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'Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.'
Subject: Re: French Elections Sun May 14, 2017 2:32 pm
What superior culture, what superior morals? It's been a nihilist hell for decades.
"Nihilism stands at the door: whence comes this uncanniest of all guests? Point of departure: it is an error to consider "social distress" or "physiological degeneration" or, worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism. Ours is the most decent and compassionate age. Distress, whether of the soul, body, or intellect, cannot of itself give birth to nihilism (i. e. , the radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability). Such distress always permits a variety of interpretations. Rather: it is in one particular interpretation, the Christian-moral one, that nihilism is rooted."
This was written over a hundred years ago in one of Nietzsches notebooks. Then, already, Europe was losing its worth. Then there was Communism and two world wars. And then 75 years of postmodernism. What, really, are we supposed to protect? Honest question, to which I expect no answer, as Ive spent my adult life fighting with all I had for what I figured were still European values. The sick joke was on me.
They are nihilists, and they do not deserve to be attributed any superior morals or values.
If they werent worthless, they would have listened to people like me long ago, instead of constantly ridiculing, beating up, cursing and excommunicating me and anyone who dares to speak out for what used to be European values, centuries ago.
Dont think Le Pen or Wilders gives a shit for what I or you have to say. Ive written to their organizations at various times offering my support, but there is a haughty dismissal of anything that doesnt fall into the literal limits of the party line.
Have you often heard a human story coming out of Europe? Ive not seen many lives that dont fall away into utter irrelevance, and that dont turn their subjects into goons of the abyss.
So Macrons "nobility" and all that I said, its relative to an irreversible wretchedness. Its all about how Europe is going to slide into cataclysm, and what will be possible from within the abyss.
Subject: Re: French Elections Sun May 14, 2017 2:53 pm
Only Parodites is relevant to Europe now. Only his works make sense anymore. Christianity as Nietzsche knew it and chose it as an enemy has done exactly what Nietzsche said it had done and would do. Christianity as Parodites conceives it is the other side of the coin, the one that contains the Eagle.
VO only describes what happens, and it only prescribes absolute commitment to a path, and it allows for more logical criteria for commitment. But what it doesnt do is move into the psyche and see the war.
Man has been born of horror, which was caused by the jungle that the instincts immersed themselves in as their attunement to nature collapsed. This horror is repressed by Christian morality, which is itself a form of that horror.
Then out of horror, this god died. God died of himself. God died of his own horrifying nature. But it left man with a void, the expectation of something not horrible. He has no idea yet how to retrieve this. He can not by himself begin to conceive of the terribleness of courage in which this path becomes visible.
Subject: Re: French Elections Mon May 15, 2017 2:57 pm
Journalists caught up with my thoughts from two weeks ago.
Britain could very well be fucked. Which, if you read what their contributions to EU policy have been, would be more than deserved.
FT wrote:
Newspaper caricatures of Emmanuel Macron show the president of France as the puppet or plaything of Angela Merkel. A lifetime since world war two, the British in particular still overrate German ambition and under-rate French strength. Nothing can change these views, not the German chancellor’s obvious reluctance as a hegemon, not France’s tenacity in defence of its own interests. It is as though a nation’s performance circa 1940 defines its true self forever.
This complacency about one continental power and paranoia about another leaves Britain unprepared for Mr Macron’s ultimate project: the restoration of Franco-German leadership of the EU. We assume it cannot happen because France is too weak and Germany too keen to dominate, but the first need not always be true and the second has not been true for 70 years.
Mr Macron envisages a grand bargain in which Berlin secures the euro with a fiscal union while Paris agrees to structural reform at home. Such a trade would revive an old relationship that has atrophied through the weakness of his predecessors and the economy they oversaw. If it happens — and the freshness of his electoral mandate gives him a shot — then Britain enters an invidious position.
It has worked for centuries to avoid a concentration of power in mainland Europe. When it failed, as it did before the world wars, Britain paid a blood price. When it failed again in the postwar era, it paid an economic price: a unified continent led by a Franco-German industrial core left Britain for dust until it started to bid for membership of the project in the 1960s.
A coherent, decisively led Europe will always be a problem for Britain. It cannot not be. It has the power to set the terms of access to the continental market and exclude Britain from any influence over events that nevertheless affect it. London’s way around the problem was always to divide and conquer, and it paid handsome returns in recent decades. With its French-style commitment to national powers and Germanic enthusiasm for commerce, it played each country off against the other, alternating alliances between them to craft an EU more to its liking. Hence the single market, the eastward expansion, the bespoke opt-outs. Related article Macron wants tougher EU on trade and foreign investment
French president-elect wants ‘Buy Europe’ measures in bid to win over domestic critics
This trick could have survived Brexit. It is hard to picture a France led by the far-right Marine Le Pen or even a generic Gaullist or Socialist holding a consistent line with Ms Merkel against Britain in the exit talks. British diplomats hoped to encourage splits between the two largest remaining members to extract a better deal. That hope expired when Mr Macron won. They now face a united front.
Both countries want to see Britain incur some material cost for its decision to leave. Both want to lure some banking activity from London. Both want the euro to survive and challenge the dollar. Both are led by politicians who believe populists can be seen off through confrontation rather than capitulation. Both can think of a dozen things they would rather harmonise at European level before they can name one they would return to nations.
All of this points to the emergence of a tighter, better-led EU that makes life harder for Britain as it leaves and in the years after. And all of it has become more achievable with the election of Mr Macron.
Britain would not be neighbourly to say so, of course, but once it chose to leave the EU it gained a strategic interest in the paralysis or even breakdown of the bloc. That way the eternal dilemma — what to do about a giant neighbouring trade zone whose rules you observe but cannot shape — would resolve itself. Not only does the restoration of Europe’s central bilateral relationship make that breakdown less likely, it creates the dread prospect of an EU that is actually more coherent after British departure.
The British political class has not adjusted to the challenge posed by Mr Macron. It goes beyond his covetous eye for the City and his hard line on the narrow question of exit, to Europe’s long-term coherence as an entity that Britain will have to continue to deal with. Even in the high summer of relations between France and Germany, when both countries were economic success stories, the former was always cold-eyed in pursuit of its interests. For generational reasons, Mr Macron might be the first post-national president of France, the first to believe in the European project as an end in itself as well as an alternative instrument for French glory after the eclipse of empire. His dynamism promises a tighter bond between France and Germany, and a Europe that is harder to divide and rule.
This, especially, is a strong iteration of what Ive described extensively on this forum. Its somewhat unnerving to always be so fucking right all the time.
"Mr Macron might be the first post-national president of France, the first to believe in the European project as an end in itself as well as an alternative instrument for French glory after the eclipse of empire."
So that's only post-national in that it is re-imperial.
Farage.... maybe not Englands future hero after all. Maybe just the resolution of some seriously sick meddling in European affairs.
I hadnt realized the EU eastward expansion was Englands demand. The only reasons they could have wanted this, are to fuck with Russia, and make life harder, less safe, and more expensive for west-Europeans.
England is also the only European country that has Sharia courts. It really may be a lot sicker and death-prone than my loyalty to its artists allowed me to think.
Subject: Re: French Elections 
Sun May 14, 2017 2:32 pm