Last night, via German public-run ARD, the Anne Will Show came on. The public forum chat topic? Trump-Clinton.
There are six observations to make from this show, which featured five entertaining guests.
1. "Are Americans that stupid?" This was the question at some point directed by Anne Will (the moderator) toward Thomas Gottschalk (the German entertainer who lives out of California). In about sixty seconds, Gottschalk laid it out....that Americans are the always the energetic child-like people....always pumped up and going onto the next thing. He didn't mean it as a slam, but just the way that public things work.
The suggestion here by the moderator.....which the public would normally perceive is that Americans really aren't capable of making correct decisions. This theme came over and over in the forum.
2. The chief active political player invited as a guest? Martin Schulz (SPD) who typically is a EU member. It's an amusing invitation because behind the scenes.....Schulz is being seen as the top SPD chancellor candidate instead of Gabriel. Few Germans know that, and it's not widely discussed.
Throughout the evening Schulz laid out issues and problems with Trump. I would suggest that the chief political theme for summer and fall of 2017 for the SPD in it's way toward the Oct/Nov election.....instead of security and immigration.....it'll be an anti-US/anti-Trump theme. Amusing to some but not likely to work as it has in the past.
3. A fair amount of assumption by the entire panel that Trump wouldn't win. This is the part that surprised me....in that they are fairly assessing the situation and have already determined that Hillary would win against Trump.
Back in April and May, Hillary would come up as a topic and talk was always positive on public-run TV on her campaign. Now? The assessment must be in and the sense is that she's in a bad situation.
4. Roger Johnson was the sole American on the panel and did a fair job (in German) explaining the whole thing. He is a Republican, I should note. Oddly, they didn't invite someone to hype up Hillary, which made one wonder if they had quietly gone ahead and assumed she was pre-determined loser.
Johnson's one key positive in the episode came toward the end and explaining the public desire for more jobs. There is a significant assumption that only Trump can deliver on the jobs promise.....which no one seemed to argue much against that logical reason to pick Trump.
5. Only intellectuals and statesmen should be leaders. Over the first ten minutes of this show.....this topic was drilled down into, and repeated. Trump isn't a statesman, or an intellectual. Trump's profession as mentioned at least a dozen times over the evening.....is reality show host.
Perhaps they could have asked about the intellectualism assessed to President Obama.....or how Chancellor Merkel's intellectualism got them deep into AfD territory with disgruntled voters, but they didn't reach that stage.
There is a need for intellectuals within politics....but to say they are some kind of 'anchor' or the stable side of the game....is a joke.
6. A clear moment where you realized this forum had become an entertainment forum. Over and over, it was stressed via the guests of the show and the moderator.....that politics isn't entertainment. Yet, over and over.....they proved the point of all of this coming full circle and being entertainment for the public.
As I came to the end of this chat forum show.....I came to this odd conclusion. There are some people (political figures and journalists) who are generally in some trance or zombie-like state, and haven't met real people in a decade. These people (not just the ones who appeared on this show) aren't connected to the public or understand the general public frustration....whether it be in Germany or the US. They hang out with like-minded friends, sip wine with other intellectual-types, and read intellectual-minded material.
These were the people who want to tell you what the priorities are.....why things are great....and how you should appreciate things as they are. The general public frustration is obvious.
3 comments:
Intelligent people don't involve themselves in politics. If that were not true, you and I would be running for office.
I just had some visitors from Hamburg, and although they do not much like Trump or Hillary ( I try to educate them on her utter corruption ), they do not give Trump much of a chance of winning. Nor does better than 80% of the Germans from what I've been told.
So it surprised me to read your article about some political-entertainers resigned to a Trump victory. Has there been a noticeable public shift towards Trump of late as has been evidenced here in the U.S.? How about by region? Bavarians I would assume could cotton to Trump more than Berliners. How about your region ( Wiesbaden is it?)
Is there any newspaper in Germany that is favorable to Trump and catalogs all the Clinton chicanery with private emails and never ending scandals - not to mention her poor health?
I have also looked on Amazon.de, and I can find nary a book printed in German that tells the truth about Obama or Clinton or is told from a conservative perspective from respected writers such as Mark Levin or Mark Steyn. I would love to give Jonah Goldberg's extensively researched book "Liberal Fascism" to my German friends if only it was in German print. How can that be? Are there no conservative publishers in Germany either?
I have come to the conclusion that Germans do not really understand what freedom means in America. Or, actually, what freedom means in and of itself. Germany has never had a 1066 moment in history. Nor do they like bold and brash personages such as Bush jr. or Trump or Reagan ( how did that turn out?) They equate cosmopolitan to intelligent which already leads them down fatally inductive paths.
I wss born in Germany, but I don't share the German mindset.
Germany needs a Geert Wilders.
On Hillary's health, emails and remarkable scandal production....it's mostly a marginally told story. If you looked at state-run news since January, there's probably been ten mentions of either the health, email server or Clinton Foundation stuff. Newspapers and news magazines might have gone to double that amount but that's about it. Trump? He gets mentioned at least five or six times a week since March, and it's 99-percent anti-Trump. So the national perception is pro-Hillary and anti-Trump. Oddly, they focus on using the same wording for right-wing players in Germany....aren't Americans "smart-enough" to grasp who Trump is....suggesting that as an intellectual...they have the capacity to see such things. Maybe one-third of German society is sick of the intellectual commentary, and polls suggest that off state-run news now....almost three-quarters of the nation doesn't believe they are telling the truth...on ANYTHING.
As for Steyn or Levin type books? No, they aren't marketed because they probably wouldn't get more than 10,000 purchases out of the country. Oddly, there's a police union chief who released a book in the past six weeks that is very harsh against Merkel and the immigration policy. It is selling well. When you do see that Hillary has sold another book and it's marketed in Germany....the stat's will always be super positive on sales. Basically, someone is buying a hefty number of paperbacks, and just dumping them in some warehouse for disposal later, but no one seems to be able to find people who actually read these Hillary books.
As for the subject of some region being more Trump enthused, it's probably Bavaria. But when you get down to the pub-crowd (the people that make up the working class, maybe 60-percent of the nation)...they really don't care. It's not like Trump or Hillary will fix anything in Germany. They might watch these news pieces and know something about the race, but honesty, it's just not a big deal to them. The journalists, the political figures, the intellectuals? For them, it's cheesecake and it's big-time stuff. So they pretend to get all frantic and hyped up....to get them more audience numbers.
As we get into spring, and Trump likely sitting in the White House....you then have the French Presidential election where it'll be a center-right or far-right President who wins. Toss in the Dutch Parliament election....higher right-wing win there. And there's three German state elections in the spring with lesser numbers for the SPD and CDU. So by late fall as the German national election comes and the journalists are shocked that the anti-Trump and anti-US message isn't being bought by the public....maybe reality will set at that point.
Post a Comment