Europe Matured

Europeans have a more mature politics than Americans do.

I read that sentence somewhere recently and it stayed with me. It stays because over the years the same rhetoric has been expressed over and over by American gasbags.

This "maturity" is described as an Anglo-Euro soberness, a somber prudence and vigilance regarding war because of past wars, particularly WWII, and always the writer says Europeans have a "greater sense of history." Europeans have matured politically.

Now, granted, this notion of European wisdom must make sense to white folks otherwise so many would not keep repeating it.

The authors of such comments do not list the countries they're referring to but presumably it's France, England, Spain, Germany, Italy - former empires, now broken geographically and monetarily.

Or perhaps they think of Scandinavia - those blond countries whose total population would fill one neighborhood in Chicago or New York City. These Europhiles are also impressed with the European outlook on sex, drugs, and crime. I believe they think of free needles and turnstile rehabs, pot smoker cafes, nonchalant nudity, and gentler prisons - all to make life more pleasant and humane - but obviously not keeping up with Interpol or European crime statistics. And by gosh, US crack houses, methadone clinics, club fed prisons, and sex everywhere would rival that of any European country!

Bosnia and Croatia are southern Europe and Russia is eastern Europe and not quite so mature as to have abandoned war completely in the last 50 years. And I guess the lovers of Euro-maturity forget the French Indochina War of 1946-1954, in that little jungle called Vietnam or the French "pacification" campaigns in Algiers. And the half-dozen French colonies in West Africa which fell apart in the 1950s and '60s in wars for independence. And I suppose Spain's generalissimo Franco rule circa 1936-1975 was mature politics.

Would the 2003 scandal of Finland's Jaatteenmaki, and subsequent resignation, so Finland could join the "coalition of the killing" be listed under mature politics?

I guess ya have to be white folks to think Europeans learned their lesson after War World II. To pay no mind to Maggie Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, and now James Gordon Brown. Forget that Thatcher threatened to use nukes during the little Falklands war, that Blair and Brown have kissed BushCo since day one. Forget all those Europeans who support and fight in Afghanistan. Forget European apartheid - murder by oppression is more mature than declaring war. I guess all that Euro-NATO and UN killing activity is a sign of maturity - oh wait, I forgot, it's "peacekeeping." I suppose when a European UN or NATO troop kills a Somalian or Haitian it's mature politics.

Yessiree Bubba, those Europeans are so politically mature and ahead of the US (excluding Prince Charlie's tampon and Bill's blowjob).