The Hearse That Wanted To Be An Ambulance

Two gravediggers have advice on resuscitating the EU

In the world of Western mainstream media political commentary, not everything is fun. In fact, mostly, things are grimly serious, the sort of seriousness that comes with solid, never-questioned self-importance. But sometimes that professional pomposity reaches a tipping point when strenuous efforts to be very earnest involuntarily produce priceless outcomes.

That is the case with a recent elephantine op-ed that has surfaced in Politico over the illustrious names of Gabrielius Landsbergis and Garry Kasparov. Its one, relentlessly reiterated argument is touchingly simple as well as out of touch with the world we really live in: The EU, this fantasy goes, is too consensual, peaceful, and nice (tell the migrants drowning in the Mediterranean or traded as slaves in Libya with EU de facto support); and it must become tough, decisive, and fierce, with plenty of arms and gritty oomph. Because otherwise it won’t survive in a world shaped by the big bad “global network of authoritarians” (no, I won’t enumerate them here; it’s just the usual suspects of every Centrist’s fever dream) and, for good measure, terrorists, too. (Surely, the latter, at least, do no longer include Mr. Jolani, the former leader of the Al Qaeda franchise in Syria who has recently been reborn miraculously as an avatar of diversity now going by Al Sharaa?)