Is ours really an age of deepening Western crisis — as it has certainly seemed, of late — or beneath all the populist sound and fury, does our society actually remain in a kind of stasis, stagnant but not close to revolution or collapse? asked Ross Douthat in the New York Times.
A few months ago, I had a discussion with a journalist colleague. “You will see that all this anxiety for the rise of populism was a waste of time,” I said, and I was right.
In Germany, the AFD party is imploding and we are marching toward a new mandate for Angela Merkel.
The stasis is the demographic free fall, the metamorphosis of the religious landscape, the normality of Jews packing for Israel, the soldiers standing in front of churches and schools...
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders had a very good showing, but he was overcome by the mainstream (the real novelty was the rising of the pro-migrants party Denk).
In France, Marine le Pen was defeated by Emmanuel Macron, the wunderkind of the French establishment.
In the UK, the Brexit was not such a earthquake, since the British democracy is still very strong.
In Austria, we have a leftist president defeatist “the first nationalist president since the Second World War.”.
The political crisis is almost over. But the cultural stasis, as Douthat calls it, is far worse. The stasis is the demographic free fall, the metamorphosis of the religious landscape, the normality of Jews packing for Israel, the soldiers standing in front of churches and schools, the 8,000 migrants who landed on Israel's coasts during the weekend of Easter...
While the political project of the European Union is saved, at least till the next “populist crisis,” the culture of Europe is on the verge of an existential stasis. All the Macrons of Europe are not touched by this stasis since they live in their self-segregating bubble of wealth, cultural benefits and multiculturalism in the form of good restaurants and nannies.
The good news comes only from the West's Eastern front: the State of Israel. It shines from every corner.