Has summer finally arrived?
We are now entering the second week of August and, looking at the reduced numbers of views to my own recent interview with Judge Napolitano on Judging Freedom compared to several weeks ago, as well as the comparatively reduced numbers of other interviewees with one or two exceptions (John Mearsheimer, in particular) it is manifestly obvious that the concerned citizens who constitute our audience have called it a day and are now at the beach somewhere or at another vacation getaway where they are trying to enjoy life. That means putting aside all concern about why and how the end of the world is nigh.
I say ‘god bless’ to them all and, for my own part, am trying to do the same. I am spending some weeks at a rented apartment on the Belgian coast, where rain or no, everyone is determined to have a good time.
Knokke is the preserve of Belgium’s upper middle class-lower upper class strata. It is where they wisely lock away their savings in residential real estate that has appreciated 800% or more in the past 25 years and is likely to continue to soar in decades to come, far outpacing the stodgy growth rates in the rest of the country. You can exchange a 10,000 or 15,000 euros per meter apartments in Paris for a similar surface area in Knokke and have no cash left over.
When I brought my 16 year old grandson here for a couple of days a month ago, he asked in all seriousness: what do people do here? And he was left perplexed by my answer: ‘they live here,’ meaning that you have to spend your days somewhere and this is an agreeable place to do that even if there are no exciting water sports, glitzy movie theaters or other entertainments that a 16 year old might think of first. I explained that they come to enjoy a beer seated at a brasserie by the paved walkway abutting the beach or to enjoy fine dining at some of the country’s best gourmet restaurants, like Olivier’s, host to ‘millionaires craving love’ as a 1990s issue of Het Laatste Nieuws printed, quoting the owner-founder Philippe Moffaert. Olivier’s is just a 5 minute walk from our apartment. Alternatively, they spend their time with close relatives and friends from elsewhere in Belgium who own or rent apartments or villas just near their own and share a dinner of restaurant quality take-out dishes prepared by local caterers..
In keeping with the often glum, rainy weather of my home city, Brussels, the predominant mood there is almost always restrained and inward looking. But here in Knokke the mood is a direct continuation of those cheery faces you see in Rubens paintings: this is Flemish camaraderie and exuberance at its most traditional. It is family life with lots of little kids to be seen as well as heard on the walkway for strolling along the beach, the digue or zeedijk, if you will.
This town was once famous for its Casino. Times change, and the Casino is now slated for demolition and rebirth, they say, in a more contemporary form. Its many summer events have been reduced to just one month long Gala Show which promises three hours of Moulin Rouge type entertainment, featuring dancing girls in elaborate plumed costumes and bare asses.
My wife and I went there the other night and were very pleasantly surprised by how well the management understood the needs and desires of its mixed audience which ranged in age from 18 year olds to grandmas and grandpas in their late sixties to early eighties. If most of the dancing girls were overweight and more representative of 19th century demi-monde than of the sleek long-legged Slavic gals on the French stages, there was good reason: the audience is not 40 year old purchasing executives being hosted to a sexy evening out by French corporate sales people, but retired Flemings looking with greater interest at the singers providing renditions of ABBA and Elton John songs or world class variety show jugglers and magicians, who also appeared on stage. And they came in groups of family and friends, taking tables for six to ten for themselves.
Midway through the 3 hour show, the audience was already warming up. Hands were swaying in the air to some of the songs. By the last 45 minutes, even the oldest and least stable on their feet among the audience threw away their canes and were shuffling- dancing between tables. The management had very wisely provided an ambiance where their aging audience could shed decades, shed self-consciousness and enjoy some moments of youthful ‘shaking a leg.’
Here on the coast, French is a disappearing language spoken only by ever declining numbers of Walloon and Brusseler visitors from the south of the country who remain loyal to this territory year after year despite national ethnic divisions and political wrangling. The locals remain competently bilingual, but it is now English and Flemish that they speak. Nonetheless, the Flemings clearly remain appreciative of the achievements of French civilization, such as the butter laden croissants they line up to purchase at the better Knokke bakeries. In the same spirit nearly half of the songs we heard from the stage in the Casino were French chansons. It is just their own French speaking compatriots that the Flemings seem to have difficulty with in their midst.
Were any of those folks around me in the Casino thinking about the war in Ukraine or of the about to start regional war in the Middle East? I very much doubt it. For them, like for the members of the prestigious royal social club of which I am a member in Brussels, the wars are just an inconvenience, a nuisance, and everyone responsible for them in their eyes, like Vladimir Putin or the Iranian leadership, is a pest. If you were to tell them that we are hair’s breadth away from a Third World War, they would consider you mentally unbalanced.
I easily imagine that the situation is the same if you visited the New Jersey shore these days. The insouciance, the willful ignorance of the unpleasantness and outright mortal dangers of current international politics is a commonality that binds together those enjoying prosperity on the two continents, of whom there are vastly greater numbers than those of us in the Opposition to the American led permanent wars and chaos.
All of the foregoing brings me back to my own explanation of how we may all be delivered from well-earned destruction: divine intervention. Watch for it!
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024