Will Young Americans Ever Know the Real Europe?

A tragedy for us and for them

While watching President Trump's speech at Davos, with which I concurred with one exception (see below), I had a thought that interfered with my goal of positivity and left me feeling a certain sadness.

Due to the feckless policies of the globalists, not to mention the clever exploitation of imperialist guilt coupled with a perceived need for cheap labor, Europe is no more.

I mean, of course, the Europe we once knew and dreamed of, so well-described by Hemingway in “A Moveable Feast”. That is the Europe our young, those under 30, or is it 40, will never see.

Papa was writing of Paris, but it could just as well have been London, Amsterdam, and a host of other cities, which made many of us think the Old World was the coolest of the cool and inspired us to cross, on multiple occasions, for business and/or pleasure, what became known as The Pond.

Hard as it may be to believe now, in those days, to a great degree it was the coolest of the cool—the culture, the buildings, the food, the art films, the “sophisticated” politics, and, to younger and older males of the time, the women (many of whom, untouchable as they were, starred in those same art films. Jeanne Moreau and Brigitte Bardot are now dead.).

It was also quite obviously the birthplace of our civilization. Where would the United States have been without John Locke, or, to go back much further (1215), the Magna Carta?

Sure, the most horrible things had occurred there, from the massacres of World War I to the Holocaust, but still….

No more. With the exception of some Eastern European countries, I, for one, have no interest in going there. No London, no Paris, No Brussels, No Amsterdam (once my favorite), no Stockholm, no Edinburgh, and certainly no Dublin, maybe still some Italian cities because of their more realistic PM (also, it’s Eataly—how could one resist?), for me.

In large part, I don’t want to see the desecration of what I once knew and loved, Western Europe, invaded and changed—almost beyond recognition, as Trump put it today—by Islam. I have no interest in being around Groomers or Jihadists or women dressed stem-to-stern in black, sometimes with even their eyes obscured so they are completely unrecognizable one from another—all without the slightest interest in assimilation; in fact, the contrary, bent on imposing their culture on ours until the West no longer exists.

I have seen enough of it already, in the banlieues (suburbs) of Paris, over a dozen years ago, when researching an early version of what would become my forthcoming novel “EMET.” And, needless to say, as we have all seen, already in many of our cities, from New York (and how!) to Houston to Los Angeles to, almost beyond redemption, Minneapolis.

Many people I talk to feel the way I do about Europe. They no longer want to go. Some of those same people still do, but avert their eyes from what has happened, pretending it’s not there, staying in the right hotels or cosseting themselves on cruise ships, and trying as much as possible to steer clear of the new reality. If they were curious, they would peek around the corner in such traditionally progressive cities as Oslo and Stockholm, where, less than a kilometer from their sleek, putatively socialistic facades with their perfect renovations of yesteryear mixed with the gleaming and ultra-modern, another city lurks that feels more like you have been transported to the outskirts of Bangladesh.

It’s easy to see which part is growing. It’s also easy to sense how pathetic Europe’s response was in the almost comic number of troops each country sent to Greenland to counter Trump’s desire to take over the world’s largest island. I had to nod when our president said (paraphrasing) that America would always defend Europe, but it was hard to say whether )%NATO would always defend us. It now looks as if he will do so, take control of Greenland, for the good of the USA and Europe. In private, I’m sure some of those globalists are exhaling in relief.

WHEN MY EYES ROLLED or REMEMBER THE LAVI

As noted above, a moment in Trump’s Davos speech took me aback—that was when he chastised Netanyahu for claiming the Israelis invented the Iron Dome when the US did. Only Netanyahu was completely correct, as shown on this AI post:

‘Iron Dome technology was primarily developed in Israel by state-owned Rafael

Advanced Defense Systems, which serves as the prime contractor. e

Key contributors and partners in its development and production include:

• Rafael Advanced Defense Systems: Developed the main system and the Tamir interceptor missiles.

• Israel Aerospace Industries (IAl): Its subsidiary, ELTA Systems, developed the system’s Multi-Mission Radar (MR) that detects and tracks incoming threats.

• mPrest Systems: An Israeli software firm (now a Rafael subsidiary) developed the Battle Management & Weapon Control (BMC) system, which serves as the “brain” of the platform.

• Raytheon (RTX): As the primary U.S. partner, Raytheon co-produces major components of the Tamir interceptor. Roughly 55% to 70% of the interceptor’s parts are manufactured in the United States.

• Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Danny Gold: Widely credited as the visionary behind the project, he initiated the program in 2004 while heading the Israel Ministry of Defense’s administration for the development of weapons (Maf’at). ®

The development was largely funded by the Israeli government, with significant and ongoing financial support from the United States, which has provided billions of dollars for the system’s procurement and replenishment since 2011.”

Now, Trump undoubtedly knew some, if not all, of this, so what’s going on here? I suspect it has a lot to do with Netanyahu’s avowed intention for Israel to further build its own arms industry and be weapons independent in ten years. Trump wants to stop that from happening.

Although blusterers like Steve Bannon insist Israel is a “protectorate” and we should diminish our funding to them, in reality, it is the reverse. Israel, which has to spend the bulk of those funds in the US arms industry, is a greater boon to our economy than the reverse, some say by multiple times. This does not include the improvements they make to our weaponry, such as the F-35.

Unlike Bannon, Trump knows that and wishes to discourage the independent Israeli industry (he’s as much as said this). He’s willing to send Israel almost as much funding as they wish, as long as they come back in the form of purchases. (I assume he was also trying to send a don’t-get-too-big-for-your-britches message to Bibi. Your bread is ultimately buttered here, no matter the facts. If so, it wasn’t Trump’s best moment.)

This has happened before. During the Reagan Years, Israel wanted to build a jet of its own, the Lavi, for similar reasons of independence and, I imagine, profit. Reagan didn’t like the idea. The Israeli jet, in prototype, looked pretty good, and Reagan feared it might be less expensive competition for America’s then-nascent F-16. Complicated discussions ensued. Israel ultimately canceled the Lavi and purchased 75 F-16s.

So it goes in international big league baseball.

AND SPEAKING OF BIG LEAGUE BASEBALL

Now that Greenland has been (mostly) solved overnight in another Trumpian coup, the stock market has (mostly) rocketed up again, nearly every nation in the world, from Russia to Pakistan to Israel, has joined his Board of Peace in Gaza, the mullahs, one way or another, seem ticketed for extinction, I think we can put to rest the idea that Trump will run for president in 2028. It’s too low. He will be the President of the World.

(Am I kidding? Not really. Think about it. If there was going to be globalism, it would have to be his way.)