We'll do it our way

It's been amusing over the last two decades watching the European Union trying to position itself as a mighty global superpower – more specifically: as at least the equal of the detested USA, but more often its superior. Neutral observers note a strange combination of superiority and inferiority complexes.

As we might expect, the French are the most infected by this: their language is the most beautiful, their history the most glorious, their culture the richest, their cuisine the most cultured, their cinema the most intellectual. Even their intellectuals are the most intellectual. Their money was rubbish, but had nice pictures of artists on the banknotes.

The vocabulary for this psychotic state is also tellingly French: folie de grandeur. Despite all this gloire, the French have dwindled into global insignificance – and that is all the fault of the Amis, those overweight, thicko rednecks who just voted for Trump. For years these Americans have polluted French culture, so that now French youngsters prefer to eat burgers, watch Hollywood blockbusters and speak and text in Anglo-Saxon.

These resentful feelings of hurt at being displaced from the leadership of the world lie deep in the psyche of the European single-state project. This shouldn't surprise us: after all, was a French invention.

The Germans are not quite as deranged as the French, but suffer from similar delusions. They have always thought they were better than everyone else: their language the most complex and precise, their culture the richest, their engineers the cleverest, their cars the best (Vorsprung durch Technik! 'Build better cars', Mrs Merkel recently responded to Mr Trump). Let's not mention 'cuisine' or 'defeat software' and stuff like that. Unlike the French, their money used to be solid, with gloomy pictures of grumpy medievals on the banknotes – until, that is, they mixed it up with French, Italian, Greek and Spanish money in the Euro, with pictures of non-existent bits of architecture. Currently, the Deutsche Bank is as good as bankrupt.

As a result of this deep-seated inferiority/superiority complex, the EU has been aggressively confrontational with the USA for the last two decades at least.

For instance, the EU just had to have its own science and space programme. Let's have a mission to Mars, that will show the rednecks. No it didn't– it's an ongoing debacle (appropriately enough a term the French gave us, just with complicated diacritics: débâcle). The EU also had to have its own GPS system, Galileo. Massively late and over-budget it, too, is an ongoing debacle. Launched with French rockets, then with Russian rockets (much cheaper), it would be simply better than anything the Amis did when they launched the GPS system. That is, as long as the clocks on which the system depends keep going. So far, not so good.

Let's not mention the European Army, or the mad, bombastic stirring up of a civil war in an attempt to acquire the Ukraine for the Union.

Desperate to prove itself, the EU never thinks of cooperation with the Americans for the greater good in such matters. It has always had to be self-aggrandisement (another word the French gave us). Over the last decades it has, however, tacitly relied on them for protection. The USA has now elected a president who will focus on American interests instead of just passively accepting the European mud that has been slung at them down the decades.

Panic has broken out. Ulf Poschardt, the Editor-in-Chief of the German newspaper ironically named in this context Die Welt, calls for the Europeans to stand up to this tyrant:

Die Verteilung globalen Wohlstands wird von den USA künftig aggressiv zu ihren Gunsten entschieden werden – wenn wir uns nicht wehren und besser, mutiger, fleißiger, innovativer, freier, offener, schwuler, lesbischer, multikultureller werden. It's the economy, stupids. Wenn die Deutschen diesen Konflikt aushalten und sogar Punkte machen, verteidigen sie damit auch die Segnungen einer liberalen, offenen Gesellschaft. Es geht um sehr viel. Mehr denn je.

The distribution of global wealth will in future be aggressively decided by the USA in its own interest – if we don't defend ourselves and become better, braver, more hard-working, more innovative, freer, more open, gayer, more lesbian, more multicultural. 'It's the economy, stupids[sic]'. If the Germans can survive this conflict and even score points they will defend the blessings of a liberal, open society. There is a lot to lose. More than ever.

His call for a 'gayer' Germany was naturally widely ridiculed. He improved it by adding 'more lesbian' – now gender neutral, geddit? However, the smart-arse German intellectual quotes Bill Clinton's famous election campaign phrase in English, to show us what a smart-arse editor he is. He's too arrogant or lazy to check the quote, even though he is writing it in an article in a national newspaper, and ends up with the laughable plural 'stupids', revealing how badly he misunderstood the phrase.

Judging from his monster portrait at the head of the article, he is also a posing, vain, self-regarding bastard person. In a society mad about Bildung, 'Education[al level]', his type bobs inexorably to the surface of German society.

A subtitle from the article reads: Unser Ehrgeiz sollte geweckt sein, 'Our ambition should be aroused'. That didn't work out too well the last time it happened.

'Why does it have to be a fight?' asks one commenter. Because this is the defiance of the petulant child, a defiant child who has been humoured for too long. Not only petulant but also frightened.

In two years Brexit will be a reality, the EU will have withered overnight and all its complicated dreams of restructuring will be delusional, dreamed-out deckchair-arranging. Herr Poschardt and his cultured countrymen will then have to be the sole paymasters of the French project called the Union européenne (UE). Let's see how long the 'liberal, open society' lasts then. There is indeed 'a lot to lose' – and they have lost it.