Eastern Europe & Western Europe: Heading in Opposite Directions?

Europe is Seeing a East-West Clash of Values (Anne Applebaum) from the Washington Post
"... they have comparable political systems, similar economies, identical border guarantees. By any measure, all of them are more prosperous now than they were in 1989. Ukraine wants in. Poland is relieved to be there. And as for the nations formerly known as Western Europe? Quite a few of them want out of Europe altogether. Indeed, on the same day that Ukrainians voted for “European values” — and almost exactly a quarter-century after the Poles voted for “European values” — another landmark, landslide election propelled an unusually virulent group of anti-Europeans into prominence"
Applebaum asks why western Europeans are turning against the system.  No surprise, like most well-heeled pundits for whom the Great Recession passed like a distant thunderstorm, it never occurs to her that the EU and most national democratically-elected leaders have done NOTHING to deal with the Great Recession as it has played out in western Europe. For six straight years, these governments have embraced policies that have made NO difference.  In many cases, if anything, those policies only made people's daily lives worse (see Greece, Italy, and Spain).  Side note: Thankfully, we have had Obama and the Dems to make sure the US did not waste the last six years in similar fashion.  The lesson here is that when economies go deep into recession (or depression), democracies (US, European, wherever) CANNOT simply sit on their hands, election in and election out, with little or no improvement, and not leave mainstream leaders, parties, and ultimately the democratic systems themselves discredited.  I doubt that many of those people who voted for the far right-wing parties actually supported their policies -- it is a primal scream at mainstream parties to WAKE UP!