Congratulations, Europe! You've inherited one of the greatest civilizations in human history, dismantled much of its industrial muscle, handed enormous power to bureaucrats, and arrived at the brilliant conclusion that what this fucking disaster needs is another major war.
Britain deserves a special award. Once the workshop of the world, commanding factories, shipyards, and an empire spanning the globe, it now clings to the City of London, a square mile of financial power surrounded by a country struggling with the consequences of decades of industrial decline.
Apparently, when you've forgotten how to build an empire, the next best thing is managing its investment portfolio while the building burns down.
Across the Channel, Brussels has perfected the art of governing economic decline. Regulate the farmers, burden the factories, centralize the decisions, and announce another magnificent European initiative when the people start getting pissed off.
And then comes NATO, the geopolitical equivalent of a Soviet-era appliance still running because nobody can find the fucking off switch.
The Soviet Union disappeared in 1991. NATO survived, expanded, became deeply entangled in Ukraine, and now faces a confrontation with Russia that Europe's governments cannot sustain indefinitely without American support.
Naturally, Britain's political establishment seems nostalgic for 1939. Unfortunately, the factories, industrial capacity, and national cohesion that helped sustain Britain through that war cannot simply be summoned by waving a Union Jack and delivering another pompous speech.
So Europe's governing class has arrived at its final business model: wreck the productive economy, preserve the bureaucracy, escalate the geopolitical confrontation, and send the bill to Washington.
What a breathtaking monument to institutional stupidity.
Trump is looking at this rotting arrangement and questioning why America should keep underwriting its survival. The people responsible for Europe's decline are appalled. They apparently believe another generation of American taxpayers should finance the consequences of their genius.
The old order is dying, its surviving leadership is selling tickets to a glorious resurrection, and Trump has absolutely no fucking obligation to finance the funeral.
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