It’s hard for a democratic regime to change its fundamental operating system without some sort of crisis. I suppose it doesn’t have to be violent, but it often is.
I think it’s naive to believe that you can get from A to B without a crisis. If you want to prove me wrong, show me democratic regimes that completely reworked their system of government without some sort of institutional crisis.
I don’t think it is edgelording to suggest that there needs to be a catalyst along the lines of Shays’ Rebellion or the Algiers crisis before we can reach systemic change. This is me espousing a theory of history.
I don’t write what I write in an attempt to appear cool or to shock for the sake of shocking. I write what I write because I sincerely believe it and think it is a viewpoint worthy of discussion.
Perhaps “federal” is not the right word anymore, but the federal government is a lot more than just a federation of states. It doesn’t just govern trade between them and such. Insofar as the federal government governs individual Americans it should be representative of individual Americans. That doesn’t at all mean that states cannot have areas of governance outside the control of the federal government. And being as we pay much of our taxes to the national government rather than to the states, we should be represented there as individuals.
My hot take is that the Greek government was largely corrupted by banks, the IMF, the EU and Germany to borrow, try to pay back with more borrowing, and be put into a debt trap and then the lenders’ solution is cripple them with austerity.
Greece joined the European Community in 1981 because “we didn’t want to see Plato play in the second division”, the head of the European commission Jean-Claude Juncker said.
Greece’s entry was a way to ensure democracy and stability in southern Europe at the height of the cold war.
And it worked. Greece was the model, Spain and Portugal followed, joining in 1986. But Greece was also a warning: levels of corruption were worse than the European average, the state was poor at collecting taxes. Lax public administration was harder to change once a country was inside the EU. Later entrants from central and eastern Europe had to pass stricter standards.
Politics also helped Greece join the euro in 2001. Although it was not until 2004 that Athens admitted entry figures had been fudged, the dodgy numbers were an open secret in Brussels. Many other countries were doing the same, albeit on a smaller scale. Only later when Greece buckled under the weight of its debts did European grandees say it had been “a mistake” to allow Greece to join the currency.
I’m Irish too (who isn’t?). There is no group that is always in the moral right. Sadly, it seems almost human to jump at the chance to be on the wrong side of a power dynamic.
So there’s no agency? I’ll happily say that the Greeks are victims. But I’m absolutely certain that the IMF is not what you think it is. Yes, I read The Nation and such things. I also went to school.
The profligacy of Greek governments and the staggering laxity of lenders after the country joined the European common currency in 2001 had left it with huge debts that, in the aftermath of a global recession, it could no longer afford to service.
The big picture is wealth flowing into banks (and hence Germany). It’s by design. And the whining of Germans about how their tax dollars are being used to forgive debts that Greece owes should be directed at the banks and not Greece.