Understand Your Fellow Human Being: The Low Countries
Americans are frequently criticized (usually by Europeans and American liberals) for being insular people who don’t have any knowledge of the outside world. Well of course we are! If you lived here you wouldn’t see any reason to learn anything about your inferiors either, Frenchy.
Nevertheless, as a public service and a means of handing an olive branch to my esteemed colleagues across the pond, I’m now presenting a primer on geographical anthropology to you, my three readers.
Next up: Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg. All entries in this series can be found here.
I don’t really know what these countries bring to the table. As far as I can tell it’s waffles, hookers, and a place you can go to legally blaze up the reefer. Oh yes, and a convenient route to use for an invasion if someone has fortified only part of its eastern border.
In other words, they’re like the French only without the history of importance on the world stage. A lot of their land is below sea level, so in another way they’re like New Orleans without the Cajun food. And the successful athletes. Let’s face it, if your national sport is speed skating, you might want to rethink your nation’s athletic future.
But they’re really good at pretending they’re important. The international criminal court – such as it is – can be found here, as can the headquarters of NATO. Although why we’d put the NATO headquarters in the middle of Belgium escapes me. I’m pretty sure the Smurfs were invented here too.
Which leads me to digress. Why is the plural of “Smurf” Smurfs? Shouldn’t it be Smurves? Stupid Belgians. Add in the fact that Michael Caine, as Austin Powers’ father, absolutely hated the Dutch, and I think we can pretty much write off the Low Countries except for the fact that George S. Patton’s most glorious moment occurred there. Sixty-five years ago.
Luxembourg? I’m not sure they actually exist. I think they’re a joke played by France and Belgium on the rest of the world, just waiting to see if anyone would be brave enough to call them on it. I see it going something like this.
Canada: We’re aboot to go on vacation, eh? Whereaboots you think you wanna go, eh? (because all Canadians end every single sentence with “eh”)
Great Britain: I say, dear boy, let’s tarry ourselves away to Luxembourg, I hear they have the most phenomenal tea and crumpets. (because all Brits crave tea and crumpets the way zombies crave brains)
France: Ahhh ha ha, English pig-dogs! Zere ees no Luxembourg! Ahhh ha ha! (because Monty Python and the Holy Grail was the most accurate depiction of the French ever made)
The Netherlands and Belgium are the kids who sit next to the Scandinavians and pretend they’re really important. They’re a member of every single extracurricular activity (not counting, you know, sports) and are in charge of the school yearbook. They do the announcements on the closed-circuit school television every morning and they go out of their way to make life uncomfortable for the kid who sits in the back of the class and gets A’s despite not studying or doing homework. You know, they try to socially ostracize them and tell the teachers about their less-than-studious ways. In other words, no one would miss them if sea levels went up a couple dozen feet and they had to grow gills.
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