To name just a very few popular (?) German Green initiatives.
“The Greens have this ‘ecological dictatorship’ feeling about them now. I used to always vote Greens. But not anymore. No one likes to be told what to do. It feels like the Greens are going to make everything more expensive.”
“Germans don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to cars and meat.”
This is how you save the world (from Climate Change).
German consumers already pay the highest electricity prices in Europe. So it follows, then, that the prices Germans pay for electricity need to be increased.
That is why a turnaround must be introduced – the infamous Energiewende or “energy turnaround” – with which, for instance, a renewable energy surcharge is levied that increases every consumer’s electricity bill from 5.3 cents today to between 6.2 and 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour — a 20-percent price hike. For starters, of course.
You see, this way everybody is happy because every single one of us then feels painfully, on a day-to-day basis, just how much he or she is pulling his or her own CO2 weight, all for the good of mankind, not to mention Planet Earth. And Mother Nature too, of course. Whoever she is.
In the near future, an average three-person household will spend about €90 a month for electricity. That’s about twice as much as in 2000.
A smack upside they green veggie heads, in other words.
If you believe the latest voter survey, that’s what the German Greens are getting at the moment.
Seems to have something to do with their recent Veggie Day Offensive. Or maybe it has something to do with their overall everyday offensiveness or another one of their many other offensive ambitious dreams for Verbotsrepublik Deutschland. Hard to say for sure.
NEUE WÄHLER-UMFRAGE SCHOCKT TRITTIN & CO.
Well, actually there are. But in this case I’m not so sure.
The satirical political party “Die Partei” gathered Thursday at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to debut its latest campaign demand: eradicating tourists from the German capital.
The protest is a play on a debate in recent years in Berlin on how mass tourism threatens to transform the Brandenburg Gate, an important historical site in the city, into a a cheap Disneyland-like attraction.
Ob Ost, ob West, nieder mit der Touri-Pest!
When it comes to Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service having forwarded massive amounts of data to the NSA – legally, I mean.
Take the good old SPD, for instance. They’re hollering the loudest at the moment. And this despite the fact that this particularly evil cooperation with US-Amerika is nothing new at all to them. So not new, in fact (an agreement made in the year 2002), that the SPD’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier was the guy wearing the responsibility hat when this agreement was made – the current governing coalition was not even in power.
But hey, you know how it is when a political party is out of power (in more ways than one) and crawling and scratching to get back into the game. In an outrage and all. In a panic, I mean.
“In my view, the opposition has only itself to blame. Pretending to be the firefighter just to be caught as the arsonist – you can’t play both of these roles with any credibility.”
How smart was the Green Party’s election pledge to introduce a weekly vegetarian day? Oh, I dunno. But more than 85 percent of Germans eat meat daily or almost daily. So you do the math.
Massive web surveillance by the US? German voters seem to have lost interest. The euro crisis? Boring. Comprehensive minimum wage? Zzzzzz. It has been a somnolent election season thus far. At least until this week. Suddenly, the German electorate is up in arms, furious with a proposal made by the Green Party which, many fear, could violate one of their most cherished rights: that of eating sausage whenever they want.
Or “virtue/politically correct terror,” if you prefer. Even some Germans now (in this case Thea Dorn for Die Zeit – “Deutsche Sitten” – no link yet) have come to realize that those who might still prefer to have the right to choose for themselves are losing Lebensraum (their habitat) fast.
A German Opera house decides to cancel a production from their repertoire because several spectators needed medical attention (they were traumatized) after the premiere. A leading SPD politician openly discusses the possibility of limiting the speed limit to 120 kmh on German autobahns. The Greens specify in their party program to do away with the reduced value added tax rate currently granted for fast-food and to forbid the use of wild animals in circuses.
The German (or European) citizen who still expects to be able to decide for him- or herself on matters of this nature (whether to attend the opera performance or not, drive the speed he/she wishes on certain stretches of the autobahn, eat fast-food, etc.) is frowned upon ever more these days because, well, there are others out/up there more enlightened than him/her to make these decisions for them. This is the essence of socialist and/or Green thinking. This makes everything safe. And predictable. And correct sowieso (at the very least).
Autonomy means being able to assess what I can expect of myself and of my environment to put up with. Living means not letting myself be knocked down by injuries or setbacks. But how can I learn either of these things if our society becomes an omnipresent governess keenly taking care that her wards never get carried away?
How indeed. They don’t want you to get carried away. Or get away at all, for that matter, ever. That’s the point. Just curb your enthusiasm already and keep on voting for more tutelage.
Man kann sein Leben zu Tode verschwenden, andere zu Tode schinden. Wir sind dabei, uns zu Tode zu schonen.
Socialism, of course, has never worked. Not once. Not in any form.
And German social democracy (like social democracy and their even cheaper imitations everywhere else around the world), although doing its best not to ever actually use the word socialism itself, is of course nothing other than the democratic attempt to reach that very goal. Which has never worked (once “reached”), like I said. But still.
So today the German SPD gets to celebrate its bittersweet 150th birthday — trailing badly in polls ahead of September elections and hearing praise for its efforts to reform Europe’s biggest economy from French President Francois Hollande, a recent left-wing winner who has also lost his luster.
Hey, whatever. More power to them and Happy Birthday and all that because, well, I kind of admire them in a way. But only kind of. They’re like a bunch of nutty professors who simply refuse to believe that their never-ending pursuit of the perpetual motion machine is maybe sort of not such a great idea – and a big waste of time after all. You know, searching for a machine that produces “motion that continues indefinitely without any external source of energy; impossible in practice because of friction?”
There’s always friction out there, you see. It’s called reality. Or self-interest, if you prefer. Or the desire of individuals to live their lives without interference from others who aren’t interested or able to live their own?
Or maybe just money, in the end. Like Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Strange, isn’t it? But that’s the SPD’s problem, too. Happy Birthday anyway! Now just shut up and cut the cake already.
“No other party has been able to last so long, because its core demands have constantly remained relevant in new ways: freedom, social justice and political participation.”
Ever notice the emotional reaction you get whenever the subject is brought up (I’m talking about gun control in US-Amerika, of course)? The reaction from both sides of the argument, I mean? You know, these irrational, knee-jerk, pre-programmed reactions driven by fear and hate, totally devoid of logical or critical thinking (as is the case with other issues like abortion, religion, women’s rights, gay rights, etc.)?
And have you ever noticed how Germans like to sit back and smirk at these reactions from their expensive, comfortable and cushy seats way up there on the moral high ground? I know, you probably haven’t. But they do.
Well, take a look at what happens when a well-meaning SPD Gutmensch (do-gooder) suggests that a 120km/h speed limit be put on all German autobahns.
The whole country goes ape shit and that’s that. Punkt. Ende. Aus. “Debate” over in gefühlte (what felt like) five minutes. So I guess the only difference here is that there is no other side to the argument – as is/has been so often the case in Germany.
“Eine absurde, überflüssige Debatte.”
Ever feel like you fell down the rabbit hole? Spend some time in Germany and then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Only in Germany can a political party go for (and actually get) votes by promising to raise taxes.
Delegates at a Greens party convention in Berlin yesterday voted through plans to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent for those earning 80,000 euros ($104,000) a year or more, and to 45 percent from 42 percent above 60,000 euros. They also backed a “wealth levy” on the richest to pay down 100 billion euros of Germany’s state debt over 10 years.
And a whole lot of German voters actually get excited about this kind of nonsense. It’s often a zero-sum mentality game over here, you see. You know, the way of thinking that hinges on the notion that there must be one winner and one loser and for every gain there is a loss? Take from the rich and give to the poor, in other words. Or Umverteilung (redistribution), if you prefer.
Of course what the Green Shirts are actually doing is selling “equality” where there is a huge demand and buying Neid (envy) where there is an even bigger supply.
“Nirgendwo in der OECD ist die Ungleichheit so schnell gestiegen wie in Deutschland.”
Observing Hermann 