t happen. In fact it just couldn’t happen, since Europe took the long wars as their signal to go on a self-hating spiral of self destruction.

(I’m not sure how much of that spiral was native and how much was USSR propaganda. Someday maybe we’ll figure out how much cognitive pollution the USSR put into the world, including destroying our own academia and a lot of our political thought. The entire anti-colonial boondoggle is something that the Europeans hold against us — the ones that realize what a disaster it was on both sides — but we were on it because of the extreme lefty academics and air-dreamers were trying to let the USSR grab lands without resistance. Most colonies Europe left were immediately taken over by the USSR de facto if not de Jure.)

On top of which, they outsourced their culture and the production of cultural product to the US. Look, that’s not what they meant to do, you know? they were subsidizing their film and novel production, to make sure the “worthy art” got all the money it needed. I mean, they got enough trash from the US, right. Except that in fact “trash” is what people read and watch. See, for instance, Shakespeare, who wrote plays for apprentices and groundlings. While the promoted art of the cognoscenti goes nowhere. So the result of European governments paying for the “approved art” was to make the only art people watch and read American. (Reading in Europe has been plummeting, in commensurate response to their getting as their only offerings from America the precious darlings of trad pub. Different for those countries to whom Kindle is readily available, but there again… There’s culture. More on that later.) And the problem is the culture they’re getting from us is what Hollywood is selling, which they take deadly serious as “modern” and “advanced” leading to far greater destruction there than here.

This again feeds a hatred of America and a wish to see us stumble.

But until recently, they largely kept their mouths shut where Americans could hear. Oh, sure, their news imputed all the worst vices to us, and generally blamed us for their problems, etc, and also gave them an idea of how we live that meant we had much fun online with Europeans who thought we shoot each other in the streets and also that we’re like Latin America where you’re either very rich or destitute. (This is vital, because the only way their elites can keep hold of the populace in their neo-feudal soft socialism is to project the horrors of what they think naked capitalism would be onto us, and then drive them to think we live in some kind of Dickensonian horror, compared to which their managed decline seems like paradise.)

However it used to be that Europe knew which side of their bread was buttered and that the US has — pardon me the graphic nature of this — a mighty generous tit on which to suckle.

They have now lost what remained of their tiny little minds, and I believe I can explain it.

First of all, they’re completely broken over 2020. At some level they have to know it was all a hoax, and they were not even — as I yelled at mom when she tried ordering me to take the vaccine — the main aim of the hoax. The aim was to steal US elections. Terrorizing Europeans was just stage dressing.

But oooh, boy, were they terrorized. Not even the crazier state in the US locked down as fast, as hard, as long or as stupidly as Europe did. And they had a ridiculously high buy in to the dangerous vaccines, too.

At some level they know they were hoaxed, but they can’t process how their old mechanism of trusting the authorities and the “best people” so they have a lot of free floating anger which their media and reporting is encouraging them to attach to us.

Okay, this is the part that I need to explain to my dad: the media over there really has them utterly convinced that we are repeating fascism.

This is partly their hatred of Trump whom their elites hate because our elites hate him, and how bad a person do you have to be even those American know nothings hate you? And partly that they absolutely believe that our media is absolutely truthful, when our media has also lost its tiny flipping minds and is now reporting completely imaginary stuff.

Partly though is that they absolutely believe that history repeats itself and have been on the lookout for Hitler anywhere a shred of patriotism remains, because patriotism causes Hitler. (DUH. That’s what they were taught in school. DUH.) And of course keep fitting the little they know onto this model.

The thing is the model they were taught in school was not how to find Hitler, but how to find anything that was antithetical to the USSR swallowing them whole. So sure signs of Hitler are: a strong military. Patriotism. Any reduction in social net spending. Self sufficiency or the encouragement thereof. Etc. etc. etc.

And in that light, we look terrible.

They also believe our country is convulsing itself with people trying to fight Trump. That ICE really is deporting anyone who tans. And other fantasies. Which is even more Hitlery.

AND the crowning thing in all this: They haven’t embraced the digital revolution as much as Americans have.

Oh, don’t get me wrong: Everyone has a cell phone. But political blogs are rare and for reasons that evade me, so are groups where people from all over just gather.

I KNOW my dad is going to ask me how I know that the rest of the country isn’t in revolt against Trump, that it’s just Minnesota.

And I’m going to answer that throughout most of the weekday I hang out with my writing group, which is spread out all over the US (and a couple from Canada/Japan.) SO I know. I know that in most cities the actual “resistance” is a dozen boomers with walkers and oxygen tanks.

Because between the work from home, and our just swimming in the digital sea, we all know people all over the country and can verify reports and rumors. (EXCEPT aged boomers of course.)

Which is a divide with Europe that I don’t understand and can’t explain.

But it contributes to their worry for us and their certainty we’re about to fall to Hitler2, this time it’s Orange.

And we have no way to reach them, because it would take explaining all this stuff.

It’s not just that they’re watching a different movie. It’s that someone has locked the theater doors and keeps amping up the sound, till they only see what they’re shown.

This will end in tears.