Der Ursprunglich Kunstlichzunder presents a few predictions:
EUROPE: While it’s tempting to look upon Europe as the land of quiche-eating metrosexuals, if you do that you’re forgetting that the continent that gave us vichy water, brie, and Vidkun Quisling also gave us vikings, nazis, and Attila the Hun. Right now Europe is about 20 years overdue for the sort of convulsive mass slaughter that we generally refer to as “history,” and while the Balkan adventures of the 1990s vented the pressure somewhat, we’re still but a few more Theo van Gogh’s away from Götterdämmerung Time. If the E.U. succeeds in uniting it may be able to stall or suppress ethnic and religious tensions for a few decades, in much the same way (and by using much the same methods) as the Soviet Union kept the lid on things from 1945 to 1990, but this will only make the anti-immigrant eruption that much worse when it finally breaks out. The eventual breakup of the E.U. will kill millions.
DOMESTIC TRAVEL: A few days ago the U.S. government announced that American citizens returning from Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean will henceforth be required to show their passports before reentering the country. Many frequent flyers are already in the habit of carrying their passports whenever they take domestic flights, just because it makes it so much easier to get through airport security. Further, with all the concern over illegal immigration, there is now loud and persistent talk in government circles of creating and mandating the carrying of a national I.D. card.
In the end I don’t know whether it will be in the name of homeland security, immigration control, or energy and transportation policy, but I figure we have at least 10 and at most 15 years left before it will no longer be possible for American citizens to move freely around their own country without government permission. “Show us your papers, comrade!” But more on this in a future column.
Hint: Your own car will be the snitch that rats you out.
My only thought is that empires usually begin to die when they reach too far. With that in mind, the event that might bring about the violent implosion of the EU would be an attempt to swallow an unwilling Switzerland.