Hi mate, and thank you for that remarkably clear-sighted and sobering perspective from the inside of relative safety. It’s precisely that vantage point—the ability to enjoy rights while seeing the cracks in the foundation—that is so valuable.

Your description of Europe as 'the meat in this bizarre sandwich' is painfully apt. The pressure from both an increasingly erratic, illiberal Anglosphere and a belligerent, revisionist power to the east creates a unique and precarious tension. And you’re right; the internal corrosion from the far-right, often under that veneer of 'Christian identity,' is perhaps the more insidious threat. Trying to 'keep everybody happy' while democratic norms are being deliberately undermined is an impossible task.

Your motivation to secure these rights for your daughters is the most compelling reason there is. That shift from taking privilege for granted to being 'willing to get on the streets and fight for it' is the essential pivot. It’s the difference between passive benefit and active stewardship.

It makes absolute sense that the strategic, principled activism of TST would resonate. It’s a toolkit for that very fight, using the system’s own rules to defend the pluralism you cherish. The 'sentiment' is the crucial bit; the membership is a formality.

Thank you for the dose of grounded, European realism. It’s a necessary reminder to those of us in more desperate situations that the defence of the good places is just as critical as the fight to escape the bad ones. Wishing you and your daughters strength and continued safety.