People ask me why I am so mad about Trump: "It's not even your country, it's far away, we have our own problems, do something about that!". Well that's exactly what I am doing. For decades my family and history lessons at school taught me about the Americans who saved us in WOII and are stil protecting us during the cold war and up until today. And for decades I took that for granted. Meanwhile the American dream came to me through TV, movies, music and stories from my friends and colleagues who crossed the ocean to find their personal luck, love and success. And I've even been there too for work and holidays a few times to sniff the air of that dream.
But somehow in the back of my mind there've been always some questions. Big decisions were made for us. In Europe we didn't have the "bombs" at least not in the quantity like the US and Russia so the cold war was mainly a fight between the US and the Soviets with Europe somewhere in between. The last decades or so big wars were started to "defend democracy" and protect us from terrorists. Yes, in Europe we also know democracy and we do have serious problems with terrorists. From everywhere. In the past from the IRA (Irish Republican Army), RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion in Germany), ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, armed Basque nationalists in Spain), quite a few more and recently Islamic fundamentalistic radicals too.
Nevertheless under guidance of the US (and the UK) and under the flags of the UN and NATO "we" have started or kludged a couple of huge wars like in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and more. No real results (except Kuwait) are delivered, all the war zones are severely instabilized and Europe is suffering from a huge refugee problem as a consequence. Reliable figures are difficult to get but rough estimates say that somewhere between 250.000 and 500.000 people were killed in those wars due to "our efforts". City's, economies, families are completely ruined.
Meanwhile Crimea is taken by Russia again. A Malaysian aircraft with about 300 people was shot by the Russians out of the air above Ukraine. Israel, Turkey, Ukraine, Libia and quite a few countries in the neighborhood of European borders are still a complete mess. And on top of that, the economic downturn, by the way started in the US due to bad legislation in the fincance sector, brought populism in huge numbers. Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands, the FPÖ in Austria, Boris Johnson in the UK and more everywhere cause instability and protectionism with Brexit as an disastrous example. And with all the above examples in the heart of Europe, nothing is really done.
To me, Trump is just a caricature of the ultimate wrong direction. He says and does everything a sensible European leader or even any human being would or at least should never do. But he is there and even attracts "fans" in Europe with his clownesque behavior. Meanwhile he is the President of the United States, the self proclaimed "leader of the world". And that is just terrifying. Being mad at him is in fact being mad at myself having lived in a bubble of false stories. And I must admit, his strategy is satisfying. Create an enemy, condemn the past and get enough energy from that to tell your own stories. I can only hope my facts are more accurate.
I believe it's time that Europe unites again. The French have "liberté, égalité, fraternité" as their motto and in the heart and constitution of every European country and their people something similar is close by. It's time that we break free of our "big brother": the US. Not that we should run to Russia, on the contrary, but given our long common European history we do have lots of experience collaborating with the far east countries like China, Japan, India and Indonesia and some more in Africa too.
Lets enjoy the turmoil coming from the US (they have some real good comic shows every night :)) and lets take them as an example how we shouldn't create our world. Hopefully common sense will emerge there soon and maybe we can than reboot cooperation between Europe and the US again too. But for the time being, no, we should build to our own strength.
Meanwhile in a few months elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands will set the pace. Fast forwards to a brave new world with promises of prosperity for everyone due to reliable collaboration between all European countries and their partners. Or backwards towards a tired and frightened society with every country on its own.
Vote!