The Men in Black

Who would have thought that the European Council would make l’Ancien Regime look like a neighbourhood block party. There is a subtext to the Grexit Crisis which betrays, all too vividly, the European Union’s democratic facade.

First the visuals.  Young, earnest provincials in their Sunday best walking up steps to meet men in black at some central place.  The hauteur is palpable.  This is not a question of nose-in-air.  The men in black are very ostensibly very friendly, as if, it were all an engagement among equals.  No.  The hauteur all but drips from the fact that the men in black are pleased to show that they have no need to be unfriendly.  Why should they be?  They are in control.  They will get what they want.   No need to belabour that Tsirpas is Le President de Patatras

Yes, they will welcome Le President de Patatras as if he were always one of us, and we would never be so gauche as to wonder where you might have been all these years. 

We shall assume you are one of us and, as such, will be expected to behave like one of us.

And being expected to behave like one of us, the Eurocentrals from La Cour d’ Europe, you will be expected to sell your people into penury in the name of economic stability and growth, just as we have done.

Let’s be clear: there is not a leader of the Eurogroup or of the European Council or any other ministerial menage  — whether of the left, center or right,  who has not sold his or her country to the Mandates of Haute Finance.

Moloch will not be denied.

Christine Lagard is very sweet about it.  She affects a persona that is a cross between Florence Nightingale and a concerned school teacher.  She might even be called the “Nun from the Fund”  Smiling gently and sweetly, she stands ready, always, even now, to help the Greeks achieve discipline on the path to sustainable economic growth.

Ah but oh... toujours cherchez the missing prepositional phrase:  “economic growth” for whom?  What Lagarde calls “sustainable” most normal people, people of flesh and blood, call “unbearable.”

The men and women in black are all from les grand ecoles, as the French call them or “school boys” as they are known in England. They are, for the most part, blood of the upper middle class who have been place on the road toward sustainable advancement and for whom the world is an vast “entre nous.”

When the president, whom we should at least have expected would have behave as one of us, does not, the smiles drop and we hear words like: “betrayal,”  “amateur,”  “cowboy,” “a mere academic,”  en fin, Le President de Patatras.  But worst of all: populist.

There is no democracy in Europe.  There is a parliamentary facade worthy of Potemkin for rule by the bloodless.