Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night
Feb. 8th, 2016 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloThe EU has a flag and a theme tune- and that's all. It's quite a good flag but it has never flown over a battlefield or marched in a victory parade and people have no emotional investment in it. The theme tune is as good as it gets- but it's not the EU's exclusive property; it's on loan from Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
For a wannabe superstate the EU has been very poor at branding itself. It has no character, no flavour. Proper states have figureheads, leaders, heroes, icons, uniforms, histories, traditions, mythologies- and the EU has none. It doesn't even have iconic buildings. The British State has the Houses of Parliament and various royal palaces, the USA has the Capitol building and the White House. Where does the EU hang out and conduct its business? Haven't the foggiest.
The coming wrangle over Britain's membership of the EU will be all about abstracts- about policies and budgets and quotas and political philosophies. Where names are invoked they will be faceless because the EU doesn't have easily identifiable chiefs or ideologues It's like the presiding authority in a Kafka novel; who's the King of the Castle? Nobody knows. For the average punter who thinks in terms of symbols and personalities (myself for instance) the debate is going to be very hard to follow. It'll be like watching a battle in the clouds between armies of ghosts.
For a wannabe superstate the EU has been very poor at branding itself. It has no character, no flavour. Proper states have figureheads, leaders, heroes, icons, uniforms, histories, traditions, mythologies- and the EU has none. It doesn't even have iconic buildings. The British State has the Houses of Parliament and various royal palaces, the USA has the Capitol building and the White House. Where does the EU hang out and conduct its business? Haven't the foggiest.
The coming wrangle over Britain's membership of the EU will be all about abstracts- about policies and budgets and quotas and political philosophies. Where names are invoked they will be faceless because the EU doesn't have easily identifiable chiefs or ideologues It's like the presiding authority in a Kafka novel; who's the King of the Castle? Nobody knows. For the average punter who thinks in terms of symbols and personalities (myself for instance) the debate is going to be very hard to follow. It'll be like watching a battle in the clouds between armies of ghosts.
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Date: 2016-02-08 07:59 pm (UTC)The only thing I find critical in this is: One may not like the EU, but what happens in higher politics if this alliance ends? They say, together the European states are a good driving force for goals throughout the world, no political dwarf you can ignore.
If they happen to part, this weight vanishes, and then it's only countries like the US, Russia, China and other alliances which didn't make the fault to create too much rules to follow around them. And this may lead to that the US becomes able again to drive its colonization politics forward in Europe in a much harder style than one had known throughout the years with the EU.
I'm still undecided over that opinion.