An open and kind Europe is a smart Europe, one that handles and manages problems with a cool head rather than drown in them while trying to save everything and everyone at the same time.
Angela Merkel’s CDU party defeat in Germany’s latest elections signals a turn from last year’s failed migration policies i.e. an admission that mistakes were made. Too bad it took an election defeat, plus the rise of the far-right in Germany, plus the undermining of the entire EU project, to get there.
Let’s cut to the chase and ask whether the Chancellor can finally back away from the emotional, pseudo-moral politics that defined last year’s developments and return to a pragmatic, intelligent kind of administration, an agenda that will address the plight of a large number of refugees and asylum seekers while preserving the unity and health of the EU at the same time. Help end the bloody war in Syria so that the region can become liveable again and people can return home to rebuild their lives. So that people will stop being killed and maimed in a war where everyone is fighting everyone — the most pointless, cynical conflict we have seen in recent history. It has to stop. That’s what one needs to do if one cares about the Syrian refugees, among other pressing issues and humanitarian catastrophes. Put an end to the slaughterfest in the Levant. Stop attacking the region’s administrations. Support Iraq and Syria in their efforts to cut down the Islamic State, tear it to shreds and reclaim the land it took from the Syrian and Iraqi and Jordanian states. Stop arming lawless rebels. Stamp out islamic fundamentalism and let the region’s administrations settle into an era of stability, which one can use to drive change and reform from the inside. If you want to help solve the refugee crisis and alleviate the problems of millions of people. If you want to preserve the strength and unity and health of the EU. If you don’t want to set the harbor on fire while trying to fix one boat. If you think a harbor is a good thing to have, something to preserve and not use as a grocery-store pitstop by the side of the road.
All roads lead to a united Europe, but that won’t mean much if Europe disintegrates, which it will if it keeps getting abused in the name of hazy utopian ideologies. An open and kind Europe is a smart Europe, one that handles and manages problems with a cool head rather than drown in them while trying to save everything and everyone at the same time. The crisis has to be addressed in an informed, coordinated manner, hard as that may be.
The rest — open-doors policies, guilt-trip rhetoric etc — is hot-air nonsense, as vile and detrimental as the far-right crap we keep hearing so much of lately, but more noble-sounding; an emotional strong-arming of a left-leaning disposition used by politicians placing too much importance on knee-jerk reactions and ideological utopian politics. It smells like the Fabians again, only Merkel’s CDU is a right-wing party, so good luck making sense of it. Whatever the case, it’s the propaganda of officials trying to run their countries like third-rate charity workshops, and I say third-rate because no self-respecting charity organization would practise charity in a way that destabilizes and undermines its entire infrastructure, its self-confidence, its surrounding environment, its credibility and viability, its resident population and every administrative body on which it depends to function. Charity is most efficient on a social, international, state level when conducted in a sustainable manner.
Sustainable. Time to pay the term its dues. If we’re going to become sustainable with the economy and with the environment, we have GOT to be sustainable in general, no exceptions.
(Not so insane when you think about it, an approach that is far more responsible, compassionate, and effective in the long term than all the pseudo-moral baloney circulating around.)
So how about a little practising what we preach here? Get serious, and our act together. Sustainable economics, sustainable development, sustainable social services, sustainable charity, a sustainable EU. The same principle across a variety of platforms. Get the premise right and the concept down before setting out to do it because, goodness knows, it’s hard enough to get things done as it is, even under the best of circumstances. The least one can do — I’m referring to Europe’s parties and their influential and civic-minded players — is get the premise right first, before everything else.
From your annoyingly common-sensical Spin Doctor,
Eyes open, mind sharp.