It’s pretty painful for Gen X Europe to witness what’s going on with Greece. We are the only generation that grew up with the idea that Europe was the goal, the answer, the neatest shit we could conceive.
But we got screwed. Boomers, again, totally hostile to mixing up cultures and sharing our good stuff to each other. Boomers’ elite created that insane technocratic layer on top of Europe’s institutions. Millennials screwing things up too because they didn’t grow up with any ideal and don’t necessarily want to work to fix what previous generations have let go. European millennials, they like their comfort and are not that curious about their neighbors, they have tablets and the world at their fingertips. Why would they?
So it’s a mess. One currency to rule them all wasn’t enough. When I see how hard it is for those countries to get on the same page for stupid things like driving laws or more ridiculous, I kind of feel like it’s never going to happen. We haven’t been able to make work laws more consistent across Europe and we wonder why people don’t move so much and blame other countries.
And always the same problem of not asking Europeans what they think. Most Europeans knew that Greece wasn’t ready in 2000. I wasn’t for it. At that time, bigger economies like Spain and Italy were slipping away. We were already seeing that it was complicated to “synchronize” countries economically and we were adding one with a pretty weak economy. We should have said no to Greece and fix issues with South Europe first and I’m pretty sure that citizens would have gone this way. But we’re never asked directly, instead populist politic parties jump in and tell everyone that we need to go back to National Bullshit. And a lot of people are listening to them. It’s a mess.
Obviously banks are the happy architects of that clusterfuck. They assisted governments lying and profiting meanwhile, people think it’s all about immigration laws and “who’s leading” Europe. That’s genius. Evil, but genius.
I don’t know how it will get better. I feel like we’re passed the point where there was a simple and straight answer to Europe which was let’s build it.