Mach's Gut, Europe!

“When half the U.S. Navy was destroyed by Japanese bombs, at least we knew who did it and where they lived... What has gone wrong with our communication system since then? Why are we more ignorant and less informed today than we were in 1941? ... we are doomed like rats in a maze of fear. We are slaves to mendacity and hostile disinformation. Bread and circuses were not enough to sustain the Roman Empire and they will not be enough for the United States of America.” – Hunter S. Thompson (2004)

If you had told me in 1991, 2005, or 2021 that a Malaysian PM would outshine a German Chancellor on the world stage, I would have thrown a bowl of nasi lemak topped with sauerkraut at your insolent mouth. Sadly, the West has forgotten a consumer-driven economy requires a subtext of morality proven by competent refugee re-settlements, responsible journalism, and at least superficial support for diversity. Any other paradigm seeking to incorporate the West’s trillions of dollars of debt and its ever-increasing military spending fails unless it admits no substantive differences between the Soviet Union and today’s dis-United States of America. Germany’s shift from the sane and sober Angela Merkel to the placid and robotic Olaf Scholz portends mediocrity in the EU’s largest economy, where mustachioed CEOs are more likely to gain the public’s attention than Bundestag members. 

Fascism aside, what typical Western student today can credibly explain capitalism, Communism, and socialism? Ronald Reagan’s stirring words are easily countered by Russia’s recovery from its post-1991 collapse and China’s creation of the world’s largest middle class. Today, Russia runs budget surpluses even as it is attacked and isolated by the entire West, which seems to have forgotten which country’s army marched into Hitler’s Berlin. Europe’s failure to maintain its “peace dividend” after establishing the EU’s common framework is particularly distressing because thus far, only the EU has been able to limit America’s technological behemoths. In contrast to the deferential Federal Trade Commission, the EU recently fined Apple, Inc. almost two billion euros and continues to keep an eye on Facebook, Amazon, and Cisco. (I am from Silicon Valley and once took umbrage at anyone limiting Apple’s ascent, but my support assumed fair competition, not sanctions and other anti-Huawei maneuvers.) 

What is capitalism, anyway? The only surefire way to judge someone’s claimed capitalist credentials is to see if they also favor legal immigration. I won’t bore you with economic theories–they’ve all been disproven and replaced by VP Dick Cheney’s statement, “Deficits don’t matter”--except to emphasize no voluntary system of exchange can be local rather than global if you expect the best. (And if you don’t expect the best, then why tolerate social inequality or higher velocity economic cycles?) As housing and higher education costs have soared in the West, further dividing the haves and the have-nots, the media has shifted to a narrative that admits historical wrongdoing but only at its own discretion. 

Sitting in Indonesia, it’s obvious much of Holland’s wealth would not be possible without the VOC’s (aka United East India Company) exploitation. Understandably, no Nederlander enjoying a stroopwafel wants his comfort disrupted by the idea that exploitation is assumed when an Indonesian doctor’s quality of life hasn’t improved significantly since colonial times and when Indonesians lack reasonable opportunities to visit Rotterdam. Such self-inflicted apathy is abetted by the impossibility of calculating the exact percentage of assigned weight to luck, personal merit, one’s parents, and overseas exploitation. Even so, truth has ways of surfacing, and greater knowledge of historical abuses has midwifed a Hobson’s choice: a European can admit his or her wealth is the result of something other than merit and suffer self-loathing, or s/he can ignore his ancestors’ abuses and break the common bond of history that facilitates social cohesion. The rise of the far-right in Europe proves humanity will choose psychological deflection in every possible scenario, future and intangible costs be damned. I do not mean to imply another Shoa or Nakba is ready to march the streets of Thuringia–but I see how we got there once, and I see how we might get there again. 

Meanwhile, in modern-day Indonesia, diversity is a way of life. In Northern Sumatra, I passed a Hindu temple, visited a Yangon-inspired Buddhist temple, saw a Catholic Church built using Orthodox and Minangkabau styles, and heard the Muslim call to prayer at sunset during Ramadan.

Though Westerners may not realize it, diversity is also their way of life. Every empire uses its privileges to commit theft of natural and human resources in the name of globalization. Britain’s greatest fiction writer, Zadie Smith, was raised by a Jamaican mother; America’s greatest fiction writer, Junot Diaz, was born in the Dominican Republic; and New York’s greatest living intellectual includes Kwame Anthony Appiah, raised in Ghana and England. The Manhattan Project that led to the development of uranium and America’s victory in WWII? Review the scientists involved–it might as well have been a European Project. None of this aforementioned cross-cultural alchemy is new. As I learned in my thirties, Christopher Columbus was not a Spaniard—he was Italian. Napoleon Bonaparte was of Italian descent, and his parents fought against the French.

Somehow, Western voters have forgotten their own history and their own authors. Like every other writer worth reading, I blame secondary school teachers, but I also realize historians have a difficult task: they must portray Western affluence–the same beneficence granting three months’ vacation every summer–as based partially on chattel slavery practices as well as incremental knowledge resulting from a trial-and-error system that viewed human beings as experimental animals. Furthermore, teachers must impart this knowledge while maintaining the fig leaf of a meritocracy, one that upholds morale in the face of increasing concentration of economic power. The problem? Not one expert or academic has figured out how to do it. 

More liberal knowledge seems to generate calls for economic reparations, which, though not attenuated by impact, are attenuated enough by time so as to exacerbate social discohesion. A proper liberal arts education allows the mind to handle a paradox, including one alleging a person’s history and culture was evil, but some of that evil also caused one place to have more affluence and opportunities than others, thereby attracting good people. (Wasn’t the devil always supposed to have more admirers than the other side?) Today’s Western liberals and conservatives have instead decided to argue that their ancestors may have been evil, but every culture had periods of evil, and hey, some people are still practicing genital mutilation, and if we hadn’t built a road over there, they wouldn’t have one, and if you don’t like it, go back to where you came from. Somewhere, a middle ground exists between lies and loathing and optimism and self-indulgence. It is up to Europe and its political and academic Mr. Magoos to find it, regardless of how long it takes and how uncomfortable the crucible.

Luckily, a solution is at hand. It involves asking secondary school students whether the British, French, and Spanish colonized America; why all prominent founders of the colonies were Protestant save one signee to the Declaration of Independence; why NYC banned Catholics from public office; why the KKK was anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic as well as anti-Negro; where the word “Negro” comes from; why Christians do not generally acknowledge Bilal or proof of other moral differences between Christianity and Islam; and so on. Such a task is not as difficult as it might seem, though re-opening wounds between Catholics and mainstream Protestants in favor of Quakers and Amish will discomfit many good people. Nevertheless, prior to 2001, the United States had ample evidence its institutions excelled at the most moral test of all: shielding the different-minded individual from the same-thinking mob. Muhammad Ali did not go to prison because he refused to support an unjust war, and the decision was unanimous because precedent protecting Jehovah’s Witnesses existed. The military—the same outfit producing Edward Snowden, Aaron Bushnell, and Josephine Guilbeau—accompanied Freedom Riders of all races. George Carlin was not driven out of the United States, Chris Rock is still working, and John Lennon was allowed to stay in New York. I am certain more examples exist. If only we had competent historians to tell us about them.

© Matthew Rafat (March 16, 2024 from Berastagi, Sumatera)

1. “Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences. And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence.” – Mikhail Gorbachev 

2. Europe without Russia is like a child missing a distant uncle–it may not matter in the long run, but we don’t really know. However, a Europe against one billion Chinese, one billion Muslims, and 150 million Russians is like a teenager choosing to rebel through arson–he may survive, but anyone with options will seek friendship elsewhere. 

3. A competent reading of anyone’s history requires a person to hate his culture and his ancestors during at least one three-hundred years period, and perhaps I will live long enough to see the dis-United States start the first chapter of its educated fan club.