Last night, I was sitting there and watching the ARD (public German TV) Aktuelle Nachrichten (the late news). About 6.5 minutes into it (after talking at length about the woes of the political spectrum), they went to some special commentary by a journalist who works for public TV in Bavaria. At the site I embedded, you can sit and watch the piece (all in German).
This guy....Christian Nitsche.....wanted everyone to grasp the 'blame' for the woes in the political arena. He got into the fact that the SPD Party is no longer the 'people's party' or 'the worker's party'. He's kinda right about that. They worked hard over the past three decades to rid themselves of that middle-class working-guy voter.
Then he launched into the asylum and immigration topic. He laid it out in blunt talk....half the nation (statistics exist)....are hyped up and boiling over the government unable to resolve the current believed crisis. Neither Merkel or the 'grand coalition' (SPD, CDU, CSU).....are able to fix this.
Because of this lack of 'inspiration' (he says it in a quote).....the public sees only one solution....go and vote AfD (the anti-immigration party).
Nitsche then kinda ends his sharp words on the success of this public perception....the 'shame' that you can only perceive one single answer, and it's AfD.
It has been weighing on my mind since I watched the piece and I agree with most of what was said.
Here are my five observations over this 'path' that has occurred in Germany.
1. When the crisis started in 2013 with thousands walking across the border and doing the asylum request.....the reaction by the Berlin leadership was more or less.....kids in a science lab trying to see what would happen if you mixed vinegar and bleach. At some dramatic point when you needed true leadership and a planned direction....you got juvenile political figures with no true idea on how to manage the issue.
2. For a minimum of twenty years in Germany (maybe even going back to 1949).....the solution has always been that the Chancellor and the Bundestag could fix everything. In the past decade, there's a growing majority of Germans who don't believe that's possible anymore.
3. The use of public TV forums and news to catapult people toward supporting parties or stances? There's some resentment and accusations of 'lying press' around, with intellectual 'trust' being carved away each month, and fewer people willing to sit and listen to the intellectual expert.
4. My son (the German) brought this up the other day....in that just about everyone who sits in Berlin and has some 'job' within the government....is more or less a bureaucrat, without any real knowledge of business, real estate, banking, or health care. In his mind and a growing number of the public....it might be time to bring just regular people into the picture and send the bureaucrats home.
5. So you come to the issue of immigration, asylum, refugees, etc. All of this goes back to a simple word text piece in the Basic Law (the Constitution), which says upon arrival.....everyone has the right to ask for asylum or permission to stay. Note: RIGHT. In a growing number of minds....some fashion of change has to occur where it's NOT a right, and you can expect a fight with major consequences if you had a large group of Germans say that it had to be modified to something less than a right.
These two state elections in Bavaria and Hessen? They weren't supposed to be a big deal when people talked about this in the summer of 2017. Today? Yes, they are a big deal.
No comments:
Post a Comment