Still Unconvinced

antyx@flickr

I got an email the other day from a German university student - apparently he’s preparing a presentation on the Europarliament campaign in Estonia. One of the questions he asked was whether there was any difference in the parties’ campaign strategies.

It doesn’t appear so. The biggest discrepancy is that some stick to mud-slinging, forcing the reaction of disgruntled citizens who are no longer happy with a particular politician’s performance; meanwhile others go the marginally more noble route of vague promises.

I saw my first IRL television spot the other day. The party’s tagline is “50,000 new jobs”; that would be nice, but you’ll have to excuse me if I remain somewhat sceptical. I’m not saying it is beyond the party’s ability, and Mart Laar’s street cred as the economics savant still has some mileage left in it, but I just can’t take their word for it. If IRL wants my vote, they’ll have to do better than “trust me on this one.”

Nevermind that it’s a disingenuous slogan for what is supposed to be a pan-European election.

Neither am I convinced by the fecal carpet-bombing by the opposition. Nobody likes our Prime Minister these days. He bugs the hell out of me, and I voted for the guy! (Well, I wasn’t in his constituency, but I voted for whoever was the Number One in his party’s list.) And yet to summarily blame the country’s collective misfortune on the failure of the leader or the coalition is stupidity of the highest order. If Estonia’s bust has been particularly rapid, it is because so has the boom - and I would rather have had both than neither.

As Europeans, prosperity is our birthright.

I suspect this might be the one creed that can serve as a common backbone for the continent, irrespective of each community’s particular quirks. Europe, its mythology and ambition, has always been about wealth. Not so long ago we fought wars and captured colonies for wealth (and I say ‘we’ as a European, taking my share of the blame despite the fact that my particular member state has never enslaved an aboriginal tribe). Today we have the European Union, potentially the globe’s premier superpower - and it can only function as long as its mandate is benevolent. We trade, and consume, and export, and innovate, and occasionally exploit, though when we do, we feel very sad about it. The White Man’s Burden is rubbish, but a multicultural Europe remains the beacon of civilization (especially once the obvious competitor has squandered its goodwill). Still, civilization is too nebulous a concept to spawn zealotry. We carry the torch because it benefits us; we have found that we can get richer by making the rest of the world richer. In an imperfect universe, that makes us the good guys.

To butcher a Churchill quote: it’s a terrible way to exist, but it’s the best one that humanity has come up to date.

Viva Europa…

—

Bonus comedy:

Latest posts by Andrei Tuch

• Your EU Government At Work
• The Lazy Person's Vote
• Apathy is Not a Bug, It's a Feature
• Why 100,000 EU Residents Won't Get to Vote for MEPs - and Why It's Not a Big Deal
• Barroso Is Watching You!

Rate this article

(11 votes, average: 3.18 out of 5)

 Loading ...