The Spreading Poison of the New Conservatism
By Michael Boyajian
I am reading a book Dinner With Persephone by Patricia Storace and in it the author describes Greece as beautiful but the Greeks themselves as less than nice. I will not know the truth of this assertion until I visit Greece on my next trip to Europe.
I know one thing the rumors spread in America by the new Know Nothing conservatives about Europe being a less than desirable place filled with less than desirable people is a bold faced lie. I have been to Europe many times and can testify without doubt that this is simply not true.
In France I met the nicest people ready willing and able to help a bumbling American tourist speaking English once asked in French if it was possible to do so. There was no scorn as predicted by the Know Nothings.
In London we attended the Globe Theater and found the British to be as jubilant about their 500 year old Shakespeare plays as if they had been written just yesterday. Yes you can judge a society by their love of theater and the Greeks after all invented the art form so could they really be less than nice?
Then there are the Italians fluent in many languages finding joy in the cosmopolitan chit chat on the streets of their cities as if it were once again the height of the Roman Empire. Waiters alone would speak fluent German to one table turn to another and speak Italian and then speak to us in perfect English without missing a beat. And can we forget the wonderful people of Spain whose leadership hundreds of years later apologizes for the atrocities committed against the Muslims and Jews of that nation.
Now the new conservatism has destroyed America with its tax breaks for the rich who turn around and send our jobs overseas, their endless wars and their need to spread hate and anger because they themselves lead unhappy lives.
Unfortunately, this pestilence is spreading to Europe threatening its new golden age and we may be seeing the end of the dream there with the German leaders bad mouthing non-Christians, the French rulers threatening retirement rights and the new English government planning to do much the same like some slow working poison or an old science fiction movie where the ignorant rise up against the technologists and send the world careening into the dark ages once again. That is the new conservatism that is sweeping America and Europe and threatening the world with its very ignorance only held in check by a diminishing educated class making for a very thin line between happiness and angry hateful mayhem.
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