European soundbites. The politics of progress and peace

European soundbites. The politics of progress and peace

As an adopted European, having acquired the nationality by paper, rather than birth (but aren’t we all people of paper or without paper? Isn’t that so a defining characteristic of the modern State that we can immediately grasp Serrat’s Vagabundear quote: “To not forget what I am, my motherland and my guitar are always with me; one is strong and is faithful, the other a paper”?) I have also ideas about Europe that I want to put in paper, at least to give them some definite form, rather than the general feeling that they currently represent.

The first is about Christianity. Christianity deals with a person’s relationship to God and his or her relationship with other people. A State cannot be Christian and a legal construct such as Europe cannot be Christian, because only people have religions. As there is a debatable percentage of people that practice Christian faiths in Europe (the Jesuits themselves admit that no one has really bothered in collecting the data appropriately, here), then, there are European Christians, such as there are European Muslims, European Hinduists, European Jews, European Buddhists, etc. People have religions and their rights should be protected, because people are important and religion is just an aspect of people.

Then what should a Christian do in Europe today? Live like a Christian, which means, care for and about others, share what you have, sit and engage in dialogue with other people, always, regardless of what you think about them. Even the most horrible person has real grievances and fears that can be addressed and to the extent that a few intractable people insist in exerting power and exercising violence, a Christian should strive for a just and caring society where the basest of instincts of the human soul will be quieted down and won’t find fertile ground to grow into the wicked tree that characterized our last century.

But I digress. My main query is the conundrum of Europe in face of the crisis of centrist parties. As an European citizen, I just hate reading the news every day. So many atrocities that could be prevented following three simple steps for Europe and three for the rest of the world:

Europe:
1) Increase tax revenues by  eliminating the tax conduits and sinks in the UK, Netherlands and Luxemburg; 2) Use that money to invest in technology and development that will create jobs in the struggling portions of the Union, leading to a booming internal traditional and digital market (which results in more tax revenues) and; 3) Jail all politicians that take bribes. Without kickbacks allowed, politicians will be forced to listen to the fears and grievances of people, instead of taking money and leaving the poor and disenfranchised to take out their discontent against each other.

The world:

Europe, now being the richest and most democratic region in the world, can finally resist, both morally and financially, the warmongering of the big world powers, such as the US, China and Russia. Having put their house in order, it would be really easy to: 1) Get out of NATO, create a zone of security around its borders, never sending their military abroad and never selling their arms outside of Europe (the economic impact of descaling the arms market would be minimal, since most nations would actually be producing necessary things, such as electrical cars and solar panels, instead of weapons); 2) Prosecute all corporations benefiting from violations of human and labor rights (production in low wage countries would not end, because it would still be much cheaper than in Europe, but workers in Indonesia, Pakistan, Haiti, etc., would be paid living wages and work under humane conditions, thus exporting European well-being abroad). Finally, using its regained economic and political strength, Europe could 3) conduct all of its foreign policies through the United Nations, in strict compliance with international law. Nothing in the UN has to change and the EU can actually save money spent on individual donations that often go to corrupt local politicians.

If we started that tomorrow, by December there would already be real peace prospects in the Middle East, Korea and West Africa; Trump would be impeached; Putin and Xi Jinping would have to concede to open, popular elections next year and the UK would be counting the 99% of the votes of the new referendum cancelling Brexit.

May 19, 2018 Miami