FundamentallySound Blog

It's late on a Thursday night, Lee is huddled in the seat across from me in the train compartment, I'm typing away trying to think of something interesting to say. We're on the Berlin-Paris express night-train, to spend a few days in Antwerp. The snow is still falling off and on outside the window.

Every time I start to talk about Europe I feel like I hit a wall. In Tokyo I'm full of observations. Even in San Francisco, where the culture can be a bit less than stimulating, I feel like I am full of things to say, critiques, apologetics, and so on. In Europe, I am just overwhelmed. In so many ways the culture is so similar to that of the United States, actually. But in other ways there is just no comparison. The similarities are things such as the fact that both America and European countries come from the basic moral perspective of Christianity. But the differences are in the directions this morality has taken them. While America is becoming essentially a kind of nihilistic melting pot of greedy tendencies under the veneer of some twisted propaganda of global democracy and freedom, Europe is blossoming into a kind of artistic paradise-on-earth of relatively well-funded arts programs and a generally rather content population. OK, that's a bit hyperbolic, but there's some truth in it.

America is fighting at least two wars, it's hard to say when everything the government does is basically part of some war effort somewhere, while Europe is flexing its diplomatic muscles and learning that it doesn't need to exist under the paranoic political umbrella of the United States. The EU is providing aid for the Palestinians, Germany has elected a progressive female chancellor. The whole EU Zone is watching with a neutral view the misguided and hypocritical aggressiveness of Bush & Co., refusing to join the battle. This feeling, of being in a neutral space, of escaping the daily bombardment of White House press releases regurgitated by a media with no spine is a welcome one. And really, why are Americans so willing to accept this nonsense? Who was it that said the people get the government they deserve...