A New Roman Empire

We live in an age of transition, comparable in some ways to that of the late Roman Empire. A new Empire stretches across Europe, just as distrustful of the people, just as distrustful of democracy and local control as Diocletian and his successors. Leaders are emerging in the European Union by the acclimation of a few not the votes of the many. The decisions, as Martin Heidegger once wrote, are being made for us. There is nothing left to discuss.

Yes, it’s true, the liberal state is dead, the shape of the state as we have understood it for several generations past. We have a new authoritarian structure set in its place, where policy is determined by bureaucrats, by people beyond any form of popular control. It’s on ongoing process as Europe experiences a gradual metamorphosis, coming to resemble the contemporary Chinese model, in structural if not in political terms.

Voting, such as it is, has a purely decorative function in the new Empire. I didn’t vote in the European election; I never will, because I can see through the fraud and the instrumentalism. Besides, I simply can’t identify with impossible large constituencies and impossibly remote ‘representation.’ I will risk another prediction here: these elections in future are set to become the opportunity for new forms of extremism, for a mass protest vote and nothing besides. Oh, well, optimism is cowardice, wise words from yet another German thinker. :-))