In a 2012 blog, Arneson wrote:
“Do you remember the first time you stepped into an IKEA store? How utterly confusing it was? How you were led into the display section of the store, and the store seemed to just go on and on and on forever?” In an observation that is a fantastic fit for the U.S. State Dept. and the European Union foreign policy division, Arneson noted:
“[IKEA] is designed for the efficiency of the organization, not for the benefit of the customers. And IKEA isn’t alone. When I visited Sweden this summer, I found that the whole country seems to operate on this mentality. It’s a country of the bureaucracy, by the bureaucracy and for the bureaucracy…
“I went into a Burger King at one point to get some fast food… They didn’t have a menu, just some gigantic photographs of about five different value meals to choose from. What if I don’t want a value meal, just some hamburgers? What did that cost? I couldn’t find the information. So I said, forget it, I’ll just go next door to McDonalds.
“When I went to McDonalds, same thing. No list of what they sell, just five gigantic pictures of their extra value meals….
“A restaurant without a menu! The concept had never occurred to me. I guess they just assume that their customers have been there before, and already know exactly what they want, and don’t care how much any of it costs.
“Everywhere I went in Sweden, I started noticing the same thing. Buses, subways, airports, grocery stores, convenience stores…a sort of implicit assumption that everybody already knows how their crazy system works.”
Wallstrom, like Kerry, Catherine Ashton, and almost every other European know-it-all, understands how her system works for her country.
The United States was founded by colonists sent from Britain to develop big business. The culture of “Let’s Make a Deal” is ingrained in the country. If it works there it must work elsewhere, right? Don’t let history and the future get in the way of the present.
So give Sweden a chance. Let it use the IKEA approach to make peace for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Give it a couple of days, or maybe a couple of weeks, sit back and watch the entertainment while she is so confused she doesn’t know which way to turn, and then offer her a ride to the airport.
Give her something to read on the plane back to Stockholm, perhaps a copy of Rabbi Kook’s teachings.
Israel is not just a piece of property.
It is not a piece of furniture, either.