I am not expert but have noticed that a lot of it is mind games. Branding. If you look at it that way, you can also see aspects of the US in a different light.
It stood out to me when the EU constitution got voted down many years ago. I thought that was sort of the end of it. And yet, the flags were still all over the place, and one person I talked to said what do you mean, the EU is already here. So the actual legal basis of—let’s call it a brand—is quite separate from the reality of what legal force it has.
Curiously, the belief in something can give it a source of power all its own. When the US cut off financial access to Russia over the Ukrainian War, it’s not like the country leadership really understands how the modern financial system works. There was more a “you know what I mean” aspect to the federal orders.
Back to the US, an example of this kind of thing is the mythology around Thanksgiving and around Christopher Columbus. This stuff gets taught to children in the public schools, and it serves to form a collective identity. I have always had mixed feelings about it. The government is not supposed to lie to us. It is supposed to serve us. Yet, I am very glad for anything that keeps people peaceful and getting along. We don’t get to dork around in online chat groups if we fear for our physical safety. I guess I wish that kind of thing were either openly made up (like the anthem) or were based more on true history (e.g. privatizing agriculture in Plymouth).
Ethnicity isn’t quite the same as nationality, and ethnicity is at least part in people’s heads and not objective.
As a matter of law, Wales is part of the UK and France isn’t. And yet Wales has a language and a flag, and you can call yourself a Welsh on census forms if you feel like it.
So there might be an element to the EU that is more like an ethnicity than a state, that the peoples of assorted Western European nations feel part of some ethnicity that’s wider than a state, just as you can belong to an ethnicity that’s more regional than a state.
I am not expert but have noticed that a lot of it is mind games. Branding. If you look at it that way, you can also see aspects of the US in a different light.
It stood out to me when the EU constitution got voted down many years ago. I thought that was sort of the end of it. And yet, the flags were still all over the place, and one person I talked to said what do you mean, the EU is already here. So the actual legal basis of—let’s call it a brand—is quite separate from the reality of what legal force it has.
Curiously, the belief in something can give it a source of power all its own. When the US cut off financial access to Russia over the Ukrainian War, it’s not like the country leadership really understands how the modern financial system works. There was more a “you know what I mean” aspect to the federal orders.
Back to the US, an example of this kind of thing is the mythology around Thanksgiving and around Christopher Columbus. This stuff gets taught to children in the public schools, and it serves to form a collective identity. I have always had mixed feelings about it. The government is not supposed to lie to us. It is supposed to serve us. Yet, I am very glad for anything that keeps people peaceful and getting along. We don’t get to dork around in online chat groups if we fear for our physical safety. I guess I wish that kind of thing were either openly made up (like the anthem) or were based more on true history (e.g. privatizing agriculture in Plymouth).
Ethnicity isn’t quite the same as nationality, and ethnicity is at least part in people’s heads and not objective.
As a matter of law, Wales is part of the UK and France isn’t. And yet Wales has a language and a flag, and you can call yourself a Welsh on census forms if you feel like it.
So there might be an element to the EU that is more like an ethnicity than a state, that the peoples of assorted Western European nations feel part of some ethnicity that’s wider than a state, just as you can belong to an ethnicity that’s more regional than a state.