You Don't Want 'Kids' Too Smart Moment

 Last night, ARD ran 'Hard But Fair' (9:00 PM).  It's a public forum type show.....live....and typically done with a moderator and five guests.

You can go and view the show over at this site.

The topic?  Which party can you trust for environmental progress?

Yeah, it's a hyped-up deal to have about five weeks prior to the election.

So the guests....Schulze (SPD Party, Environmental Minister of the government), Cem Özdemir of the Greens, Markus Blume who is a ranking member of the CSU Party, Pauline Brünger who is a founding member of the 'Fridays for the Future' crowd, and Economist/Director of the Institute of German Economy Michael Hüther).

So to describe the group....Hüther is the capitalist, Özdemir is the voice of reason within the Green Party, Schulze is a 'bear' on getting climate legislation done, Brünger goes to the ninth degree on all matters related to the environment, and Blume is a moderate conservative.

So Brünger reaches some point in the panel discussion where she 'demands' that the parties all present their program....so the 'future' crowd can whittle down the group.  Then this marvelous moment comes up....the economist (Hüther) asks why the 'Fridays for the Future' crowd haven't organized their own political party in the past two years.  Özdemir then has to quickly step in before this answer can be delivered because the Green Party absolutely doesn't want the Future crowd to make this into a dividing factor, and take half the votes away from the Greens.

If you haven't figured out these two groups....the Green Party of Germany has shaped a theme over the past ten years where they aren't as radical or charged up as they might have been in the 1980s/1990s.  You can call them the moderate Greens or Greens-lite, but they realize today that you can't tear the economy apart or destroy jobs

The 'Fridays for the Future' crowd?  Well....they are all young (ages 12 to 20 mostly) and very willing to take extreme positions (destroying industries in Germany or forcing companies to relocate outside of Germany isn't a big deal).  

The Greens like the energized nature of the 'kids', but they don't want them to go crazy and take a half-million votes down some separate path....toward a 'Fridays for the Future' political party.  

Here's the thing.....if there were a million kids watching the moderator's show, and watched that suggestion fly by......they have to be standing there today and asking....why couldn't  we organize a political party and start participating in state elections?  

The Green Party elders now trying to quiet down the chatter?  I would imagine that they have to take this chatter out of the discussion and hope that the kids don't suddenly get 'smart' or start thinking independently.