From Brexit back to Grexit

Letter to a British old friend

Dear Tilly,

Sorry, I missed your birthday, I remembered it was around mid January but failed to check on Facebook, I'm too tired of so-called social media.

Well, we're the same age now, not bad at all. We made it. I'm still living, alone, though with two adorable kitten, in the Britton family big and empty house, but I managed to fix my fireplace and add one room and two high-tech electric heaters, During the school vacations, my elder daughter come and visit me with her two adorable kids. Since May 2018, she's a tenured Professor at Paris-X. Nanterre where I was an undergraduate student in philosophy from 1971 to 1975,  

But times have completely changed since May 68, or rather "time is out of joint" as said your national treasure, William Shakespeare.

In view of a Brexit with or rather without a deal, let me say this: it doesn't matter, I can travel anywhere thanks to my US passport. Anyway, I failed to renew my French one, which has always been of poor help in foreign countries. Politics is even worst in France than in the US or the UK, with their yellow jackets = not worth a yellow submarine. If you want my real opinion on the subject, I say: let it be, anyway Europe has become one big German business. They have the money and therefore the power. The Greeks should have left the E.U. since the No (οχι) referendum in June 2015. I was there, in a tiny Aegean island and then in Athens too – a city I love more than any other in Europe, even Paris or London. – I was there watching the situation deteriorate, and the vote by the people rejected by this weak and loose guy named Tsinakis. Have you read what his Finance minister, Yannis Varoufakis, has written on the "crisis"? He’s a really smart and seducing guy, a bit too seducing with his leather jacket and motorbike, but truly a brilliant economist from Harvard. He has now moved to Berlin, trying to wake up European minds in radical theory. Unfortunately he’s from a soon to be extinct species, promised to become Geist or ghost, as communism was for capitalism according to Karl Marx Manifesto. 

I saw them, my beloved Greeks, not the German or French tourists, being unable to get any cash at any ATM. I wish they had the courage to exit the malaria Euro-zone, and cancel their extravagant Debt. Even the FMI had to recognize the absolute impossibility of paying back more than the interests, which are already too high. I wish Germany were less lucky when the U,S, erased their debts after their collapse in 1945, I wish Crete was not bombed in vain by the Nazis, I wish history in general were more grateful for the heroic people especially when they are poor. and helpless. At least the Greeks might have kept their pride. But no, humiliation and injustice seem to be their endless condition.

I had to leave this friendly and courageous people in a total mess from years of their careless and corrupt government, but primarily from false promises and true lies from the French and German banks, and these secret institutions as the Eurogroup with no transparency or “democracy”, a word and a reality that has appeared in Athens 2000 years ago. As with the origins of Western philosophy, a Greek word too, invented by Plato to mean friendship in place of unreachable wisdom.

But is there any place in Europe for a democracy, especially the One “to come” - à venir, to quote our last philosopher, Jacques Derrida, a "Jew" born in Northern Africa and chased from the Republic school by the "French" antisemitic government, l'Etat Français, an "icy monster"(according to Friedrich Nietzsche), born from amnesia and shame and resent for the Front Populaire and its paid vacations for the workers? Are they still real workers in this dis/connected and confused "world" ? Oh yes, I forget you have your Labor Party... well, I wish them good luck, they'll need it 'badly', as says Donald.