It is almost a miracle that the municipality of Amsterdam is still willing to allow a Pride in the city.
Amsterdam is becoming a place where almost nothing is allowed. It all still happens, but as a resident of the city centre you can clearly feel the ambition to turn it into a well-behaved village. Posters are everywhere, instructing us to adjust our behaviour. Throw your garbage in the bin. Proper English, of course, because the municipality prefers to address tourists with care. Instead of throwing them straight from their cruise ships into the IJ, which many Amsterdammers would consider a relief, these largely unwelcome guests are politely instructed throughout the city. It produces no results, but that is not the point. It is a way of demonstrating that Amsterdammers are respectable people, and that we expect the same behaviour from our visitors.
Amsterdammers are, in fact, not respectable people at all. They drink too much or indulge in other substances, but it is true that we are becoming increasingly well-behaved. That has everything to do with property prices.
You now have to be something of a millionaire to secure a decent place to live here. And it is common knowledge that millionaires are never loud in public or careless with their rubbish. Instead, they pollute the city from within, through their tax advisors and wealth managers, turning the centre into a large-scale laundering operation. They are also the only people who can comfortably accept the rent levels. I am referring to the so-called expats.
Expats is a polite term for American assholes who not only look down on Dutch culture, but also attempt to impose their imported narrow-mindedness on the original inhabitants. When the Westerkerk bells ring at six in the morning, they write letters to the municipality demanding that it stop, because it disturbs their sleep. Unlike refugees from other countries, they are not expected to integrate. They only need to speak one language: English. And we seem to enjoy that in the city centre. You practically faint when a shopkeeper addresses you in Dutch. According to those same expats, that is our own fault, because we are too willing to speak English, which deprives them of the opportunity to learn Dutch.
That might be plausible, if Americans ever made the slightest effort anywhere in the world to learn another language. Even in countries where no one speaks English, they attempt to make themselves understood by speaking English more slowly and with increasing irritation, until the person they are addressing would rather hang themselves. Meanwhile, their home base continues to pour billions into the bottomless corruption of Ukraine, ensuring that Europe lives on a powder keg. It does not concern them. There remains a strong political lobby at home that still believes in the old idea of General Alexander Haig that a “restricted nuclear war over Europe” is a viable option. If that sounds too crude, sabotaging a nuclear plant is apparently considered more refined.
Anyone who believes this is an exaggeration has not studied our political leaders closely enough. For them, the increasingly fractured United States remains a living example of how society should be organised. With Willem-Alexander leading the way, they believe they are doing good business with a country that is becoming ever more isolated financially. In the Land of the Free, one can choose between two elderly idiots for president. That is considered normal. In that respect, we were fortunate to have a sharply dressed pathological liar who could make children disappear, close hospitals, and at the same time convince us that market forces would make healthcare cheaper.
“Many serious mistakes have been made,” he said recently, “including by me.” This from someone who treated nearly every decision as his personal domain and kept the opposition in the dark time and again. But that is Dutch politics, and it is hardly worth more than a theatre subsidy, because in the new Europe we have very little influence. What is harder to understand is why Dutch citizens feel the need to replicate every absurdity emerging from the United States. From which cracks have these empty-headed people crawled? Take the discussion about drag queens. Did we come up with that ourselves, or did it drift over like a virus from the United States of A-holes? I suspect the latter.
Meanwhile, I am distracted by the screaming of hundreds of seagulls, who have discovered that the street waste left on the pavement by enterprising expats who do not speak a word of Dutch, and therefore never learn when rubbish is collected, is a far easier source of food than hunting fish over the North Sea. Fortunately, our paternalistic city council fully understands their situation, although they lack the means to collect the stinking mess. They are, however, working on a deal to burn 900 tonnes of Italian waste here every week in an “environmentally conscious” way. But you cannot blame the council. They have no idea what life in the city centre is like, because they do not live here. Too expensive. Their homes have probably gone to expats.
Madame Boissevin
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