For some reason of late, it seems to have become fashionable on here for many posters to applaud criticisms from Europe of aspects of the United States and even DKos itself that go beyond normal acceptable boundaries of international dialogue. And it is aided and abetted by one or two Kossacks themselves indulging in what is close to an orgy of self-flagellation
Daily Kos is exceptional for its willingness to look at international examples that can inform its own policy formulation. It is exceptional in that it welcomes contributions from overseas. As a European, I am grateful for the two way dialogue. I am greatly informed by it. I hope, in turn, I can add some element of insight into how we approach over here certain common issues. It is an equal exchange of ideas, not proselytizing about some solution that may be utterly irrelevant and unworkable in the culture, economy or political environment of the United States
I'll be honest. I am also getting tired of those Americans on here who say they are so fed up with their country that they are thinking of coming to Europe. Fortunately, there are not many. Why the hell do these people think that we Europeans enjoy writing on Daily Kos? It is because we find in your society elements that are missing in our own.
Every now and again it would be worthwhile if some Kossacks took a good hard look at us Europeans and realised that there are aspects here that makes some of your social, cultural, economic and political problems look miniscule.
You see, I love the United States. Sure I love my homeland here in Wales and choose to live here. Yet this love of two countries is not mutually exclusive. So it damn well hurts me when I see any American take political objection to what is happening in the States to the point of denigrating it and making ludicrous comparisons with a heavily flawed Europe and wanting to dance with its equally flawed and largely discredited extreme left.
I am as fully conscious as any of you of the problems that are currently affecting the United States and am keenly interested in how you go about mending your society. Yet, it is the mending of your society that concerns me, not joining in with the European left-wing knee-jerk reaction of "if it is America it is bad" and whose only real interest is to radically change that society to a model that has largely failed across the Atlantic.
Because Daily Kos is an American site, it is American problems that are put under the microscope, not European ones. If they were, some of them would scare you to death. Have you seen the steady rise of the neo-fascists in some European countries? Have you seen the level of unemployment in some of these countries? Have you seen the stuttering weakness of some of the economies? Have you looked at the knife-edge some of us are walking relating to racial and religious minorities, particularly Muslim, and their integration into our European society ? Have you looked at the stability of marriage, the rise in sexually transmitted disease, the level of teenage pregnancy of some European countries? Have you examined the truth behind the protectionism and the denial of the free movement of poverty stricken Europeans across the so-called Community?
These don't get dealt with on DKos because they are not what DKos is about.. Yet, to read some European posts here , it almost seems that nothing is ever seriously wrong in their countries - it is all dreamt up by a right-wing press or the even more right-wing economists.
We can even put into perspective your White House if you want a real example of deception of the public and other nations and of double dealing of the highest order. We can make Bush look a pussy cat, Cheney a beginner and Rumsfeld a mere apprentice. Our newspapers in the UK have been filled for the last two weeks with the anniversary of the Suez Crisis and the French/Anglo/Israeli invasion of Egypt. As the Economist writes:
The Suez crisis, as the events of the following months came to be called, marked the humiliating end of imperial influence for two European countries, Britain and France. It cost the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, his job and, by showing up the shortcomings of the Fourth Republic in France, hastened the arrival of the Fifth Republic under Charles de Gaulle. It made unambiguous, even to the most nostalgic blimps, America's supremacy over its Western allies.
It thereby strengthened the resolve of many Europeans to create what is now the European Union. It promoted pan-Arab nationalism and completed the transformation of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute into an Israeli-Arab one. And it provided a distraction that encouraged the Soviet Union to put down an uprising in Hungary in the same year.
It also divided families and friends, at least in Britain and France, with a degree of bitterness that would not be seen in a foreign-policy dispute until the invasion of Iraq in 2003. If that is difficult to understand, remember that the world was a different place then. Many European politicians still believed their countries had a right to run the affairs of others. Many were also scarred by memories of appeasement in the 1930s. Faced with a provocation, even an entirely legal one involving the nationalisation of a foreign-owned asset like the Suez canal, the instinct of such Europeans was to go to war.
They and their Israeli partners-in-invasion were restrained, eventually, by the United States, led by a Republican president and war hero, Dwight Eisenhower. The venture involved intrigue, lies, nemesis--and no end of a lesson.
I am damn sure that much of the coverage of Suez over the last few days has been because it has enabled a subtle comparison to be drawn to what is happening now in Iraq by politically careful commentators like the BBC.
Yet if you look at the level of deception and outright lies of those times, it stands at least equal if not greater to anything seen over the last four years.
The Economist seems to suggest that it couldn't happen again. Well, did Europe allow concentration camps to arise again in the Balkans?
Look, fellow Kossacks, I'm not writing this to run down Europe. I am writing it to get some balance into the discussion.
As an example, INMHO, it is fine for us Europeans to tell you about our approach to such aspects as methods of our meeting our energy shortages. It is not fine to become involved in which of your coastlines or mountain ranges or prairies can be sacrificed to solve your own problem or, worse still, call out one your most internationally respected political families over it. Nor for this to turned into an opportunity by a few Kossacks to demean American society in total.
I want to share European experiences, thoughts and ambitions with Americans on Daily Kos. If in describing a European solution I ever stray into hubris and start prescribing remedies for you, tell me to STFU.
If one or two of you, in describing the real problems facing your country, stray into denigrating it forgive me but I will tell you to STFU with the passion of the most vehement red-neck. I am a Welshman who stayed up all night to cheer the Cardinals home and I don't take kindly to legitimate anger about politics becoming twisted into a form of disloyalty to a great country by your wishing you were an equally troubled European or a European with equal troubles. And, fortunately, I rarely see it on DKos.
In not so many days time, the Democratic Party will start to get its country back. That is the country that I want to see return. That is why this European writes on Daily Kos.