alt Hacker News>Dismantling the EU is like burning down your own house just to get rid of flies.
I don't like this comparison at all. Europe, the land that housed, fed and scarified my ancestors, is my house, not this supra-governmental corrupt bureaucratic institution called the EU that does not represent me nor speak in my name.
Empires, monarchies, governments and all such man-made institutions like the EU get torn down all time, when they become too bloated, incompetent, corrupt and cronyistic and lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people. See all human history.
Forests go through prescribed burns in order to be saved, for their own good, and so must political institutions. And when the rot is too big, it can't simply be "patched" anymore, it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch with fresh new people, which in turn will get corrupted over time and get torn down, and so on, rinse and repeat because that's human nature.
Ironically, the EU has achieved its goal of uniting all Europeans, as in they're all now united via hating what the EU has become and what it's doing.
Replies
I agree on the base of the argument. EU after all was created because of one tragedy. I'm absolutely sure that there will be more gruesome wars on the continent and I even wouldn't rule out the collapse in the future because petty tribalism holding everything back as always.
But this is the hatred you are talking about?
https://www.politico.eu/article/europeans-embrace-eu-gloom-w...
Let's stop the blut and soil BS right here. I am all for european panationalism but don't pretend that Europe is "your house" where "your ancestors" were. You come from a very specific culture inside it which has its own specific language and traditions and that has spent most its history warring with its neighbours, sometimes people in the next village speaking a different version of your lanuage. My ancestors and your ancestor probably scarified each other, the land didn't
Turns out unifying a lot of different countries that have different languages and interest is a hard problem and in order to satisfy everyone a little bureaucracy is the price to pay. You may find it too bloated, too slow or even too corrupt but burning it to the ground is a lunacy for people who entertain clean slate delusions: Whenever it happens, it is a catastrophy for everyone but a few opportunists.
Europe is imperfect but it has rejected the idea of war outside of itself. I don't think any European citizen would go to war with their neighbour. Just that is an amazing achievement. Now it can stay an economic union and big powers can pick and choose how to manipulate each one of us for their own purposes or it can strive to be a political union and have a standing on the international stage. We're not there yet but we will, eventually, we just need to hang tight. Things take time.