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Tardigrade's avatar

"As for the SPD voters? An astounding 75% of them say they cast their ballot for the Social Democrats not out of political conviction, but merely to prevent an AfD victory."

This reminds me of the situation in the US, where a lot of people who aren't that crazy about the Democrats will still vote for them, because Trump.

I'm a disillusioned progressive no longer suffering from TDS. All my friends are dedicated progressives. I was talking to one friend recently, who agreed with specific points when I explained why I'm so disappointed in the Democrats. And yet when I said I might actually vote for Trump (in hopes that RFK Junior would play some part in the government), she was still appalled. Because Trump!

Hate and fear are so much stronger than reason.

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john kingsbury's avatar

How does your friend feel about supporting the candidate Dick Cheney endorses? Germany is not the only country with odd coalitions.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Trump!

Because the "Because Trump!" argument trumps all else, for people infected with TDS.

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CMCM's avatar

We can NEVER underestimate the power of TDS. On a personal level, I see it with my brother and sister. Their TDS is utterly irrational and hysterical to the point where you simply cannot have a conversation with them about Trump policies vs. the current Democrat lunacy.

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Tardigrade's avatar

I'm very lucky that my friend is willing to converse with me. We talked politics for three or four hours over a bottle of wine. I'm careful not to preach and to stay reasonable, and it helps that I don't like Trump or Republicans any more than I like Democrats. I'm only interested in policies and actions.

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CMCM's avatar

I'm actually at a point where I no longer harbor hopes of convincing such people to see the light and modify their opinions. It's clearly not going to happen, they are cemented in their utopian ideas. However, I am now in a place of pure curiosity: what do they think, what do they actually know that forms their opinions, what do they think will happen if Harris is elected, what kinds of things are they aware of and understand? So far, what I have observed with sadness is a shameful level of ignorance of issues. So very many of them seem to have what I call bumper sticker ideas. Nothing deeper than that.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Still, since I don't figure I can change anybody's mind completely, my goal is to implant bits of skepticism (dare I say brain worms) that might trigger actual thinking at some point.

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Mitch's avatar

three word slogans are key

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feldspar's avatar

I suspect your friends' ideas merely appear utopian when contrasted with the grim dystopia the MAGA Red Hatters dream about at night. Under the cover of darkness...

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Warmek's avatar

Yeah. Had a similar conversation myself recently.

"So, you're comfortable voting for the person who has *actually enslaved black people* because it was more profitable to keep people who had served their sentences in prison and working in the prison industries?"

"But Trump!"

"Well, that's a choice, all right."

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NAB's avatar

I think there are too many voters who remain materially "comfortable" despite the economic conditions on the ground in the US and also are insulated from the worst of the Democrat party's policy initiatives. Until they "feel the pain" in a more visceral and consistent way, they will continue to vote against their interests and feel good about doing so because....Trump!

Additionally, women are in a unique position of political power this election and are being heavily courted by groups weaponizing our inherent empathy (and emotional vulnerability) who have been incredibly successfully in convincing too many of us that abortion MUST be the only issue considered when casting a vote. It's beyond depressing.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Abortion was one of the arguments my friend made for opposing Trump. I had to explain to her that Roe v. Wade being overturned meant that *each state is in charge of its own policy*, and the president cannot make a sweeping executive order outlawing abortion everywhere. She had not really thought about it, despite being an intelligent and otherwise thoughtful person. People like my friend simply read the New York Times and listen to NPR and believe what they're told about Project 2025.

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John Bowman's avatar

It is depressing that the decision for some rests on who will make it easier to kill an unborn child over who will make it easier for a born child to live and prosper.

As Adam Smith said: There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.

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feldspar's avatar

It's a fetus, not an unborn child, numbnuts.

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feldspar's avatar

I certainly believe what I'm told about Project 2025 because it has been told to me by the chuds who wrote the damn thing.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

and tribalism and the terror of being ostracized from your group for the crime of moral pollution may be even stronger

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jotolo's avatar

I'm a hopeful conservative who always rejected the TDS hoaxes. During my entire life, I have never voted for a political candidate without at least some reservations. Happily for my psyche this year, the choice is clear. I will both be voting for courageous Trump and against horrible Harris who is wrong, extreme, and unlikeable.

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

I'm voting against EVIL.

Easiest decision all time.

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jotolo's avatar

My wife and many others definitely see the literal Devil at work!

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Mitch's avatar

watching the left tie up with Dick Cheney, the Muslims, the CIA, and the military industrial complex is pure comedy gold.

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feldspar's avatar

All the above are coming after you if you don't vote Harris. With broken whisky bottles and bike chains.

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Begrateful's avatar

I completely understand. Explain to your friend that a vote for Trump is merely a 'Chess move,' NOT a Valentine! I believe that many people will hold their noses and vote for him this time round after the catastrophic economic, political and social earthquake that has shaken the US in the past four years. Unless you have been living under a rock or are totally brainwashed, it is clear that the US is heading down the wrong road. I fear for my children and their future should the Dems take power again. And BTW...I don't actually care for Trump one tiny bit. But...the alternative.......

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feldspar's avatar

"And BTW...I don't actually care for Trump one tiny bit..."

Ya, ok, lady...

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John Bowman's avatar

TDS = cutting one’s nose off to spite the face.

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Charles Chevalier's avatar

It's ignorance more than anything else.

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carol ann's avatar

Yes, but this hardly surprising. People vote governments out when they've had enough and want a change rather than because they believe in the amazing policies of the opposition parties.

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Danno's avatar

Reading eugyppius I'm learning about German politics from a humorous and sarcastic angle. Now I eagerly look forward to each state parliamentary election, and it just keeps getting better and better.

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eugyppius's avatar

thanks man, I'm glad you find this interesting.

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INGRID C DURDEN's avatar

Love it - this sounds like the nutcase job in Belgium, only there are even more parties involved. You probably know some of these people. We have a nutcase here in the US too, but we can watch the puppet show more from a distance, which makes it exactly what it is! Muppets! (although they did a way better job at it)

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TheDukeofAlba's avatar

An interesting thing about German politics is that the post-war Western set up, which now extends over the whole country, was explicitly designed to avoid the parliamentary chaos that was a feature of the Weimar era. It was believed that the multiplicity of parties was a driver of the chaos so measures were put in place to prevent that, like the 5% hurdle. It worked for a long time, the West for decades had a big center right party and a big center left party, and a little party of economists in the middle to play kingmaker. This has obviously broken down because the settlement mistook symptoms for causes; once the establishment declared war on their own people, the ‘stabilizing’ institutions failed and now chaos has returned. Popular discontent will find avenues to express itself in due course, institutions be damned.

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Sue Don Nim's avatar

Yes indeed, Harris is more than a little koo-koo.

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InfoHog's avatar

I recently heard an interesting take by Eric Weinstein (brother of Bret) on someone's podcast, about Kamala being supposedly unsophisticated. His take seems to be she plays dumb similarly to how G.W.Bush played dumb and folksy after being a known cutthroat debating local politician, and sees some indication in her quoting certain (potentially terrifying) things out of Karl Marx' books, seeing her more as a hardcore Communist who knows what she's doing.

I haven't looked that much into her to be able to comment.

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David Rice's avatar

I saw that excerpt from the Modern Wisdom podcast (with Chris Williamson) on YouTube..

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Tardigrade's avatar

It was a three hour interview ranged over a wide variety of subjects. Every minute was fascinating. https://rumble.com/v5e92m5-326268797.html

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Yukon Dave's avatar

Liz Cheney does remind me of Mademoiselle Piggy

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Tardigrade's avatar

As a typical American I've usually been woefully ignorant about politics of other countries, with the slight exception of the UK. It's so fascinating to learn how things are done elsewhere.

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Timster's avatar

Likewise, I look forward to hearing about the retarded political clowns running the German government. Provides light relief from the more sinister but equally clownish, politicos here in the UK (Scotland specifically).

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Michael Stanton's avatar

Hello there, my friend!

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carily myers's avatar

me too!

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Truly retarded.

If you want to cry until you laugh, do some reading on how writing and sending a letter and information of the chain of command went during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Committees were literally debating appropriate verbiage while the plant was still burning.

Sorta like now...but instead of a reactor at a plant... the PLANET is on "fire".

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SCA's avatar

Oh, the analysis was great 'n all that, I always love that part--

--but the joy in today's post was that last line, after the perfect professorial restraint you maintained throughout every word preceding it.

I'm not in the least a drinking woman but today I sure want to buy you a beer.

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la chevalerie vit's avatar

a surprise ending

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SCA's avatar

It's carrying one off that's the magic trick, and so I lifteth my virtual and faux-beer stein.

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la chevalerie vit's avatar

indeed raising with you 🍻

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Tardigrade's avatar

AfD Derangement Syndrome... Like Trump Derangement Syndrome, it's an off-switch for brains.

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Tardigrade's avatar

I feel so emboldened as to be cautiously optimistic.

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Weihan Xing's avatar

I'm fairly sure that the phrase "the evil fascists of the AfD" was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the government's position on the AfD. The problem with written sarcasm, however, is that many readers who are not aware of Eugypius's delightful use of rhetoric might take the phrase quite literally as a reflection of his own sentiments about Germany's best and brightest political faction. The AfD is one of the only political factions in Germany with both "Verstand" and moral integrity.

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Michael's avatar

This how democracy came to its end…to the thunderous applause of the brainwashed. But every good run will come to an end at some point…

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Harley Smedlapp's avatar

Ah, but I might offer one slight modification to your comment about democracies. None of the EU parliamentarian governments are really democracies. They're republics, which, by definition insert "representatives" (by whatever party stripe) between the voters and the rulers.

The longest-lived republic in history was anvient Rome, which lasted nearly 500 years before Caesar overthrew it. But no republic since then has managed more than 250 years and many not even close to that. And they ALL fail because of internal corruption---those representing the people serve themselves, not the voters who put them there.

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Potassium Enjoyer's avatar

eugyppius, your prediction a few months ago that the Greens would gradually replace the SPD as the prime leftist dolt party has aged poorly.

Though perhaps the dwindling population of leftist dolts will just pendulum between the two as their world collapses around them.

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eugyppius's avatar

well, while the Greens have all but collapsed in the East, but they're still at 10-12% nationally, just a few points behind SPD, and they have long since eclipsed the SPD among the western urbanite elite classes who still steer politics. but, I will admit that the hard right turn of politics has surprised even me, and the Greens are in serious crisis.

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Thing is, by characterizing all opposition, even centrists embracing what was mainstream ideas just a decade ago, as "far-right" and led by "demagogues" who would plunge the nation into dark, Hitlerian tyranny they've made it more likely that a Hitlerian demagogue regime could actually come to power.

The disenfranchised populace will eventually turn to anyone promising to restore "normalcy." And relish turnabout.

These fools cobbling together coalitions of once-opponents, drunk on their own power and hyperbole, who've mistaken political rhetoric for gospel truth are sowing the seeds of their own destruction and the rise of their greatest fear. Almost makes you think that's the goal.

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TG's avatar

Hahaha - brilliant: "Good job retards, I hope it was worth it"

In years to come AZQuotes will feature Eugyppius's above quote!

Just a burning question I have, (esp. as I'm living in the Democratic Republic of Great Britain), are you hanging around for comedy value reporting or are you genuinely thinking we can turn this around?

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Rikard's avatar

Heh. Sweden's major daily chose to cover this in their own way:

"AfD-leaders reported for hate-crimes" (Apparently, Volker Beck of Die Grüne is the man making the complaint.)

The paper covered a protest/rally in Potsdam yesterday, and went all-in on the fascist-angle. The actual election and the result got half a sentence, with no background or context.

What's really ridiculous is that about 1/3 of all Swedes above age 30 took German at school, for at least three years, so should be able to find out things for themselves, yet don't, instead trusting in regime media.

If I had a pfennig for every time I get the response "How do you know those things?" when I talk with someone who only consumes state/regime media, I could buy a Koenigsegg, it feels like.

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Intelligent Dasein's avatar

Is the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht kind of like a German political version of the Alan Parsons Project? When she gives major party speeches, does she stroll out to the podium to the beats of Sirius/Eye in the Sky like the Chicago Bulls?

Seriously though (Siriusly?), I think that someone naming a political party after themselves is itself a strange commentary on parliamentary politics in the modern age. It's no longer even a cult of personality, as it was in the Soviet era; it's that the cynical impulse to use high political office solely as a means of personal advancement no longer even bothers to hide itself, and nobody even cares. You go girl!

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Tardigrade's avatar

"I think that someone naming a political party after themselves is itself a strange commentary on parliamentary politics in the modern age"

I was wondering about that…

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Mark Seager's avatar

All across the EU we are seeing vastly unpopular policies being forced on the countries by an out of touch unelected parasitic elite. Immigration is an obvious one but other toxic green lunacy is starting to take effect. Even stupid hypocrisy like telling the Irish to raise their corporation tax as it is unfair state interference whilst the agricultural policy remains in place??

The end result of the united stop Trump, Brexit, far right fascists, Front Nationale, etc will lead to the election of extremists or revolutions.

Neither is an appealing prospect but the morons being pushed around by the billionaires and corporations are too stupid to realise that they are causing what frightens them the most.

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gregvp's avatar

I read Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly” many years ago, but apart from some of it being about some Popes, all I remember is that at the end I was no clearer than before I started, on why people in power are unable to see what’s in front of their noses.

I’ve been eyeing it on the bookshelf these last few months. Time to have another attempt, perhaps.

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jdm's avatar

Very interesting and enlightening. Thanks. I'm fascinated by the rise of the BSW. Have you written about BSW elsewhere?

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eugyppius's avatar

I've discussed them only in passing, but perhaps they're worth a full post. The party itself indeed is interesting and kind of anomalous – split off by celebrity politician Sahra Wagenknecht from Die Linke (the rebranded Socialist Unity Party from the DDR), they're light migration sceptics and hard-line advocates of ending weapons deliveries to Ukraine. Most of the list candidates they're running are people with little prior political history, and Wagenknecht herself organises a close control over the whole operation.

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Michael Magoon's avatar

Yes, please write about BSW. It is a fascinating case. It appears to be an old-time Euro-Communist party from the Cold War era before the European Left started focusing on race, gender, immigration, environmentalism, etc.

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jdm's avatar

Ooh, looking forward to it. The only information I have about Ms Wagenknecht was an adoring bit of propaganda from the Unz Reader

https://www.unz.com/jtaylor/allies-on-the-left/

Unfortunately, the author's credibility was tossed aside by including Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as someone similar to Ms Wagenknecht. So, now I need someone I trust to help me understand.

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Nat's avatar

She came off very well in her interview with Glen Greenwald a few months ago (could be a year now). It is on his Rumble channel.

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Viv's avatar

Surely any issue requiring a two thirds majority is now impossible to pass. It would have to, for consistency, and to retain the Brandmauer, result in a stern phone call from Merkel.

How are the SPD going to cope with passing measures with AfD support? What will happen afterwards in terms of the cordon sanitaire?

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Rikard's avatar

The SPD will, come Spring, rephrase and rebrand AfD suggestions and policies and launch them as their own, to the tune of "WE must now clean up the mess the previous governments have made of things" without naming names or being questioned by the media.

Source: This is what happened here in Sweden after the Sweden Democrats got into Parliament and quickly became the second largest party - the Moderate Party and the Socialist Democrats (the two parties most responsible for our situation) simply added some of SD's talking points and policies as if they were their own ideas.

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Tardigrade's avatar

'How are the SPD going to cope with passing measures with AfD support? What will happen afterwards in terms of the cordon sanitaire?'

The horns of a dilemma.

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la chevalerie vit's avatar

Are there any members of AfD who might be “AfD in name only”? (unf. no catchy animal-associated acronym) If so they could provide the votes needed by SPD.

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Viv's avatar

I think it's unlikely, since getting involved with AfD as an activist or representative, in fact even as an ordinary member, is basically a declaration to the rest of the world that you are unclean.

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Yo mismo soy el regalo's avatar

Good job retards!

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