Different cultures. America was essentially a one-language, English, culture when the Union was formed in 1789. Europe is still a bunch of separate nations with 26 “Official Languages” different customs and different ways of doing things.
Expecting Greeks and Germans to get along ignores the differences between Greeks and Germans. Same goes for France and Spain. Disparate cultures can cooperate in many things except for the cultural differences that are more than just differences in language. The differences are not inconsequential. They are real and consequential and the differnces are not superficial.
National pride is why Donald Trump became president. Same for Brexit. The English are not French nor any of the other official cultures. Deep down they feel their culture is superior or at least better than the others. They don’t quite like each other.
They can cooperate superficially but they are not similar cultures. Put it to the people and they will go for their home nation. The 27 remaining nations in the European Union after Brexit are not ready to become a real union because that would submerge their identity as different cultures.
The Americans had a common language. The EU doesn’t. It cannot agree on one. It was formed in 1957, 60 years ago and it does not have a common language. Even worse for the idea of a common language which could lead to a common union, the EU has the largest group of translators in the world because it has to translate things into 26 official languages.
Additional nations are trying to join. That will complicate the union even more.
Countries aren’t the only entities having a hard time joing together. In Philadelphia, a city that used to be called the City of Brotherly Love, on Thursday, March 15, 2017 in a forty-six second video posted on Facebook, horrified commuters inside a Philadelphia subway station watched as black students attacked white students. HERE. And HERE. FOX NEWS reported it without mentioning the race of those involved.
Does it have to be this way? Probably for now, yes but racial tensions increased during the Obama presidency because of the expectation that things were going to get better for black people. More black people went into the Obama administration but the changes didn’t trickle down into the neighborhoods of Philly, Baltimore, Trenton, Ferguson and some other places. The website SBPDL reports and comments on race issues from a white perspective. Most of the media, probably 99.9% follow the example of FOX NEWS and simply avoiding mentioning race. For now, that’s the way it is. If Europeans who are essentially one race cannot get along that well, it’s unreasonable to expect things to be different in America with the exception that black and white people seem to bet along much better in America than in most other places which shows how the future will unfold. .
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