{"id":67056,"date":"2018-06-08T11:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-06-08T16:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=67056"},"modified":"2018-06-07T21:39:38","modified_gmt":"2018-06-08T02:39:38","slug":"downfall-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=67056","title":{"rendered":"Downfall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe – blessed by US deterrence with the longest period of peace in its history – loves to hector America about how much better Europe does, well,\u00a0everything.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Laugh it up, Eurotrash<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture, and government protocol \u2014 a welcome change from the deadly fault lines of 1914 and 1939.<\/p>\n

Yet, as in the waning days of Rome, there is a growing uncertainly beneath the European calm.<\/p>\n

The present generation has inherited the physical architecture and art of a once-great West \u2014 cathedrals, theaters, and museums. But it seems to lack the confidence that it could ever create the conditions to match, much less exceed, such achievement.<\/p>\n

The sense of depression in Europe reminds one of novelist J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s description of the mythical land of Gondor in his epic fantasy\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. Gondor\u2019s huge walls, vaunted traditions, and rich history were testaments that it once served as bulwark of a humane Middle-earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When they were a collection of smallish, ethnically and culturally homogenous statelets, they had something going for them (other than the whole “going to war with each other every generation or more” thing).<\/p>\n

But the thing about European cultures is, you can never “become” French, or Norwegian, or Dutch; those societies are defined by language, history and ethnicity (even polyglot Switzerland).\u00a0 Combine that with being in demographic death spirals (at least those countries west of the German\/Polish border) and importing millions of people, first “guest workers” and later refugees to fill in the demographic gaps, workers who can never be truly assimilated into their respective societies…<\/p>\n

…and all that placid homogeneity that allowed Swedish and Dutch and French society to actually\u00a0be\u00a0<\/em>Swedish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, whatever, is all by the boards.<\/p>\n

And then, the\u00a0best\u00a0<\/em>they can hope for is to become occasionally fractious, like we do.\u00a0 The worst?<\/p>\n

The same thing that always happens when one culture drowns in another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Europe – blessed by US deterrence with the longest period of peace in its history – loves to hector America about how much better Europe does, well,\u00a0everything.\u00a0\u00a0 Laugh it up, Eurotrash: There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture, and government protocol \u2014 a welcome change from the deadly fault lines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,109,73,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-sovereignty","category-western-civilization","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67057,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67056\/revisions\/67057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}