Lucky Americans

Last year, Prince gave, well, performed twice in the Grand Palais in Paris. All seats were sold out in less than two hours. The audience knew he's an American artist and that he kind of was an image of America by himself.

I can't think of any European artist faring as well in any American city -save a British- because European countries, by and large, have no musicians as talented as those America never ceased to produce since WWI.

Lucky Americans, both in terms of musicians or film makers worldwide famous.

When we refer to each others, Americans and Europeans, the US has an enormous advantage over Europeans: they're one nation with one language. Whatever the political dissensions between themselves, they're united. And Europeans know that.

When I see the Europeans being mentioned in America's media, I wonder if Americans actually know how divided Europeans really are. We're as foreign to ourselves as was the case one or even two centuries ago.

What do the Poles know about the Greeks? Just nothing! Is there anything common between the Danes and the Portuguese? Nope! Does a Dutch feel closer to a Croatian than to an American? Certainly not.

There are few exceptions like the Swedes and the Norwegians, the Portuguese and the Spaniards, the Germans and the Austrians because they somehow share some periods of History and their languages are more or less similar but overall, Europe is made of some 35 different countries which will never get along like Americans can.

15, 20 or even 25 century old countries with as many languages you can imagine, will never overcome this state of affair.

Nationalism is still vivid and alive among European countries and the so-called European Union is a daily opportunity for each of the 27 members to claim and demand an exception for their personal case.

Save for politicians and CEO of the biggest companies who know their foreign interlocutor, the vast majority (say 99,9% of the population) just know nothing about their neighbours.

Going back to Prince, there may exist great or just good artists in Germany, Italy, Poland etc. but nobody knows them outside their respective frontiers. Just a tiny part of Europeans interested in modern art for example or music and the film industry can name several artists in their field of competence. But these are just an ipsy-tiny bit of the 450 million people living in Europe.

Although German is the most native language spoken in Europe (85 million) English is the only way to communicate between Europeans. And we're usually exceptionally bad at it.

Lucky Americans whose unity makes their strength!

Once again, when they're told of Europeans, Americans shouldn't be fooled into thinking Europe makes an equal counterpart to America.

Europe has 450 millions inhabitants vs 300 in the US, the European GDP is bigger than that of the US and the percentage of European economy in the world trade is bigger than that of the US but it would be unrealistic to consider Europe as a united block in the world. No, it's not.

Eventually, China will settle the score...