Europe Is Just Alright With Me

Where JD Vance and Elon get it wrong

Ed Note: kicking off a new writing course next month and if you’ve got a book or a keynote burning a hole in your dome, jump in. Will take it from 3 min elevator pitch, to 20 min standing ovation TED talk, to 250 page bestselling page turner.

Grab a call here if you’re interested.

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Onto the matter at hand…

A few months ago now (the Trump 2.0 era runs on dog years, you understand, where one month feels like seven), JD Vance went to a conference in Munich to denounce the EU in no uncertain terms.

He lambasted them for being a moribund, self-hating nanny state and doomed to Great Replacement by uppity jihadis and other ungrateful brown folk from the Southlands.

A short while later on Rogan’s podcast, Elon claimed that Western Civilization (and by implication, the non MAGA EU as Exhibit A) was displaying “suicidal empathy.”

In other words, they were too soft, and were going to be run over like the bitch-ass cucks they really were.

But after spending the last month bouncing around between events, from England to Amsterdam to the French Alps to the Balearic Islands, we saw less of that version of Europe–all weakness and disfunction–and a good bit more of the other side of Europe.

A really good, safe, clean user-friendly realm, filled with people living and being, not just having and doing.

A place that has matured to the far side of tragedy (two World Wars and a holocaust will do that for you), operating from a more grounded and adult perspective on what The Good Life might mean, and what the State’s role in supporting it might be.

It’s no surprise in an era where everyone’s talking about the Revenge of the Nerds and the takeover of the Broligarchs that America is being governed by some unreconstructed man-children these days.

Calling their enemies shit heads and retards, posting crying emojis and terribly bad puns.

#livingthememe

But really it goes deeper than that.

Theirs’ is not some more sophisticated philosophy, both morally and practically superior.

Rather, it is the muscle-bound arrogance of a frat boy.

Pumped up on testosterone and bench pressing, convinced that how he looks in the mirror is an exact measure of how virile and superior he actually is.

(until he has to summit a mountain, or survive a bar fight. Or fight in a war.)

America, you will remember, got off incredibly lightly during the same 20th century that forced their aunties and uncles in Europe to rethink how to get along with their neighbors.

As Winston Churchill supposedly said “You can depend upon the Americans to do the right thing. But only after they have exhausted every other possibility.”

In reality, the US was late into both wars, only getting in when stalling was no longer an option (thanks Japan!), and when maximum advantage and minimum liabilities were secured.

It’s also been forever buffered by not one but two bigass oceans, and benign/ineffective neighbors north and south.

They’ve taken those “born on third base thinking you hit a triple” advantages to heart. And imagined it’s their superior way of life that has rightly gifted them with all of the returns.

Pretty good deal, compared to the cheek by jowl living on the Continent that forced conflict until it inspired cooperation.

Now, for everything that I’ve just said, the opposite can equally be argued.

As one French raconteur friend of mine lamented “yeah, but we could never build Silicon Valley, and we would never have been able to invent Burning Man. Things are too staid here, and really bold, innovative change is next to impossible!”

So it’s not that Vance and Musk were categorically wrong in their critiques–Europe has plenty of problems. And overwhelming immigration and bureaucracy are a couple of them.

But it’s also further along in its maturation, and has some answers for adolescent America. A country that’s so hopped up on its own hormones and sense of invincibility that it can’t see what it’s missing.

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That’s because the American Dream is, (when it works) dreamy.

But so is the European Miracle (i.e. how to get millions of disparate peoples to have a high quality of life in a peaceful union of states).

It’s the downsides of each of those that are the real problems.

In reality, this conversation just needs a better framework than arguing simplistic Pro vs. Con.

And as long as we have American pols bragging about the upsides of the American Dream and ignoring when it turns into a nightmare, we’re going to miss what we can learn from the other side of the pond.

Here, a model first refined by Barry Johnson can be really helpful. It’s basically Hegel’s dialectics, just mapped onto a nice McKinsey 2x2 graph.

In this sort of polarity map, we start with the obvious observation: (take a sec and look this one over as it sums up the dynamic pretty clearly)

Opposing ideas or values (AKA “polarities”) have a best case/worst case expression. Each has strengths when it’s optimized, and weaknesses when it’s overdone.

Like in parenting, when we wrestle with whether to Challenge our kids more so they will become resourceful and gritty, or whether we Support our kids unconditionally so they always feel safe, worthy and loved.

Too much of the former and you end up with Full Metal Jacket school shooters.

Too much of the latter and you end up with mollycoddled little dweebs.

It’s all about balancing the upsides of both, while minimizing the downsides of each.

But in most culture war/political knife fights, you only get one side championing the unmitigated upsides of their position, while pillorying the downsides of their opponents.

So when Vance and Musk drew such stark contrasts between MAGA ‘Merica and socialist Europe, they fully displayed this kind of lopsided argument.

They focused on a puffed up version of the best that America could be, while dunking on the worst of what Europe sometimes can be.

But there’s also the downside to that MAGA ‘Merica. Sure, anyone can grow up to be president (even reality show dropouts!). And even immigrants can grow up to be the richest man in the world

(#africanamericansFTW)

The reality of that harsh no safety net world America has created, where minimal regulations, negligible social programs and rock bottom taxation leaves the possibility for breakaway success, but it also leaves the reality of breakdown failure.

And even though almost everyone in America below the top 10% (or increasingly, the 1%) suffers under this system and would massively benefit from a bit more redistribution and government programs (as was the case during the US period of greatest growth from the 50s-60s)…

we keep playing the lottery, and we watch the Apprentice and we retweet Elon’s tweets (mostly cuz he’s just so gosh darn witty!) in the fevered hopes that we will hit the jackpot and be next onstage to collect the prizes.

And the losers under this system are just that. Losers, deserving of neither sympathy nor solidarity

Call that overall cult of personality, de-regulated “you’re not the boss of me” Great Gatsby ethos: Hyperindividualist Presentism.

Nothing to think about or optimize for but Me/Now.

Europe on the other hand, seems much more indexed towards a Traditionalist Communalism.

It’s about Us/Always.

They decided that it might be worth it to kick in a bit more to the tax man so that they were personally on the hook for a lot less.

They figured that the lottery is really just welfare for people who can’t do the math.

They remembered that hungry men are angry men. And that despots and dictators promise what democracies fail to deliver.

And that it might be better to create systems that work for most of the people most of the time.

From airports that share passports across an incredible diversity of countries and geographies, allowing for travel as easy as going from Alabama to Arkansas..

And UNESCO protected cobble stone paths through the mountains, to cob cottages with names from centuries ago.

From town squares and old cathedrals, to summer celebrations marking battles and saints from the Middle Ages…

To sunset and cheeses fresh made from each mountain village to good wine and lingering conversations.

They mark the seasons and reasons for being.

And not in an oversentimentalized Eat/Pray/Love kind of way.

But in a sincere and observant way.

Hospitality matters.

Tradition matters.

Place matters.

People matter.

Community really matters.

Architecture matters.

Beauty matters.

***

Large chunks of the world have figured this out.

In truth, they never forgot it.

It’s only America, with our pubescent insistence on the greatness of our immediate impulses that we end up with Wal Mart and Vegas.

Plastic knockoffs of the best of humanity, stacked deep, and sold cheap.

To be sure, America has something to be deeply and unapologetically proud of, and it’s that very thing that’s getting kicked to the dumpster right now.

Our newness, our inclusivity, and our willingness to invent the future, unconstrained by a past that binds us.

But that’s based on the American Dream. Not the “Love it or leave it!” one that frat boys love to shout drunkenly on Bourbon Street and Sixth Street.

The simpler one.

The humbler one.

The tired, poor, huddled masses one.

Welcoming the stranger.

Defeating the bullies.

Honoring the rule of law.

Listening to the voice of the people.

Like Alexis DeToqueville, but in reverse. This spring I left America to find it.

And Europe has reminded me all that its uppity offspring might never be.

But also what it can be.

If only it would grow up.