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What Russian trolls want you to believe:

Germany is building up a massive military force to take over Europe. The Nazis are back! This is WWIII. 😱

Reality:

Germany is facing mass unemployment and deindustrialization, does not have a functioning road or train system, bridges all over the country are crumbling, has no military service and a defense as small as Italy's despite a ⅓ more people, has no real information or security service, has a decrepit and unsecured electrical grid, and has _no emergency supplies_ of energy, generators, food, or medicine.

It has nothing. It literally has absolutely nothing. Zero zip nada.

It took years to even setup an emergency warning system and it still doesn't work, properly. There is a seemingly endless supply of work-shy and disproportionately violent foreigners flooding into the country, and a never-ending stream of productive, peaceful citizens leaving to get away from them.

You can cut one power cable in the German capital and take out a whole suburb for a week, and the city can't even figure out how to organize emergency shelters, lighting, or a soup kitchen for the residents.

Yes, we need to spend more money on this stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of the money that was supposed to go toward this is being spent on social welfare, woke/lefty NGOs, refugee whatever, and other vote-buying. Surprise, surprise.

In other news — completely unrelated to the Union doing whatever stupid stuff the SPD says — the AfD is now at 26%, making it the most-popular party in Germany. They are rapidly making headway by promising to do amazing things like figure out how to keep the lights on and the border controlled.

/rant

OostLog 4d ago

Same is true for almost every European country. Betrayed by the boomers who first sucked it dry, and then became more decadently left-wing as they got to the later stages of life, almost as if they were seeking an ideology to fit with their selfish decisions (debt, immigrants, budgetise the military, infrastructure etc to fund left wing hobbies).

Anyway that much is clear. What is more interesting to me is what comes next. Europe will get out of this impasse either way, but will it be messy or organised? I hate the current EU but gut feeling says European integration is not getting wound back any time soon. It’s almost like a charismatic pan European leader needs to emerge, but today I can’t even picture what that would look like.

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Discussion

Laeserin 3d ago

Karl der Große 🗡️

kravietz 3d ago

You're right about the integration, but the very point of EU from the beginning was an alliance of fundamentally different Member States pivoting around the LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR OF SHARED VALUES. What we got in EU today - including the time-consuming consensus-based decisive process is the best thing we can have without going back to the dark ages of 19th century in-fighting. EU is a very complex beast, but in general it DOES work well on the topics that involve complex negotiations across 27 countries with conflicting interests, which led huge economic growth for both the new joiners and sustained economies of the old members, a classic win-win.

There's an excellent book from an insider about how EU operates in reality, that skips all the 'straightening cucumbers' nonsense invented by British tabloids:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Enraged-Citizens-European-Democratic-Deficits/dp/0857423622

OostLog 3d ago

First - I appreciate the level headed response, Nostr is so great for this.

I read a book by Eduard Habsburg over the holidays (“seven rules for turbulent times”) and one of the points he makes about empires, is that succesful ones should always devolve things to the lowest level possible, ie what can be done on local level should be done there. Decentralisation!

This is probably what I hate most about the EU, the tendency for bureaucrats in Brussels to want to decide whether the lights in my street should be on or off at a certain time (hypothetical example but you get the idea). It’s total overreach from far away. Increasingly it also feels like an institution abused by national governments to pass things national populations don’t want and force it down our throats as a fait accompli (immigration, chat control, crypto laws, that sort of thing).

This all pains me because I am a proud European and I love some of the benefits of integration. But the institution needs to change as it’s making a lot of people extremely upset in its current form and tendencies.

kravietz 3d ago

That's one of the most widespread myths reinforced by Britons. Nobody in the #Brussels "tells anyone" what to do, UNLESS that's APPROVED by all Member States. And to be approved, it must be first requested by one of them!

Think of "Brussels" as a legal company that you outsource your complex business negotiations to, nothing more.

If one of 27 countries comes up with some problem or idea - any some of them may be irrelevant to you but relevant to them - the cogs start moving and the whole legislation process follows, involving negotiations with everyone else - the 27 Member States, EEA associated states etc etc - but at EVERY stage all stakeholders are involved and it takes a few years of complex negotiations (in case of Mercosur it took 20+). But at the end the compromise should represent interests of ALL parties. If it doesn't, Member States can veto it - which is what Hungary does routinely with sanctions on Putin for example, at the same time whining about "lack of democracy in EU" 🤡

But what you really see from regular EU citizen's perspective is some media noise in say 2020 "EU plans X and Y", then everyone forgets about it. If your government doesn't give shit about that, so they also forget to even send their representatives, notify trade organisations and instruct your MEPs , and then in 2025 the compromise lands where someone finds something they don't like and they run to press whining about "OMG EU MAKES US DO X!!!" and everyone is outraged. But in reality what you're seeing is your government incompetence, MEPs and trade organisations NOT doing their job and ultimately blaming everything on EU because that's what voters will buy. This is moronic and suicidal, but that's what they do

OostLog 3d ago

Tried to zap you but no wallet set up!

kravietz 3d ago

Sorry but the idea of installing some $9.99/month app only to get/send zaps on an allegedly decentralised network sounded quite contradictory to me so I've never done it ):