A message in a bottle from an European
A message in a bottle from an European
I was listening to Marc Andreessen interviewed by Joe Rogan on his podcast, and while I can see why Andreessen was relieved by the US election results, from where I sit (Italy) I can only say “one cheer and a half”.
They were discussing the prevalence of government and/or government funded censorship under the Biden administration and even before that, but I think they were both missing something. And for that “something”, I can contribute my life experience from the wrong side of the Atlantic pond.
US citizens are aware there is indeed a Europe because that's where France is (and the Swiss Alps), where they can go to visit Italy, correctly expecting to be welcome, to get their complimentary copy of either the Washington Post or the New York Times, be treated well and addressed in a more or less discernible English, and where politics is mostly similar to that at home.
They are right on all but the last, the Biden administration notwithstanding.
Now, I never lived in the US but I had to have a professional interest in what happened there, since I have been working in finance since 1988. So I experienced the extension to continental Europe of concepts that for the US were broadly taken for granted and were born in the fiery furnace of the 1929 crash, like bond ratings ( ERISA act), ban on insider trading, antitrust authorities etc. and also of less financial concepts.
Altough some of the customs and laws that came across the sea, like the Palantir of Minas Morghul, were put to bad uses, almost all were not understood to mean the same on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. For example, Andreessen and Rogan were speaking of a renaissance of the First Amendment. That means a very different thing in the US than in Europe, where State controlled media ALWAYS ruled the roost and privately owned media ofter live at the kind behest of government subsidies as in Italy, where only a limited number of outlets do without the handout. It mey beggar belief for them, but here we are still on a downward trend.
So, to name one problem, when Thierry Breton practically threatened Elon Musk in order to keep Trump off Twitter he was NOT throttling information that an average EU citizen could eventually find elsewhere on some selected but main stream national media, he was choking the ONLY outlet not beholden to the international Big Government that an average European had access to.
Ditto on the way things work (hat tip to Harald Malmgren for the expression). Americans are very aware that they actually HAVE a constitution and that there are clearly spelled right in the amendments whose general meaning is quite understandable to the average Joe. That is not the case here in Europe, where even the UK, one of the oldest functioning democracies, is now sending Police after people who expressed publicly thoughts that do not adhere to the party line, without higher courts trying to reopen the dungeons on the Tower of London to keep those responsible of such a government overreach suitably at bay.
It's too early by far to assert that the US will end the last two decades of sinister use of the government machine against its citizens and the principles of the Constitution the Republic was built on. But mark my words, if a country that tried nation building in impossible places like Iraq and Afghanistan doesn't try bringing Europe to its senses, two dire consequences might ensue:
The first is that no matter how successful the Trump administration will be domestically, the threat to go back to the dark days will always be there since the Davos /IMF crowd will treat such an event as a passing irritation, to be duly punished when the opportunity arises. The core of the mad machine was never IN the US anyway but it was and is transnational, so it lives to fight another day.
The second, and this hits personally closer to home, is that it may already be too late to have enough like minded people here help the US reassert basic freedoms across the western continent.
For one, and this is personal experience, the ole US of A has been quite open to all kind of immigrants of questionable background (I mean CHINESE citizens illegally crossing the Rio Grande, as if China had a common border? Gimme a break), but be an ambitious and stifled young person in Europe and the moat the US puts in front of you would make Vauban eat his hat in envy. Three of four of the next generation of Ponzettos tried in the past six years, none succeeded, in one case even when employed there by a local corporation. I think our family experience is relatable.
So you have the people that normally an Andreessen would want to hire doing a kind of European musical chair dance where they jump from one sinking boat to another, all the while of course remembering which boat shoved them off first. They will want to see the situation corrected by the powers that be before putting an inch of effort in changing that themselves, because they saw MY generation try and fail to do so multiple times... and now quitting for good, and again for relatable reasons: if you are already quite close to a Chinese style Orwellian state, doing away with votes and a multiparty system is a cost saving measure seen from the side of those that pay over half their income into the collection plate.
You should of course also add an ingredient come from the North, the happy country of Norway, and that I reckon will become widespread over all of Europe in the next four years: Should you START here, then try to relocate your company abroad, there WILL BE an exit tax à là Norway, one third of the whole value of the company, in full, in cash. And when I say “abroad”, I don't mean “to the USA”, I mean even within the EU, because bad ideas go far, they are unburdened by reality.
So in essence, not only it is in the best interest of the US to pressure Europe to adopt universally AND RUTHLESSY ENFORCE AGAINST EU GOVERNMENTS some kind of “Citizens rights charter”, three words that are enough to set nose hair on fire in all EU capitals and make the French ENA burst out in flames, but unless the US does that the “dark days of censorship” will remain for all practical purposes, and return to the US eventually in the future.
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