Maishberger ran a ARD public chat forum last night. Topic? Trump.
It was an odd line-up of people that Maishberger gathered for this talking group. Afar-left retired political figure. An intellectual retired journalist from ARD. Alice Schwarzer, who is a feminist gal and very anti-immigrant....who is fairly known around Germany. Some PR German gal who was all pro-Trump. A BILD journalist. And Eric T. Hansen, the lone American on the group.
Hansen is an unusual character. He's an American Mormon, who met a German gal.....married her....went onto a German university....settled into Berlin, and has written a couple of well-received books. It should be noted that he tends to see humor in most events and can be sarcastic. His book....Planet Germany.....written a decade ago....was a best seller in Germany and does some sharp but humor-filled criticisms of German intellectualism.
At some point, the retired journalist hyped up "Rational Politik". It's an invented word that basically covers the idea that you need professional political people running governments and conducting foreign relations because they are trained and have the right way of looking at problems. Hint? Well....insiders can only run the insider system. You wouldn't want the general public rationalizing the issue and coming to a totally different objective.
By the end of this show, you got a fairly big dose of 'problems with Trump'. I think Hansen did try to open their minds just a bit....but with a German, you'd need a ton of persuasion.
Over the past year or two...I've come to the idea that you need public and open forums with a dialog that goes in various directions and allows people to grasp the depth or lack-of-depth to a problem. When you have a bunch of people trying to make this a one-solution problem or limiting debate to only one side....it doesn't work. People are generally smart enough to figure things out on their own.....they don't need intellectuals trying to pretend that their services are priceless and irreplaceable.
More of these 'slam-Trump' debates? Yes. Over the next week, I'd expect at least three additional public-run TV shows like this. In some way, it's like a bunch of children who were told that a circus was coming to town, and they wake up the next day to find that it's just two clowns and a monkey. They all sit by the street corner and weep over the loss of their anticipated "circus". In the end, they never consider that basically the whole circus story got blown way out of proportion and was never truthful....ever.
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