Within months of becoming Chancellor, Friedrich Merz promised an “Autumn of reforms,” which never materialised because the political will to fix Germany’s economic and fiscal problems does not exist within his coalition.
How can he go on with no one behind him? I dislike the multiparty system, which resembles probably what I saw in Belgium. Even if AfD is the largest party they get blocked from government by a coalition of smaller parties, for which people did not really vote. And the mayor party cannot even deliver the governor/prime minister. My father once said that people should get the posts in order of their votes. Most votes gets to be prime minister, and so on. That would be democracy. What there is now is a hassle between politicians IMO
“That would be a democracy” . . . Begs the question, is Germany a democracy when it firewalls its largest political party, and effectively disenfranchises about a third of its citizens?
To me the prime characteristic determinants of a democratic nation are: 1. free, fair, and meaningful elections, and 2. a resulting government that reflects and implements the wants and needs of the electorate. I’m not so sure that is the case when it comes to Germany, the US, the UK, or most of the west’s other democratic republics. Why the charade?
I mean, I suspect that was rather the point, that what Germany has now *isn't* actually a democracy. And has shown how the system in place breaks down rather badly under certain inputs in terms of *being* one.
I'm old enough to remember a German politician being hugely unpopular, suffering election loss after election loss and ignoring the will of the populace was called being a "great leader." As long as they have the "nerve, courage," and "muscle" to retain power, even outlawing political opposition:
"The third critical quality of a great leader is courage – or nerve, as Klaus puts it. The surge of refugees in Europe, especially Syrian asylum-seekers in 2015, led to an explosion of populist sentiment, with political leaders increasingly calling for borders to be closed. Weak leaders buckled under the pressure, either aligning their rhetoric with that of the populists or getting steamrolled by their fiery competitors.
Not German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She set a powerful example by agreeing to accept one million refugees. At first, her standing with voters – and even many within her own party – sagged, to the point that some began writing her political epitaph. But her remarkable courage eventually paid off. She is now recognized worldwide as one of the strongest leaders of our time.
In his own quiet way, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia has shown similar courage. Indonesia, like Europe, is confronting growing pressure from nationalist and populist voices seeking to displace the five principles of tolerance – the “Pancasila” – that underpin Indonesian statehood.
The imprisonment of Jokowi’s political ally, former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, for blasphemy against Islam has reinforced that pressure. Yet Jokowi, like Merkel, has continued to fight back against the extremists, even outlawing the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir."
FF - The irony of Schwab talking about opening borders to millions of Muslims and multi-ethnic invaders while in China, a nation with closed borders and homogenous ethnicity, no mass migration to, isn't lost.
Bingo. Like John McCain, eulogized as a "statesman" for lying to his voters in 2016 that he'd repeal Obamacare, even cut ads saying his opponent supported Obamacare, would vote to keep it...then weeks later became the "No" vote on repealing Obamacare.
Being a "statesman" means lying to your voters, then stabbing them in the back. Nevermind that he was a corrupt as a day is long, Keating Five corruption, fake 'heroic' POW narrative, Jew-hater (before hating Jews was kkkool). "Statesman." For consistently lying, thieving, betraying his voters. Yep, that's exactly what the term "statesman" means.
There are no political solutions to the problems caused by the excesses of politics. You can search the world if you wish, you won't find a system that works. Parliamentary democracy is much worse in countries with fewer parties. The old soviet party congresses and supreme soviet should serve to illustrate how the model becomes worse with just one party of any meaningful status. The District of Corruption in the untied states of America shows you how terribly useless a two-party approach looks. All these shenanigans illustrate the joys of being stateless and free. See my pinned essay for further elaboration.
Oh, much longer. Easily tens of thousands of years. In his epistles saint Paul explains that we battle not against flesh and blood but against "...principalities, against powers, and against the worldly governors, the princes of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness, which are in the high places." The show you are seeing is the show they are showing you. Parliament of clowns. The puppet theatre on television and on the major "news" sites. My phrase for it is "the hoax stream media." The actual power is mostly hidden, behind the scenes, manipulating through extortion and bribery, and inaccessible to the likes of me and thee.
Yes. The American system is seeming more and more attractive. Having the head of government also as the head of parliament, while the head of state is virtually powerless is bad enough. Add in the parliamentary hijinx of blocking the plurality from forming a government, and you have just about the least democratic system you can reasonably call democracy.
No, it's not an indictment of multiparty systems. The left bloc voters really do not want the AfD, so insofar as those parties get enough votes to govern, this is democracy working as intended.
The problem is, AfD doesn't get blocked by the smaller parties, it gets primarily blocked by the CDU. What you see on the left center is that they opportunistically govern with whomever suits their needs at the moment, and they have no compunctions to coalition with extremist and antidemocrats, as long as they are left-wing.
The CDU, meanwhile, only ever governs with centrist parties. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it means it's completely dependent on the center-left. Which longterm makes any governance except leftwing impossible, with at most minimal concessions.
The problem is the suicidally stupid behaviour on the center-right, which sadly seems to be a theme in the EU atm.
Considering that Die Linke is the heir to East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, this is an illustration of Santayana's aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Looks to me like this particular parliamentary system makes it rational to vote for any party that promises you stuff/money from the government, even where you might be competing for that stuff/money against global south migrants.
Well, that's pretty true of all governmental systems -- other than dictatorships, uniparty systems, and governments whose constitutions strictly forbid expenditures for "social" or "redistributionary" purposes. We here in the US thought we had one of the latter, but our founders failed to comprehend the power of entropy and the persistence of parasites.
As I mentioned (I think) here yesterday, memory is not even the factor. There are three perfectly good communist tyrannies currently operating that fangrrrls of communism could analyze right now, if they cared enough to do their homework.
Looking at German political scene (and my own domestic one too), I am reminded of an old problem with hunting:
Many many hunters wants to down a prize animal, a prime specimen.
This easily leads to the entire race or breed degenerating, since only the lesser specimens get to procreate.
In a way, media and the Kanon of Approved Ideas & Values, lobbyists, and so on, has acted as prize hunters for decades now, removing from politics anyone capable, brave, and wise.
What is left are the "sneaky fuckers" (a semi-technical term in evolutionary biology I believe?), that no-one bothers killing.
Thus, the system was subjected to evolutionary pressure and produced Merz-like creatures as a response.
Such a species, breed, race or Kultur invites its own extermination.
Oh gear, I'd need to start in the 1960s and move forward for a real explanation, but a brief summary:
The Reds have supported mass-migration since 1976, and have set the system up to use non-White migrants as voter-cattle.
The Liberals/capitalists have done the same, but to force wage-dumping and breaking the power of the unions.
When the problems with importing people from MENA and Africa became apparent in the late 1980s, there was a concerted effort by all the power-blocs to hide the problems and associate any criticism in any shape as racism and right-wing extremism.
Since most Swedes over age 40 have state media as their main or only news-source, this propaganda programme has made it so we are now split in three political groups:
Pro-migration Swedes. Think German communists or US woke-lib-progressives
Anti-migration Swedes. Think baseline European Socialist Democrats of the 1960s.
Identitarian voters, by which I mean which party they vote for has nothing to do with reality or politics; they have always voted for party X and always will.
Then there's a sociological/psychological side to it too, beyond politics, Simply put, most people are rather ignorant due to our de facto media-monopoly which is regime-loyal to a degree that'd have made Julius Streicher jealous being their only source of information. Also, many Swedes are as socially conformist as are Germans - being outed as a Wrongthinker can be career-ending, and social suicide.
Thank you. We have been reading for years the degradation of cities like Malmo and Gothenberg etc. due the numbers of muslim immigration and had imagined that with the apparent turn to the right at the previous election, Swedes had finally seen the writing on the wall, so their recent swing back leftwards was surprising. Could it partly be due to a rising economy masking the societal problems?
No, the swing in the vote is solely due to migration. Ca 250 000 new citizenships since last election, and the result from this year's election swung on three seats, rep. ca 25 000 to 50 000 votes dep. on which specific circuits were the deciding ones.
Non-White migrants vote almost completely Green, Communist or Socialist Democrat, and have started clan-voting to get their own people in charge inside those three parties.
Next election will be worse. Possibly hundreds of thousands of new Red/Green voters, plus tens of thousands of old Swedes having died off (in the 1940s and early 1950s we experienced a never-seen-before record bump of births, and those people are now at or beyond average life expectancy).
That's a darned good question without a straightforward answer.
Before the 2010s, I'd have answered that cancellation/blacklisting was very rare and only done for rather reasonable causes (being an outspoken proponent of the USSR in the 1980s or earlier f.e.). The cultural foundation for it exists, and has done so for centuries, but it was much more nuanced and less binary than at present.
Also, more importantly, there was a cultural role as an "enfant terrible" or truthspeaker that meant that anyone fulfilling that role could speak freely without suffer any social backlash; in fact, the role of truthspeaker was largely a cherished and appreciated one, even if it often was someone you'd rather not have at your dinner table who was 'it'.
This whole thing where you must be on some side or other didn't really exist before 2000-2010 or so, except at the most extreme of fringes of politics and society (essentially, only fringe religious [Jehovas f.e.] or political [the most extreme communists] cults had that mindset). You could condemn Israeli settlers stealing Palestinian land and burning their villages in one breath, and condemn Palestinian terror-attacks in the next, and no-one except the loons would have made a thing over it, to pick an evergreen example-situation.
I think this holds true for most or all of the West. I have certainly seen enough comments and articles written by USAmericans of all shades of melanin about how just a decade or two ago you could have opposing opinions and have it out over an issue in public, and then go crack a beer and light the grill and have a good time together.
I also think there's a malign and conscious force behind this "extreme-isation" of public discourse. China? Silicon Valley? Someone else? Our own stupidity and laxity of thought and moral integrity?
Sweden has had issued with contained emotion for decades, amplified by stifling socialism. The sad part is so many people think there is no way forward but to ignore the beauty of their country and kill themselves.
As long as there's no outright majority of 51% for the AfD - unlikely given how strategic voting to keep them out has played a role in those elections - the Germans will keep being governed by a red-dee red-green coalition. I'm not mentioning the CDU: thanks to the M&M duo (Merkel and Merz) they'll vanish, their voters drifting to the AfD. As for the youth voters: well, the economic crash will show even the stupidest Leftie voter that 'eating the rich' is not a solution. Mind you, they might get employment by the increasingly blatant criminal clans of migrants. After all, someone has to do the drug running, innit ...
If everyone remaining in the CDU / CSU migrates to the AfD, they might just *manage* a straight majority. Of course, I suspect most of the people inclined to go that way already *have*. If Germany can hold together long enough to survive the immiseration that the Red-Red-Red coalition will engender, enough people *might* gather enough of a clue to go that way, even if the CDU / CSU remnants don't, after their party collapses entirely. One can hope that Germany will last that long.
Those in the US (and Europe) who like to complain about foreign (Russian) interference in elections are themselves eager to interfere across borders in others' elections.
Here in Britain the political class is trying to prevent British citizens who made their money overseas, or from businesses they disapprove, should not be permitted to give their own money to political parties.
At least, not a political party which is not part of their Uniparty oligopoly.
I would have expected the SPD to go down first (followed by the CDU in the next decade).
But you make a good point with the left ecosystem. The SPD will likely survive, with ups and down. Probably the young leftist people will keep voting for The Linke, when they get a bit older they switch to the Greens, and eventually in their old age to the SPD.
Also, the SPD has a lot of wealth and infrastructure (e.g. in media and unions). After all, they are by far the oldest party.
The CDU by now stands for nothing and may go the way of the FDP, maybe as a junior partner of the AfD for a while.
The SPD isn't supporting policies which the vast majority of their voters oppose, nor are they ruling out working with any of the other parties on the left. That's what the CDU has done to themselves. There's an old American cliche about shooting yourself in the foot, but what the CDU has done is more like shooting yourself in the head.
CDU messed it up all by themselves. Remember last election? Merz ran about telling us "left was over", turned around, formed a coalition with SPD and started doing whatever the left asked of him. By now it's probably difficult to find a CDU voter who still trusts the party.
Yes Merz was a disaster, but only in marketing. The CDU would have done exactly the same with anybody else at the helm. They are a corrupt, oppotinistic party with no ideology and after Merkle with a low IQ. They are unable to envision any long or even medium term strategy.
The voters of the CDU are the old people, who live off their pensions. They trust the CDU (and SPD) to make sure they get their pensions, no matter what. They have no other choice but to trust them.
And they have no long term strategy either, just to run out the clock until their personal death.
As they die off, the CDU and SPD die off. The AfD gets many young voters, so does Die Linke.
I just can't understand it. A right wing Facist Hiltler loving party actually not wanting war?!
Surely deliberate/Green based de-industrialisation of the EU's greatest power, massive unchecked immigration and war against Russia would've/should've been a vote winner.
It seems Mertz et al are truly perplexed by this. Says it all really.
Only the drumbeats of war can save him and his handlerrs.
What about the CSU? I have wondered for a while whether there is any chance that the CDU/CSU alliance might fracture one day under the pressure from the insane firewall.
Is there any chance, do you think, that the CSU might decide the AfD is closer to their own ideas than the CDU is, and that they might do a deal with the AfD similar to their current deal with the CDU?
I don't think that's likely, mainly because it's the CDU that is hurt most badly by the firewall. It bites less in Bavaria, where the CSU is at the district level highly entrenched and where it has its own right-of-centre coalition partner in the Freie Wähler (so they're not forced to go into massively unpopular coalitions with Greens and SPD).
Let’s be honest, the CSU is as lame as the crap FDP. How could they possibly team up with the CDU when that gives power basically to policies submitted by the SPD? CSU should have gotten cojones long ago and left their partnership with the CDU.
Exactly right, Charlotte. They were always more "robust" than the CDU. If it appears that the AfD are gradually replacing the CDU as the main party of the Right, wouldn't it make sense for the CSU to do a deal with the AfD, so that they could have a share of national power as they have done with the CDU?
That does seem like it would prevent the sort of rout for them locally that the AfD has managed against the CDU elsewhere. Guess it depends on how dead set against it their "boots on the ground" are.
"The general agitation against the AfD and the fight “against the right” has the effect of turning every last state election into a referendum on national politics..." This sounds a lot like the upcoming midterms in the USA. I think this is what Trump is counting on. The polls, as usual, do not look good for Republicans.
The bitter pain at the gas pump is real, though. Dunno how that's going to play out in reality. I'm still *hoping* that the Rs hold on, but I won't exactly be *shocked* if they lose control of Congress in at least one chamber, if not both. At which point we'll get endless replays of the last Trump Administration, with the House doing nothing more than conducting impeachment after impeachment. Though, if they do that and the Rs keep the Senate, I suppose Congress doing *nothing* isn't the *worst* outcome in the world.
These outcomes have almost a mythic quality of retribution and justice to them.
Plus a little bit of the brigades of international leftism popping up all over. Hoping Germans will show a little more revulsion towards them, ultimately, than Morons of Noo Yawk.
I’ve been reading many of the comments and it looks like every country is turning politics into people’s identity. Here in the U.S. it’s a shitshow. I’ve quit watching tv except for reruns of Seinfeld, NCIS, & Family Guy. Sports claims the rest of my viewing time. I have a few shows I stream but after that I have zero interest in any network news show including cable. We’ve been lied to and scammed for so long and they’ve been right along with it. I’m sick and tired of it all. People yell and scream about shit that has nothing to do with their daily lives and it has done nothing but divide our nation all the while our shithead leaders do nothing and get rich trading on the stock market. A divided citizen’s are simple to govern. The psyop works perfectly
"As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming . So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter."
That's an old trick of leftists. Here in Arizona, we have a lefty governor who did not fight very hard in the debate on the distribution of Colorado river water among the lower basin states, and as a result, we got stuck with the largest cutback of river water among those states. The average AZ voter forgets that our lefty governor looks at this result as a feature, not a bug. Severe water restriction will hamper future development of land - she's in favor of this - because it fits in better with her communist vision of "15-minute cities."
She is amazingly irksome, but so are the voters who put her in charge.
The USA is orchestrating much of the war going on in the Middle east and Ukraine. The idea the USA is 'clean' is far, far from the truth.
If.... if it ever emerges who blew up Nordstream 1 / 2, and now, is actively targeting refineries producing diesel..... even the most placid Europeans will be beyond anger. For too long the EU27 and UK have been viewed by Chyna, Russia, USA and the Middle-East tent types as a mere cash cow.
If the UK involvement was ever proved, every single member of the team should face the charge of treason - which until recently carried the death penalty. It's that serious.
"..bestowing on Germany the dumbest energy policy in the developed world .."
Not a chance in hell..
Australia beats everyone...
We have some of the largest deposits of Uranium, Coal, Coal gas, offshore oil/gas etc.
The offshore stuff is virtually given away for token amounts.
Our govt also spent hundreds of millions mapping the sea floor then gave away (not a metaphor) the results to private companies.
We spend hundreds of millions/billions? every year on Renewable Energy Certificates.
Overseas based "renewable" energy companies produce energy at a $ loss here, to the grid, and are paid with the certificate when its "closed".So they get paid twice for same energy input as fossil fuel, and three times if its wind and they are a paid a constraint payment if the grid is over loaded and they have to stop energy into it.
Which means fossil fuel based companies have a hard time competing which is what the Certificates were designed for.Its allows the barely sentient to mumble "renewable is competing with fossil fuels"
We are not allowed to use Uranium and coal and gas incite hysterical frothing from the chattering classes.
Our "scientific" body the CSIRO when dragged into senate estimates hearings has no idea what/how etc any of this will "effect the worlds climate" and doesnt care...
And we now have cattle/cows being injected with drugs to make them lower methane in their farts.
We also have this brilliant idea to buy farms/or pay farmers, not to farm anything.
Let the land go back to scrub and then the farmer gets paid for "carbon credit".
How can he go on with no one behind him? I dislike the multiparty system, which resembles probably what I saw in Belgium. Even if AfD is the largest party they get blocked from government by a coalition of smaller parties, for which people did not really vote. And the mayor party cannot even deliver the governor/prime minister. My father once said that people should get the posts in order of their votes. Most votes gets to be prime minister, and so on. That would be democracy. What there is now is a hassle between politicians IMO
“That would be a democracy” . . . Begs the question, is Germany a democracy when it firewalls its largest political party, and effectively disenfranchises about a third of its citizens?
To me the prime characteristic determinants of a democratic nation are: 1. free, fair, and meaningful elections, and 2. a resulting government that reflects and implements the wants and needs of the electorate. I’m not so sure that is the case when it comes to Germany, the US, the UK, or most of the west’s other democratic republics. Why the charade?
I mean, I suspect that was rather the point, that what Germany has now *isn't* actually a democracy. And has shown how the system in place breaks down rather badly under certain inputs in terms of *being* one.
I'm old enough to remember a German politician being hugely unpopular, suffering election loss after election loss and ignoring the will of the populace was called being a "great leader." As long as they have the "nerve, courage," and "muscle" to retain power, even outlawing political opposition:
What Makes a Great Leader?
China-US Focus, Aug 10, 2017
https://www.chinausfocus.com/society-culture/what-makes-a-great-leader-
"The third critical quality of a great leader is courage – or nerve, as Klaus puts it. The surge of refugees in Europe, especially Syrian asylum-seekers in 2015, led to an explosion of populist sentiment, with political leaders increasingly calling for borders to be closed. Weak leaders buckled under the pressure, either aligning their rhetoric with that of the populists or getting steamrolled by their fiery competitors.
Not German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She set a powerful example by agreeing to accept one million refugees. At first, her standing with voters – and even many within her own party – sagged, to the point that some began writing her political epitaph. But her remarkable courage eventually paid off. She is now recognized worldwide as one of the strongest leaders of our time.
In his own quiet way, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo of Indonesia has shown similar courage. Indonesia, like Europe, is confronting growing pressure from nationalist and populist voices seeking to displace the five principles of tolerance – the “Pancasila” – that underpin Indonesian statehood.
The imprisonment of Jokowi’s political ally, former Jakarta Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, for blasphemy against Islam has reinforced that pressure. Yet Jokowi, like Merkel, has continued to fight back against the extremists, even outlawing the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir."
FF - The irony of Schwab talking about opening borders to millions of Muslims and multi-ethnic invaders while in China, a nation with closed borders and homogenous ethnicity, no mass migration to, isn't lost.
This reminds me of "statesmanship" an idea used to glorify anti-democratic policies.
Bingo. Like John McCain, eulogized as a "statesman" for lying to his voters in 2016 that he'd repeal Obamacare, even cut ads saying his opponent supported Obamacare, would vote to keep it...then weeks later became the "No" vote on repealing Obamacare.
Being a "statesman" means lying to your voters, then stabbing them in the back. Nevermind that he was a corrupt as a day is long, Keating Five corruption, fake 'heroic' POW narrative, Jew-hater (before hating Jews was kkkool). "Statesman." For consistently lying, thieving, betraying his voters. Yep, that's exactly what the term "statesman" means.
There are no political solutions to the problems caused by the excesses of politics. You can search the world if you wish, you won't find a system that works. Parliamentary democracy is much worse in countries with fewer parties. The old soviet party congresses and supreme soviet should serve to illustrate how the model becomes worse with just one party of any meaningful status. The District of Corruption in the untied states of America shows you how terribly useless a two-party approach looks. All these shenanigans illustrate the joys of being stateless and free. See my pinned essay for further elaboration.
I agree. There is not one working political system and there never was. How did humans get into this mess? It has been going on for 4000 or so years!
Oh, much longer. Easily tens of thousands of years. In his epistles saint Paul explains that we battle not against flesh and blood but against "...principalities, against powers, and against the worldly governors, the princes of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness, which are in the high places." The show you are seeing is the show they are showing you. Parliament of clowns. The puppet theatre on television and on the major "news" sites. My phrase for it is "the hoax stream media." The actual power is mostly hidden, behind the scenes, manipulating through extortion and bribery, and inaccessible to the likes of me and thee.
Yes. The American system is seeming more and more attractive. Having the head of government also as the head of parliament, while the head of state is virtually powerless is bad enough. Add in the parliamentary hijinx of blocking the plurality from forming a government, and you have just about the least democratic system you can reasonably call democracy.
No, it's not an indictment of multiparty systems. The left bloc voters really do not want the AfD, so insofar as those parties get enough votes to govern, this is democracy working as intended.
The problem is, AfD doesn't get blocked by the smaller parties, it gets primarily blocked by the CDU. What you see on the left center is that they opportunistically govern with whomever suits their needs at the moment, and they have no compunctions to coalition with extremist and antidemocrats, as long as they are left-wing.
The CDU, meanwhile, only ever governs with centrist parties. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it means it's completely dependent on the center-left. Which longterm makes any governance except leftwing impossible, with at most minimal concessions.
The problem is the suicidally stupid behaviour on the center-right, which sadly seems to be a theme in the EU atm.
To my mind, this is the most noteworthy development of this week's elections in Germany: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/21/one-in-two-young-female-voters-backed-radical-socialist-die-linke-party-in-berlin-elections/
Considering that Die Linke is the heir to East Germany's Socialist Unity Party, this is an illustration of Santayana's aphorism that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
If they watched “Lives of others” they would never vote Communist or Socialist.
Many of them will have watched it at school. But they think they're the good guys, er, wymen, so...
As a wise American legend noted:
“It’s proven through hyskery that wimmin's a myskery /
Says Popeye The Sailor Man! Toot toot!”
https://stonetoss.com/comic/fresh-off-the-boat/
Looks to me like this particular parliamentary system makes it rational to vote for any party that promises you stuff/money from the government, even where you might be competing for that stuff/money against global south migrants.
Well, that's pretty true of all governmental systems -- other than dictatorships, uniparty systems, and governments whose constitutions strictly forbid expenditures for "social" or "redistributionary" purposes. We here in the US thought we had one of the latter, but our founders failed to comprehend the power of entropy and the persistence of parasites.
https://fee.org/resources/not-your-to-give/
I wish I could say that I was even slightly surprised by that link of yours, but I'm not.
As I mentioned (I think) here yesterday, memory is not even the factor. There are three perfectly good communist tyrannies currently operating that fangrrrls of communism could analyze right now, if they cared enough to do their homework.
"That won't happen here." / "That's not *really* communism."
Do I sound bitter? I probably sound bitter. ;)
Looking at German political scene (and my own domestic one too), I am reminded of an old problem with hunting:
Many many hunters wants to down a prize animal, a prime specimen.
This easily leads to the entire race or breed degenerating, since only the lesser specimens get to procreate.
In a way, media and the Kanon of Approved Ideas & Values, lobbyists, and so on, has acted as prize hunters for decades now, removing from politics anyone capable, brave, and wise.
What is left are the "sneaky fuckers" (a semi-technical term in evolutionary biology I believe?), that no-one bothers killing.
Thus, the system was subjected to evolutionary pressure and produced Merz-like creatures as a response.
Such a species, breed, race or Kultur invites its own extermination.
How do you explain Sweden's recent slide towards suicide?
Oh gear, I'd need to start in the 1960s and move forward for a real explanation, but a brief summary:
The Reds have supported mass-migration since 1976, and have set the system up to use non-White migrants as voter-cattle.
The Liberals/capitalists have done the same, but to force wage-dumping and breaking the power of the unions.
When the problems with importing people from MENA and Africa became apparent in the late 1980s, there was a concerted effort by all the power-blocs to hide the problems and associate any criticism in any shape as racism and right-wing extremism.
Since most Swedes over age 40 have state media as their main or only news-source, this propaganda programme has made it so we are now split in three political groups:
Pro-migration Swedes. Think German communists or US woke-lib-progressives
Anti-migration Swedes. Think baseline European Socialist Democrats of the 1960s.
Identitarian voters, by which I mean which party they vote for has nothing to do with reality or politics; they have always voted for party X and always will.
Then there's a sociological/psychological side to it too, beyond politics, Simply put, most people are rather ignorant due to our de facto media-monopoly which is regime-loyal to a degree that'd have made Julius Streicher jealous being their only source of information. Also, many Swedes are as socially conformist as are Germans - being outed as a Wrongthinker can be career-ending, and social suicide.
Thank you. We have been reading for years the degradation of cities like Malmo and Gothenberg etc. due the numbers of muslim immigration and had imagined that with the apparent turn to the right at the previous election, Swedes had finally seen the writing on the wall, so their recent swing back leftwards was surprising. Could it partly be due to a rising economy masking the societal problems?
No, the swing in the vote is solely due to migration. Ca 250 000 new citizenships since last election, and the result from this year's election swung on three seats, rep. ca 25 000 to 50 000 votes dep. on which specific circuits were the deciding ones.
Non-White migrants vote almost completely Green, Communist or Socialist Democrat, and have started clan-voting to get their own people in charge inside those three parties.
Next election will be worse. Possibly hundreds of thousands of new Red/Green voters, plus tens of thousands of old Swedes having died off (in the 1940s and early 1950s we experienced a never-seen-before record bump of births, and those people are now at or beyond average life expectancy).
Is wrongthink cancelation a recent or rooted cultural phenomena?
That's a darned good question without a straightforward answer.
Before the 2010s, I'd have answered that cancellation/blacklisting was very rare and only done for rather reasonable causes (being an outspoken proponent of the USSR in the 1980s or earlier f.e.). The cultural foundation for it exists, and has done so for centuries, but it was much more nuanced and less binary than at present.
Also, more importantly, there was a cultural role as an "enfant terrible" or truthspeaker that meant that anyone fulfilling that role could speak freely without suffer any social backlash; in fact, the role of truthspeaker was largely a cherished and appreciated one, even if it often was someone you'd rather not have at your dinner table who was 'it'.
This whole thing where you must be on some side or other didn't really exist before 2000-2010 or so, except at the most extreme of fringes of politics and society (essentially, only fringe religious [Jehovas f.e.] or political [the most extreme communists] cults had that mindset). You could condemn Israeli settlers stealing Palestinian land and burning their villages in one breath, and condemn Palestinian terror-attacks in the next, and no-one except the loons would have made a thing over it, to pick an evergreen example-situation.
I think this holds true for most or all of the West. I have certainly seen enough comments and articles written by USAmericans of all shades of melanin about how just a decade or two ago you could have opposing opinions and have it out over an issue in public, and then go crack a beer and light the grill and have a good time together.
I also think there's a malign and conscious force behind this "extreme-isation" of public discourse. China? Silicon Valley? Someone else? Our own stupidity and laxity of thought and moral integrity?
That, I don't know.
Sweden has had issued with contained emotion for decades, amplified by stifling socialism. The sad part is so many people think there is no way forward but to ignore the beauty of their country and kill themselves.
As long as there's no outright majority of 51% for the AfD - unlikely given how strategic voting to keep them out has played a role in those elections - the Germans will keep being governed by a red-dee red-green coalition. I'm not mentioning the CDU: thanks to the M&M duo (Merkel and Merz) they'll vanish, their voters drifting to the AfD. As for the youth voters: well, the economic crash will show even the stupidest Leftie voter that 'eating the rich' is not a solution. Mind you, they might get employment by the increasingly blatant criminal clans of migrants. After all, someone has to do the drug running, innit ...
If everyone remaining in the CDU / CSU migrates to the AfD, they might just *manage* a straight majority. Of course, I suspect most of the people inclined to go that way already *have*. If Germany can hold together long enough to survive the immiseration that the Red-Red-Red coalition will engender, enough people *might* gather enough of a clue to go that way, even if the CDU / CSU remnants don't, after their party collapses entirely. One can hope that Germany will last that long.
Of course, hope is a poison, so...
is Merzdämmerung how it would be said in Germany?
yes, but that word has been bouncing around the press and political statements for a while now so I went with Merzpocalypse instead
Armerzgeddon?
I think "Amerzageddon" scans better, rhythmically.
AusMerzung.
Der SchMerz. ("The Pain", for those who do not 'sprechen zee Deutsch'. ;) )
Your comment about Mamdanis strategist and Advisors helping Die Linkeis very interesting. Are we seeing a revival of the Comintern?
Those in the US (and Europe) who like to complain about foreign (Russian) interference in elections are themselves eager to interfere across borders in others' elections.
It's only interference if those you don't like are doing it. If your buddies help you out, it's support.
😭😭😭
Too accurate this early in the morning! Augh!
Yes.
Here in Britain the political class is trying to prevent British citizens who made their money overseas, or from businesses they disapprove, should not be permitted to give their own money to political parties.
At least, not a political party which is not part of their Uniparty oligopoly.
I would have expected the SPD to go down first (followed by the CDU in the next decade).
But you make a good point with the left ecosystem. The SPD will likely survive, with ups and down. Probably the young leftist people will keep voting for The Linke, when they get a bit older they switch to the Greens, and eventually in their old age to the SPD.
Also, the SPD has a lot of wealth and infrastructure (e.g. in media and unions). After all, they are by far the oldest party.
The CDU by now stands for nothing and may go the way of the FDP, maybe as a junior partner of the AfD for a while.
The SPD isn't supporting policies which the vast majority of their voters oppose, nor are they ruling out working with any of the other parties on the left. That's what the CDU has done to themselves. There's an old American cliche about shooting yourself in the foot, but what the CDU has done is more like shooting yourself in the head.
Yes, but right now only old people vote for the SPD.
The young leftist people go to the DIe Linke or Greens, which are perceived as more left than the the SPD. (but they are really all the same).
And the non-left people vote more and more for the AfD. Eventually all CDU voters will be AfD voters.
Yes, the CDU could have be part of the righist block, with the AfD, and have a similar role as the SPD on the left.
But Merkle forced them to go left, and now the AfD is taking all their voters.
CDU messed it up all by themselves. Remember last election? Merz ran about telling us "left was over", turned around, formed a coalition with SPD and started doing whatever the left asked of him. By now it's probably difficult to find a CDU voter who still trusts the party.
Yes Merz was a disaster, but only in marketing. The CDU would have done exactly the same with anybody else at the helm. They are a corrupt, oppotinistic party with no ideology and after Merkle with a low IQ. They are unable to envision any long or even medium term strategy.
The voters of the CDU are the old people, who live off their pensions. They trust the CDU (and SPD) to make sure they get their pensions, no matter what. They have no other choice but to trust them.
And they have no long term strategy either, just to run out the clock until their personal death.
As they die off, the CDU and SPD die off. The AfD gets many young voters, so does Die Linke.
I wonder if CDU members might overrule their leadership policy towards AfD.
IMO, it will come naturally over the years.
I just can't understand it. A right wing Facist Hiltler loving party actually not wanting war?!
Surely deliberate/Green based de-industrialisation of the EU's greatest power, massive unchecked immigration and war against Russia would've/should've been a vote winner.
It seems Mertz et al are truly perplexed by this. Says it all really.
Only the drumbeats of war can save him and his handlerrs.
What about the CSU? I have wondered for a while whether there is any chance that the CDU/CSU alliance might fracture one day under the pressure from the insane firewall.
Is there any chance, do you think, that the CSU might decide the AfD is closer to their own ideas than the CDU is, and that they might do a deal with the AfD similar to their current deal with the CDU?
I don't think that's likely, mainly because it's the CDU that is hurt most badly by the firewall. It bites less in Bavaria, where the CSU is at the district level highly entrenched and where it has its own right-of-centre coalition partner in the Freie Wähler (so they're not forced to go into massively unpopular coalitions with Greens and SPD).
Let’s be honest, the CSU is as lame as the crap FDP. How could they possibly team up with the CDU when that gives power basically to policies submitted by the SPD? CSU should have gotten cojones long ago and left their partnership with the CDU.
Exactly right, Charlotte. They were always more "robust" than the CDU. If it appears that the AfD are gradually replacing the CDU as the main party of the Right, wouldn't it make sense for the CSU to do a deal with the AfD, so that they could have a share of national power as they have done with the CDU?
That does seem like it would prevent the sort of rout for them locally that the AfD has managed against the CDU elsewhere. Guess it depends on how dead set against it their "boots on the ground" are.
"The general agitation against the AfD and the fight “against the right” has the effect of turning every last state election into a referendum on national politics..." This sounds a lot like the upcoming midterms in the USA. I think this is what Trump is counting on. The polls, as usual, do not look good for Republicans.
Luckily, the polls have been wrong since 2016
The bitter pain at the gas pump is real, though. Dunno how that's going to play out in reality. I'm still *hoping* that the Rs hold on, but I won't exactly be *shocked* if they lose control of Congress in at least one chamber, if not both. At which point we'll get endless replays of the last Trump Administration, with the House doing nothing more than conducting impeachment after impeachment. Though, if they do that and the Rs keep the Senate, I suppose Congress doing *nothing* isn't the *worst* outcome in the world.
They have done nothing with the majority. I’m an R guy too but seriously have lost hope in both parties.
"Hope is a poison..."
These outcomes have almost a mythic quality of retribution and justice to them.
Plus a little bit of the brigades of international leftism popping up all over. Hoping Germans will show a little more revulsion towards them, ultimately, than Morons of Noo Yawk.
I'll align with the leftists who remember they're supposed to be anti-war.
What the absolute hell are Zohran Mamdani’s ‘influencers’ doing getting involved in Germany’s elections? That’s more than troubling.
I’ve been reading many of the comments and it looks like every country is turning politics into people’s identity. Here in the U.S. it’s a shitshow. I’ve quit watching tv except for reruns of Seinfeld, NCIS, & Family Guy. Sports claims the rest of my viewing time. I have a few shows I stream but after that I have zero interest in any network news show including cable. We’ve been lied to and scammed for so long and they’ve been right along with it. I’m sick and tired of it all. People yell and scream about shit that has nothing to do with their daily lives and it has done nothing but divide our nation all the while our shithead leaders do nothing and get rich trading on the stock market. A divided citizen’s are simple to govern. The psyop works perfectly
There are hundreds of good movies from past decades to contemporary times, from the USA and from overseas, to watch on streaming services.
Those and Major League Baseball are the only things I ever turn on the TV for.
The rest is mostly revolting, even dehumanizing, particularly the commercials that "normalize" moronic behavior.
You'll notice that in a prison, people group by racial identify for survival.
The primacy of politics means un-limited state control over our lives as in a prison, and we divide into groups based-on natural ethnic identities.
These are inevitabilities.
People are ignoring the elephant in the room .
Diesel fuel hit $10,50 in France yesterday.
Ukraine aka UK and USA took out the largest refinery of Diesel plus countless others refineries
As Eugyppius points out ,the left was strong in Berlin .
As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming .
So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter .
I appreciate Eugyppius…but NO one is calling attention to irreversible path to ruin .
You can’t ignore science or nature.
There IS no woke Physics .
Go to substack “ Doomberg “ free ..today for partial alert .
Their opinion?
Put a fork in Europe .
Too late to undo the damage…Good luck Germany ..you are going to need it soon .
"As I wrote the other day …the Left and greens will never abandon their core belief that we are doomed by global warming . So they figure, we might as well freeze to death this winter."
That's an old trick of leftists. Here in Arizona, we have a lefty governor who did not fight very hard in the debate on the distribution of Colorado river water among the lower basin states, and as a result, we got stuck with the largest cutback of river water among those states. The average AZ voter forgets that our lefty governor looks at this result as a feature, not a bug. Severe water restriction will hamper future development of land - she's in favor of this - because it fits in better with her communist vision of "15-minute cities."
She is amazingly irksome, but so are the voters who put her in charge.
It’s a religion
The USA is orchestrating much of the war going on in the Middle east and Ukraine. The idea the USA is 'clean' is far, far from the truth.
If.... if it ever emerges who blew up Nordstream 1 / 2, and now, is actively targeting refineries producing diesel..... even the most placid Europeans will be beyond anger. For too long the EU27 and UK have been viewed by Chyna, Russia, USA and the Middle-East tent types as a mere cash cow.
News: We are not just a wallet to be raided.
Uh did you not understand “!Ukraine aka UK and USA “ ?
What part of that taxed you brain ?
That's a bit too 'Helll rootin-tootin Yeah' Amer-i-caaaaan for me. Hell yeah. Hell heah.
Isn't it general knowledge that Ukraine bombed the pipelines?
Officially, it was Ukraine - whom we give millions and millions of taxpayers' money nevertheless -, the question is how much US was involved.
Well put.
As an observation from the NY Don to Sleepy Joe, the US of A has done much to distance itself while directly profiting from the situation.
I'm bored with the US of A 'Hell yeah'. Sooooo bored by it all.
Not much . We bought the boat , trained the divers , provided the explosives ,set the charges and some Ukrainian come along and watches
It is not that easy …I’m thinking USA UK also involved
If the UK involvement was ever proved, every single member of the team should face the charge of treason - which until recently carried the death penalty. It's that serious.
"..bestowing on Germany the dumbest energy policy in the developed world .."
Not a chance in hell..
Australia beats everyone...
We have some of the largest deposits of Uranium, Coal, Coal gas, offshore oil/gas etc.
The offshore stuff is virtually given away for token amounts.
Our govt also spent hundreds of millions mapping the sea floor then gave away (not a metaphor) the results to private companies.
We spend hundreds of millions/billions? every year on Renewable Energy Certificates.
Overseas based "renewable" energy companies produce energy at a $ loss here, to the grid, and are paid with the certificate when its "closed".So they get paid twice for same energy input as fossil fuel, and three times if its wind and they are a paid a constraint payment if the grid is over loaded and they have to stop energy into it.
Which means fossil fuel based companies have a hard time competing which is what the Certificates were designed for.Its allows the barely sentient to mumble "renewable is competing with fossil fuels"
We are not allowed to use Uranium and coal and gas incite hysterical frothing from the chattering classes.
Our "scientific" body the CSIRO when dragged into senate estimates hearings has no idea what/how etc any of this will "effect the worlds climate" and doesnt care...
And we now have cattle/cows being injected with drugs to make them lower methane in their farts.
We also have this brilliant idea to buy farms/or pay farmers, not to farm anything.
Let the land go back to scrub and then the farmer gets paid for "carbon credit".
So we "win"...
You're still quite some distance behind D (Energiewende) and UK (Arabia of Wind). (Check their retail electricity prices.)
You are assuming sir, that we have reached peak stupid in regards to energy.We can still do even dumber things with all our natural resources.
I agree the limit may be beyond infinity. However, you've got very able competitors in D and UK.
https://substack.com/@samuelfurfari/note/c-343723587?r=m0512
Looks very similar to 'green' merkelstan tbh. Nuclear was flat out killed here.
It is unfathomable why the ostensibly conservative parties do not band together
Only if you do not see any forces below the surface.
fathom
/făᴛʜ′əm/
transitive verb
- To penetrate to the meaning or nature of; comprehend.
- To determine the depth of; sound.
Perhaps you have some fixed ideas about the political system that prevent you from seeing deeper.
Are ye daft man?
No but I can fathom it because I stopped clinging to the illusions I grew up assuming were true.