We've all heard the term. When we say "Eurotrash", we are thinking about pompous, often lazy young people who populate their beaches, have too much money somehow (or act as if they do), seem to vacation half the year, prey on visiting American girls and, most importantly, look down their noses at the USA as if we are country yokels.
The last is most important, because the USA has now, by far, the highest GDP of any NATO member and bears more than half of the cost of the defense of, essentially, Europe, in doing so. They laugh at us and ridicule us, while they simply ignored our pleas for the European nations to pay their fair share of the defense of their own continent from the threat of Russian intervention.
Beyond that, they banded together into the European Union, turned over their sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats, and among other acts, absurdly taxed imports of American goods into Europe. In true Eurotrash fashion, they simply assumed that, yokels that we are, we would just go along with it and continue to import European goods without applying comparable tariffs.
Well, Donald Trump is many, many things, but is not a yokel.
Listening to his impromptu news conference this morning -- and he certainly enjoys engaging the press, in stark contrast to both his predecessor and his defeated 2016 opponent -- you could readily tell that this is not a president who will be walked over by those nations who think that soccer is actually a watchable sport.
It is not a president who is content to see the American taxpayer fund the defense of a set of nations who treat us as if we are stupid with our money. It is not a president who will let grown-up Eurotrash spit in our faces and expect us to wipe it off and give them another few billion while they sun themselves on the coast.
It is a president who is an American, willing to stand up for my tax dollars and do his best to ensure that hard-earned wages are not just given away to nations who laugh and refuse to pay their share -- and then keep out American farmers' and ranchers' products with huge tariffs.
NATO has been a problem, and the EU has been a problem, because their leadership has behaved like grown-up Eurotrash and treated us like we are stupid. And that has been exacerbated by eight years of a globalist like Barack Obama who was willing to bow down to European abuse of his own country and beg for more.
Those days are over. Thank God.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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I don't believe it when the opposition democrats give interviews where they state that the president is ignorant of the terms of the alliance, doesn't understand that you can't treat allies in this way, and add that he is pals with Vlad Putin. (It is part of the sneering attitude that they adopted when they lost the election). I don't believe it because the concerns he raises are the same they were stating (in congress) while the last two or three presidents were in office.
ReplyDeleteThe non-stop political posturing is tiresome and destructive of our country. It will not abate until someone gets really creamed in a future election (if then...).
I do know that many Americans are getting tired of spending billions of dollars to defend a continent that is unwilling to defend itself. Trump is actually trying to head disaster off at the pass by broaching the subject in Europe. Unfortunately, they aren't interested in hearing uncomfortable truths, especially from Americans. This will come to a head at some future date. Eventually, backing us up in some conflict by sending a token force will be understood for what it is: Europe is unable to fight with us anymore (remember - they couldn't maintain a full two weeks of air operations in Libia). It takes a reasonable amount of spending to maintain readiness and to modernize a force. They haven't even lived up to their treaty obligations. At that point, politicians here will start to find themselves in danger of losing office because people here will no longer support the expense.
I grew up in Europe. It is not just Euro-trash that looks down their noses at us - it is everyone. As you say, they have given up a great deal of their freedom in favor of un-elected bureaucrats. I expect that the gradually widening levels of wealth between our country and their continent will become so great that they will have to self-examine. Don't count on it.