The Empathy Lost Sory

There is a piece over at ARD (German public TV, Channel One) which caught my attention this morning.

If you follow German politics, 2018 is shaping up as a big year for Bavaria because of the state election scheduled in the fall.  The AfD Party is looming big on the landscape because they are anticipating taking a minimum of twelve percent of the vote.  The SPD?  They will likely be eclipsed by the Green Party.  Surrounding all of this....is the CSU folks who are trying to hype their solutions on immigration enough to slow down the AfD gains.

So, the Council President of the Evangelical Church has gotten 'hyped-up' (my word for it) and discussed the poor nature of responsibility shown by the CSU on the refugee problems.

Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, more or less, has said that the CSU is being rather 'one-sided'.  He says this is all to block CSU voters from walking away to the AfD, and it's a poor political strategy.  In saying this....he's more or less suggesting that having more AfD support and votes is a really positive thing.

All of this leads to a quote given....."empathy is lost".....suggesting that the CSU has lost track of it's empathy.

I sat and pondered his statement for a while.  Typically, empathy means that one side ONLY has lost it's position and can't share/understand the feelings of the other side.  After spending the last five years observing German society and the often one-sided debate on immigration....it is apparent that both sides have lost empathy.  Bedford-Strohm, in this case, has lost understanding of the people who are negative about migration and immigration.

While taking the high road....his use of the fight to preserve empathy...seems marginal.  You can't demand empathy, if you aren't empathetic yourself.

So you look at the political situation that has developed.  The AfD is standing there as the only counter-weight to mass migration. No other party takes that position.  Every vote for them....is a frustration vote.  In this case....if the CSU had not taken the steps or positions noted.....then the AfD today would likely be near 20-to-25 percent and would create a major problem for Bavarian politics.  Bedford-Strohm seems to be oblivious to that suggestion, and thinks that a frustration vote is not possible.  It might be time for Bedford-Strohm to put on regular clothing and go walk out among non-intellectual types and get a new perception of the frustration factor.