@_dm @ouguoc oh! yes we agree! the questions surrounding the EU wouldn’t be so much its lack of moral purity—as you say, no one has that!—but what role it plays or could play in stabilizing some not completely despicable hegemony. i certainly consider a hegemony a bit more European than the present one potentially optimistic, much better than some of the alternatives. i’m disheartened tho becuase managing the Ukraine crisis seems a basic test of that, which EU and US both now risk ceding.