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Friday, December 2, 2011

The rise of New Europe

There may or may not be a crisis in the Eurozone. My take is that at worse it is a crisis for the financial sector, but that society's other sectors would muddle through should that be allowed to fail (examples: Iceland, Sweden).

What the political sector does is another mater however. For them, this crisis is a godsend. They are in the drvier's seat again, which is always exciting. I think that Europe's politicos will come around to an arrangement that stabilizes the financial sector, allows them to continue in office, and offers them more benefits from staying in the EU than out of it.

We are long past the point when nationalism matters in W. Europe. National interests will not drive the future of the EU. It will not be France, Germany or Italy that makes the difference. Those referents will be modified into a new amalgam called Europe.

You see, the EU government has become more and more detached from the nations of the Europe, i.e. the will of its peoples. Witness their numerous rejections of Europe in referendums. That detached condition had to change.

Postmodernism is nothing if not a lesson in ambivalent politics. Europe will end its purely fictional existence (which was still Modernist) and trade it for ambivalence. The referent will become less clearly defined as France, Netherlands, etc. Only then can Brussels represent Europe.   

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