Pitfalls along the road to socialism
All over Europe, elections are teaching Brussels that Greeks like being Greek, Brits Brit, and French French. Nobody much cottons to being "European," where some Belgian bureaucrat says what you will and won't do in your small town where another language is spoken and people don't like paying huge salaries to self-important nobodies in gray flannel suits.
The population of Europe is discovering that it really doesn't like the creeping socialism of the European Union, though many probably don't even realize that that's what they're mad about. It isn't even full-blown socialism yet, but everybody knows that's the destination, and the shine has worn off. Happens every time on the long and winding road to socialism.
Some insightful sage noted that you can vote your way into socialism but you have to shoot your way out. That's what waits at the end of the road Europe is on. Strife. Once it breaks into the open, citizens will suddenly understand why they haven't been allowed to own private firearms. It's a lesson Venezuelans have learned the hard way and that many Americans still don't get.
But Europe will probably have to get hungry first. Literally hungry, and not "literally" in the Joe Biden sense. Perhaps before that, Europe will get literally cold as Moscow starts playing with the natural gas spigot, just to show who's really boss. Certainly, before that, Europeans will run low on gasoline and will have to wait in line for a few expensive liters to get home from the jobs that just laid them off.
Rough times await Europeans. They're going to discover they need all that self-regenerating energy that greenness doesn't provide but that they paid billions for. They will shiver in their homes from all the warming not caused by the CO2 their bodies emit. Disease will spread as trash builds up and clean water stops. Gunshots in the streets will remind them they have no defense against rioting, looting crowds.
It will be Venezuela all over again, and meek half-steps will not check the social ills. As civilization crumbles, the choice will be suppression now or repression later. Rebel now, get suppressed now. Don't rebel now, get repressed later anyway. In either case, rebellion will take a while to get going, during which the supranationalist kingpins will keep on quietly arranging the complete demise of the nationalities.
That's what illegal immigration's all about. By this late date, many of us can see the endgame from the supra perspective: replace the native populations of the West with people from places where social peace has never existed; tribal hatreds take the place of civil discourse; and sudden, violent death is a way of life. Hobbes's state of nature, famously nasty, brutish, and short, reasserts itself, with force the only form of control. Who controls the force? If you said, "Brussels," go to the head of the class.
Unknowingly, Donald Trump assists and impedes the entire process. The string-pullers behind the scenes want all this done on the sneak so the present populations don't become unpleasant. Trump's economy is improving lives the world over, and people everywhere are content to let the rising tide lift their boats. But once the Trumpian economy stalls, as it inevitably will, things could quickly turn fractious. In time, they will become fractious.
Europe, you have a problem. If you don't take care of it, it becomes everyone else's problem, too. Without America taking up the slack when you fail, you have become the leading barometer of Western success or failure defending against the forces of evil tearing at its foundations. The surprise election results going on across the continent are glimmerings of the fight for Greeks to be Greek, Brits Brit, and French French.