The effect that American politics has on the rest of the world is truly amazing. If the claims of American pundits are to be believed, it causes people in faraway countries to rebel against their governments, it’s responsible for global warming, it’s the reason for the rise of DAESH, and it induces people to leave their homes to move to other countries. Writing at the Washington Post Jim Hoagland epitomizes such an American pundit:
Count on a European stampede toward Moscow — and an even more precipitous swing to the nationalistic right in European politics — if Trump is declared the winner here in November. That moment would also mark the final burial of that American ideal of internationalism that helped to make Europe a more prosperous and peaceful continent for the second half of the 20th century.
Sorry, Jim. We’re just not that important. Let me make an alternative prediction: European politics will “swing to the nationalist right” regardless of whom is elected president in November because internal economic, social, and political circumstances and fundamentals are a lot more important to our European cousins than the bloviations of our politicians.
The internationalism that Mr. Hoagland longs for is and always has been a will o’ the wisp. It will remain so as long as relative values differ among the peoples of different countries which IMO is likely to be forever. At least as long as I’ll live which for me amounts to the same thing. It is dying of its own pretensions rather than because of anything we’ve done or failed to do.
The reaction of the elites to the predictable outcome of the shell game they’ve been playing reminds me of nothing so much as an old Wizard of Id cartoon.
