Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
America Surrendered to the Left in Our Last Election. Germany Is Next.
The world is a mess right now. More than usual, I mean. China appears to have demographic and economic imbalances that would seem to lead to a catastrophic correction at some point. Russia has social and economic problems that just can’t be sustainable. America is doing it’s very best to destroy itself and its allies as rapidly and spectacularly as possible. And then there’s the EU – a random collection of 27 nations united in one economy which is based on, really, nothing whatsoever.
Germany is the gorilla in the EU room, with a population that dwarfs the other 26 countries, and an economy that actually produces things. Try to imagine the EU without Germany. Why would earn the money to pay for everything? Greece? Italy? Spain? Portugal? Estonia? Romania? Many countries in the EU are essentially insolvent, and are completely dependent on the support of the EU, meaning the support of Germany, to continue to pay the bills. Which means those countries, and the rest of us, might take an interest in the upcoming election in Germany.
Angela Merkel’s 16-year reign of mush is coming to an end. After this week’s election, it appears very likely that Germany will be ruled by a coalition of the Socialist Party, the Left Party (a direct descendant of the Marxist Leninist ruling party of the former East Germany), and the Greens. According to Andreas Hellmann of National Review,
The Left Party calls for an end to all Bundeswehr (German army) missions abroad, a stop to all German weapons exports, a shutdown of the NATO alliance, and a replacement of NATO with a new system that includes Russia and China. (emphasis mine)
The Left Party also wants a wealth tax of 5 – 30%. The Socialist Party questions the value of property rights and wants to nationalize BMW. Please read the whole article. This could be very important to Germans. And other Europeans. And everyone else, really.
Imagine the German economy collapsing under a steaming pile of leftism, and the EU forming a coalition with Russia and China. This might help Russia and China postpone their reckonings with their own internal problems. And the focus of world power would move away from America and toward Putin and the Chinese Communist Party.
The part of all that that upsets me the most is that President Biden, and most Democrats, will see nothing wrong with this.
The American election last year was a big deal. The world’s greatest superpower finally succumbing to the left has enormous global implications. Just like the election this week in Germany. This is a big deal. And it looks like the outcome will be the same, there. Lord help us.
Things are changing fast. I wonder what the world will look like in 20 years…
Published in General
So (West) Germany is transgressing from an economic juggernaut to socialist crap hole — All in one lifetime. Lesson!
Often societies have transition from liberty to tyranny–rarely does it go away. When all the G8 goes corporate-fascist, can any future green shoot of liberty survive? Will any outliers of liberty survive?
As a small note of hope, I will point out that this line could have been written in 2009 or 2013. There remains a prospect of defeating the Left in 2022 and 2024.
The transformation of our country since the election of Obama has been quite terrible, in my view.
As another small note of hope, I will add that there have been some significant shifts in the electorate. On balance, thus far, they have largely been a wash. Working-class whites have moved strongly toward the Republicans, while suburban whites may have moved (somewhat less strongly, I think) toward the Democrats. These shifts demonstrate the possibility of people changing their minds in fairly large numbers. Obviously, such shifts may be favorable or unfavorable from my point of view, but they are at least possible.
I keep trying to tell myself that exact thing.
But with cancel culture and questionable election integrity, we can’t speak our minds and we can’t vote our minds. If those two suspicions are correct, then we have a very serious problem.
As I often say, I hope I’m wrong about this. Perhaps I am.
We Republicans allow the Democrats and their mass media to frame every issue that comes along. Thus we talk about immigrants instead of immigration. We talk about racism instead of economic opportunity. We talk about the permanent government-supported underclass rather than education.
The only thing that can save the world at this point from being engulfed by China and Russia (who have officially linked arms since we gave them Afghanistan for their new toy) is a smart Republican Party in the United States. We have got to compete for hearts and minds. That is the game that is being played. That’s where we have to go.
I have been so impressed by Trump’s refusal to go off on his own into an independent party. He has done a lot that made me think, “Wow, that’s really smart and fantastic,” but his continued efforts to unite the Republican Party are the most impressive to me. This is a guy who saw the whole world from the mountain top. He knows what it will take to defeat the forces presently arrayed against liberty and justice for all.
Jerry, it is not as though winning elections back and forth somehow maintains an equilibrium. When we elect squishes, the left wins. When we elected a fire-breathing man of the base, the GOP went to war against us.
We did lose in 2008 and 2012, and it is not as though any of the losses there were made good during the Trump administration. Instead, the executive branch mutinied, to include the Milleytary, and conducted a coup to oust our elected President. Our GOP by turns both colluded with and folded to the now self-sustaining tyranny of government rule of, by, and for itself.
People like me who were so stridently alarmed at the re-election of Barack Obama — croaking Doom! into the ether — were correct.
Looking at the twenty year scope of what I consider the current political age (2000 ~ ), it has been a disaster galloping from a troubled Republic to a dictatorship by ad hoc committee. The deep state waged cellular unconventional warfare against the electorate, and they have won.
Well, I can speak my mind. I write all sorts of things here at Ricochet. Most of what I write would annoy the Left, and much of it annoys many of you. :)
I can find all sorts of information and commentary that annoys the Left. Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Glenn Loury, Amy Wax, Jared Taylor. Even Richard Spencer. I listened to a few Spencer podcasts a month or two ago, and he said some sensible things, and some things that I found objectionable.
What important figure has been cancelled? The two that come to mind, and they’re relatively minor, are Alex Jones and Stefan Molyneux. I never listened to Jones, and I can still find Molyneux when I want — even on YouTube, which cancelled his account, because others still post some of his stuff.
On the election integrity issue, I have not been convinced by the arguments about massive fraud. I have been convinced by arguments of some irregularities in some places, amounting to perhaps 1% of the vote at the high end. That’s not good, but only relevant in a very close election.
I do think that things are pretty bad, but I’m not as pessimistic as you about the possibility of a turn-around.
Ummm. A sitting President. If you don’t see the problem, I guess it’s not a problem for you.
The New York Post, for revealing information obtained from “hackers.”
We should draw a distinction between silencing on the largest global platforms and sending to the gulags to silence. Corporate media is more slanted than ever and studies show that it affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. I assert that we would not have a global pandemic, if not for the slanted media. It is real and fake news is the enemy of the people, despite the fact that I can still access Alex Jones on some obscure website.
Again semantics. Is the 250,000 unlawful vote-by-mail ballots in Wisconsin fraud? Or, is it just unlawful and illegitimate? What about when Pennsylvania and Nevada forgo required signature verification on mailed ballots? Is that fraud? Or, is it just unlawful and illegitimate? Or, maybe you are not convinced those things happened. If you want to use a very narrow definition of “fraud”, it might be more fruitful to use a more specific phrase is “identity fraud” or “registration fraud”.
History has proven that the only way totalitarians (socialism is the promise and the lie, but power is the means) can succeed is through raw power. This conquest requires no legitimacy, no mandate, no abrogation and no allegiance; just force and defeat. Why do the Democrat leaders press so hard on the January Sixers? They refuse to accept defeat. They still believe in liberty. As a result, they are a threat to the new socialist order. The same goes for those who defy vaccination, who challenge the massive power grab that is the New Green Deal, who support some modicum of fiscal restraint, who demand free and fair elections, who see open borders as a threat to our sovereignty.
The biggest threat of all is the second amendment. When they come for our guns…
In just over one year, there will be elections. There will be a demand for accountability. It just may stem the tide.
Germany’s population is 84 million. France’s is 66, Italy’s 61. The EU as a whole has some 450 million inhabitants. Germany is a pretty vicious chimp, but it’s no gorilla.
Good point. I don’t use Twitter or Facebook, so the banning of President Trump didn’t affect me. I could still find what he had to say, but he was barred from some important platforms.
Key moments in key races for electoral votes. You’re not so simple as to try the simple majority argument.
I’m writing this down, that’s gold.
Ok, fair enough.
But economically, it’s a gorilla. Right?
The other thing to remember is Germany’s population is falling fast, especially its working-age population.
It’s banks are a mess. It is highly dependent on auto manufacturing, but how electric vehicles will play out is unclear.
Germany has been much farther to the left than the US for a long time. It is highly divided by region and demographically.
A very high percentage of voters take climate change seriously with the recent flooding being blamed on climate change. Rather than spending money on controlling flooding, the money will be spent amorphously on climate change accomplishing nothing in terms of controlling flooding. A few politically well-connected people will make a lot of money.
The CDU leader was caught out at an event for the flood victims laughing while the flood victims were describing what happened to them. So there’s that.
But whoever has the most seats will likely have to form a coalition of SPD/CDU/CSU (the CDU/CSU are the same party in different states) or three parties with very different agendas. There will likely be months of negotiating before a government is formed. Germany is highly divided.
The People has disappointed the Party, which has decided to replace them with another people.
Sweden, Italy and the UK moved rightward after tiptoeing close to the edge. It is not impossible to recover from acute stupid.
Biden, Pelosi and AOC can’t even fake not flushing our entire way of life so our recovery may be sooner than expected.
Feminized, risk-averse, narrative-loving voters are invariably the last to figure out the actual cost of lefty fantasy but they will get it. Germans are not going to put up with a big hit to national prosperity.
Inflation, loss of the summer home and criminals in the better sorts of neighborhoods have a salutary effect on voting patterns everywhere.
The thing is Germany is decreasingly German. And it is increasingly third world where almost noone has a German standard of living. Few of the immigrants are citizen’s and thus able to vote. Even many Turks born in Germany are not citizens (by their own choice). That could easily change with a new law.
The greens have been captured by the Neocons. So I am not so sure about this coalition happening.
We will be seeing a lot of this.
American workers have no leverage in a high-immigration society.
Well, it’s over there, for one thing. If other countries go left, it’s no cause for concern. They might go a bit too far, but their hearts are in the right place. There might not be “property rights,” but if there’s guaranteed housing with a certain square-meter allotment, that’s better. There might not be “free speech,” but if people are unable to say harmful things, that’s better. There might not be “free enterprise,” but if everyone has a job – regardless of whether it’s productive – that’s better. There might not be a common “culture,” but vibrant multiculturalism is a superior replacement.
What matters is the ability of Americans to visit now and then and tour empty churches and art museums, and feel a sense of satisfaction when they compare the trolley systems to American highways.
We’ll, not a “job” as such – work is so demeaning – but a guaranteed income (guaranteed until you dissent, obviously).
Reminiscent of the old Soviet era joke: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
We used to have a culture and substantive tradition of tolerance that permitted an array of beliefs and cultural heritages to coexist within a single magnificent political tradition. Multiculturalism is instead unity based on shared (mandated) contempt for the culture that made multiculturalism possible.
We could be involved in WWI.
I’m not sentimental about Europe. Europeans may be sentimental about something, though I’m not sure what. The EU is a vanity project for Germany and maybe also France. It’ll hang around, whether there is any practical purpose for it.
I was just thinking about this the other day, as I made one of my rare visits to a Turkish news website. The big guy thereabouts was speechifying. Maybe he always does and I just don’t notice, but it did seem to me he was going off his own reservation so to speak. He was talking about the possibility of a more just world, and Palestinian independence, and even climate change, which surprised me because who ever heard of a Moslem caring about climate at all? I had never before seen the Turkish word for it. Well, he was in Europe, addressing some subunit of the UN. He was trying to please people he thought needed to be pleased.
Which might be the UN, or the EU, or the EU-ish parts of the UN, or some other supranational body, though maybe not NATO, which is so over, or ought to be. Anyway, I found his concerns touching. He so wants to belong…to something.
As do Europeans themselves. I have long thought that what Europeans want is to (1) cut deals with monsters and (2) look perfect doing it. They’ll always find a new monster.
China will outlast us and dominate at least for a few decades. They probably already control more than we realize and almost certainly will unambiguously control after the Democrats steal the next election, which is when China may move against Taiwan. Our military advantage means nothing in the hands of the current Democrat leadership. China’s internal struggles even if real, will decline with the struggle to dominate Taiwan, if they think it even necessary with the decline of the US economy in particular and the west in general. We can’t imagine what the world will be like without the US. Europes decline is related to the US and if they don’t have to compete with a vigorous US the bureaucrats will continue to build their power there as well. China may end up the freest economy until the general tendency toward rot erodes them as well. Strange indeed.
Soon we’ll be calling Germany “the Venezuela of Europe” . . .