The European Union has stopped being a political institution and turned instead into a sort of "sacred cow." It’s not even governing anymore, it’s just too busy managing a religion
Back in the 90s, we slowly drifted away from acting as a trading bloc based on national interests and started building a new secular faith. We became convinced that we had discovered the ultimate formula for history, the only "Truth" with a capital T. In the process, we stopped being diplomats who dealt with reality and instead became missionaries trying to convert the rest of the world
The trouble is, missionaries don’t want to understand people, they only want to change them. This is why we don't see powers like China or Russia as competitors with their own interests, but as sinners who haven't read our gospel yet. We’ve become like an arrogant professor who fails the entire class for not following his manual, completely ignoring the fact that outside his classroom, that manual is useless to everyone
This disconnect has turned the offices of Brussels into a kind of cathedral. Our leaders don’t see laws as tools to fix things anymore, they see them as sacred texts you can’t even question. We’ve built a system that believes it can simply legislate reality until it fits our desires. It’s a collective delusion: the reports say everything is fine because we followed the rules, even while people in the real world struggle to pay for energy or feel safe. We are living in an institutional mirage where, if reality doesn’t match the Excel spreadsheet, we assume it’s reality that is wrong
All of this theater is born from a deep sense of guilt. Since Europe was the "monster" of the 20th century, it now feels it must be the "saint" of the 21st. We act like a recovering alcoholic who becomes a fanatic and looks down on anyone who enjoys a drink. This martyr psychology makes us believe that if we suffer economically for our "values," that pain is proof of our moral superiority. It’s a form of institutional masochism that confuses ethics with the basic instinct for survival. "It hurts, so we must be good," we tell ourselves as we sink
What we are seeing today is a head-on collision between dogma and reality. The EU keeps shouting its rules from the pulpit while regular people are living through a purgatory. We don’t want to admit our map is wrong because, if we did, the whole cathedral would come crashing down. For a bureaucrat who has made the rules his religion, it is better to sink with the ship while the "Ode to Joy" plays than to admit the map was drawn incorrectly. We have forgotten that you can be the most ethical person in the cemetery, but at the end of the day, you are still dead
I don’t want to be part of this "crusade" of liberal democracy that lectures the world while its own roof is falling in. We need to finally take off this saint costume that we love showing off. Let’s stop trying to save the soul of humanity and start fixing the real problems we have at home
