Just a Quick Cheap Shot at France, Germany, and the EU

European Union could be a thing either wonderful or horrifying, considering the performance over history of the component states. In the short term, their ability to coalesce seems mighty fragile. Germany’s Green Party has persuaded a substantial number of the Deutsches volk to their point of view, and managed to get one of their number elevated to the post of Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer. It’s unlikely such voters will forget that it was FRANCE that bombed the Greenpeace ship lying at dock a few years back, drowning two of its crew and preventing the ship from interfering with a French nuclear weapon test in Pacific waters near Tahiti. Germans simultaneously protest nuclear power, disposal or storage of hazardous nuclear waste AND the pollution occasioned by coal burning, currently [sorry] the only viable aternative fuel. But all the while they quietly purchase surplus electrical power from FRANCE, which generates only six percent of its power by coal, eighty percent by Nuclear fission.

I wonder if the Germans or French have ever translated the phrase “cognitive dissonance.”

Good luck to Angela Merkel in her coalition government. A period of stability in German politics would seem to be a gift for Germany, the EU, and, well, everyone.