The immersive experience of the visual panorama was of course the chief draw, but being inside industrially giant and industrially unfamiliar, unreachable architecture was extra-ordinary as well. Sometimes the installation, the frame can be nearly as dazzling as the contents.Reflecting on Victory in Europe Day, the instruments of surrender signed and witnessed late in the night of the 8th of May and hence Victory Day in Russia and Eastern Europe due to the time difference, and the commemoration of the formation of the predecessor to the European Union that followed barely a scant decade later, is a bit diminished for being subjected to the current filters of disloyalty and disunion.
Forging a united Europe should not be without flexibility and forgiveness, nor at the expense of individual dignities. The conception was not perfect and neither are the realities and incom-patibilities of day-to-day operations, but I thought that we were moving beyond that frame of mind, no more entrapment and petty skirmishes and no more convenient amnesia. To compare the manufactured crises of economics to the untold tragedies of war is petty and cause for offence, but—though politics and popular sentiment can be moved greatly by either upheaval—despite anger and irreversible damage done in the war, the victors did not retaliate. Though defeated Germany could have been broken utterly and completely by demands for reparations (like after the First War—which albeit, did not turn out so well; I sometimes call our fair village by that name, not because its not a nice place but since it has an exceedingly common name and earned the stand-out designation of Bad [Spa, stand-out among its similarly named peers, that is] only just after it was one of the first towns to acknowledge and congratulate Adolf Hitler on his coup d’etat, Machtergreifung), its people were allowed to rebuild and recover.
Germany certainly has done many great things to recuperate and to contribute to peaceable formation of the European Union but has not done so without outside support and a stable substrate. This contrary and exclusive thinking that sees no growing imbalance in Europe’s social priorities is not a very appropriate way to regard the day, and it reminds me of the forgetfulness of some of the better-off of America’s campaigners (followed by a loyal base of supporters) who’d now begrudge a nation and a system that created the environment that fostered and protected their success its dues. A little gratitude can urge anyone towards improvement. Please now allow the Eurocorn to chase away the negativity in this dark post.
