World
Europe Recognizes The Costumes, Offers America Its Extensive Notes
Harriet Sloane spent Sunday fielding calls from European officials who have seen this parade before and were calling to say so, at length.
BRUSSELS - European officials reached this weekend responded to footage of masked men marching through Washington with a unanimity this correspondent has not observed in thirty years of summits: they recognized it. The unanimity was remarkable. Nothing else about the weekend was.
"We have seen the mask-and-column format before. Ours had better production values and worse outcomes. We recommend skipping ahead to the outcomes." a German foreign ministry official, speaking with what he called professional familiarity
In thirty years of covering international affairs, this correspondent has watched Europe be wrong about currencies, pipelines, and the shelf life of every unity communique it has ever drafted. The continent maintains, however, one undisputed area of expertise, purchased at documented cost: it knows exactly what a column of men marching for ethnic purity is, regardless of what the men call themselves or how their government files it.
The Filing Dispute
Several officials were struck less by the march than by the American cabinet's description of it as democratic untidiness. A French diplomat observed that Europe also once filed the genre under manageable disorder, and that the filing now appears in the histories, in the chapters titled Warnings, Ignored.
The marchers described themselves as the future of America. Europe keeps extensive records of men in matching outfits describing themselves as the future. The records are unflattering. In every documented case, the future declined the men in masks and went instead with the people who showed their faces.
Whether America requires Europe's notes is a question this correspondent declines to answer prematurely. The notes exist. They are archived, translated, and, on the evidence of Saturday, unread.
Reporter note: The NATO map required no updates this week. The domestic map is not this desk's jurisdiction, a fact this correspondent confirmed twice, with unusual gratitude.