Say Cheese!

I mean, I do understand these guys at www.diplomadic.blogspot.com. There are two or three trades that really force their practitioners to hide what they think, that make a professional obligation to smile and say nice things to the stupid fool you are facing with a glass of (weak) booze in a stupid cocktail that you’d be oh, so happy, to strangle. Take journalists, diplomats and priests…

As a journalist I have been so many times there, sheepishly staring at some snide crook delivering the usual load of lies! Furiously chomping on my poor pencil or pretending to check if the recorder was working properly (it usually was), so as to hide my embarrassment and eventual murderous impulses (that itching in the fingertips!) … Now, oftentimes the professional deceiver was a diplomat doing his job, if you see what I mean...

Often the script wants the diplomat to tell the reporter something that he/she perfectly knows the other would be a low-tech dumb cluck to swallow… Since most reporters are reasonably witted and awake, the diplomat -who usually isn’t half-witted  either- knows very well the other doesn’t believe one iota. But well, both make a living playing in that never-ending farce; one does the talking, the other sort of listening for the bell.

Now the Internet and its blogging revolution has made these professionals of concealment free to indulge in sincerity. At last! Free to say whatever you want!

I just enjoyed enormously the post “Sorry, But Euro Bore” of the US State Department Republican Underground. FSOs (and others). Here are some (long) excerpts:

There must be one. We don't know where, but there must be. There must be some place with politics more boring and inconsequential than those in EU Europe, but we can't name that place right now. In fact, everything about EU Europe (sans the UK, we always exempt the UK) is a giant bore. Nothing interesting or particularly important happens there. It's Canada but with tiny cars, 300 million people, and 9,000 types of cheese.

What are EU politics about? Simple, they are all about pensions, doles, subsidies, and new ways to avoid working and contributing to the advancement of mankind. Think we're kidding? Pick a European party -- right or left, no matter --cut through the rhetoric -- you won't have to cut much -- and the party is about coming up with new doles while making sure the old ones are protected. "The mean ol' (fill in name of party) wants you work 35 hours/week! We the (fill in name of party) will make sure you work only 30 hours a week! This will create more jobs, as the evil capitalists will have to hire more people! This will create more pensions, more free time, more sick leave, more, more, more . . .!"

Oops, sorry. We left out something else EU politics is about: being anti-American and anti-Israeli/Semitic. It seems that every continental EU politician has to establish how incredibly anti-American he/she/it is. EU "foreign policy" largely consists of loud denunciations of whatever the USA (or Israel) does (e.g., intervene in Iraq) or protestations about what the USA does not (e.g., not intervene in Darfur.) European foreign policy consists largely of blather about "soft power," quietly paying ransom, and always arguing for the need to "talk more." This has worked so effectively, we hear, that the Iranian mullahs will now give up their nuclear program just to avoid another conversation with a delegation of pompous Euro dips -- Europe has very good smelly cheese and very bad dental hygiene, a potent combination in a negotiating team.

Among the features of EU anti-Americanism is lecturing the US about how superior Europe is because of its doles and pensions and, of course, because it's, well, not the USA. We poor American Diplomads have to sit through endless bloviating from Euro colleagues about how Europe has high taxes but excellent public services, unlike in the USA. Of course, that the reality is far different doesn't bother them. OK, yes, we'll gladly grant them that Europe has taxes that are higher than in the US, but, sorry, they don't get much for them: European public services are much, much worse than ours. This statement comes as a shock not only to Europeans, but also to many Americans of the NY Times variety who see high taxes as the answer to every question. Don't believe it? Go to Europe, get sick or hurt, call an ambulance. Then, wait and wait and wait. If that's not the week the ambulance drivers are on strike, when (if) the ambulance comes, you quickly will learn that an American hearse has more life support equipment, and that European paramedics couldn't teach a Boy Scout first aid course. The ambulance, however, will look good compared to the public hospital where you'll be delivered, and, if still alive, you will wish that you were in the hands of American Boy Scouts.

Our "friends" the French get upset when we say this, and immediately retort that their medical system is considered (by whom?) the best in the world. Yes, that's the very same system that when the temperature went up a few degrees in the summer let 15,000 people die. Imagine the scandal in the USA if 15,000 people died because the temperature "shot up" to 95 degrees Fahrenheit! Imagine if we couldn't handle 95 degrees: LA would be a ghost town; Vegas never would have happened; Texas would be a howling wilderness.

Worth a visit, worth a Blogroll!   Freedom's just another word for blogging, folks.

UPDATE ------------------>
Talking about France, have a look at the thread at Winds of Change. I've been posting there just to get the record straight (less crooked, that is), nuance instead of black & white. Katzman's headline is, well, France: Siding With the Enemy. Again.

# posted by Juan A. Hervada @ 1:05 AM