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Autumnal Anxieties in Allemagne…
…better known as Germany around these parts. It starts like this:
We’ve been back in the Federal Republic now for most of a month, and the anxious mood of the country seems to have gotten worse. Before the headlines here were taken over by news of Queen Elizabeth’s death and of the startling Ukrainian successes in the Russo-Ukrainian war (update as of September 12th, here), the newspaper headlines were filled with stories about the impending wave of price increase for everything from foodstuffs to soaps to clothing, all driven by the continuing price increases in the energy sector. The war and the energy prices are of course related, and those who laughed when Donald Trump warned Europeans against relying on the regime of Vladimir Putin for their supplies of natural gas are finding out now just how appalling crow really tastes when it is served up cold. It tastes like the fear of pensioners who quite legitimately think that their government is going to force them to choose between food and heat this winter.
And the rest you will, I hope, read on the blog. Thanks!
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Good blog. And I think living in San Francisco is difficult. What a nightmare coming to Germany. Wonder if Gov. French Laundry and the Greens here will get the message. Probably not.
Are there any elections coming up, and do you think this will increase the vote share for AfD?
Great sentence.
Mein Schatz is coming here in three weeks to spend three months with me, while we wait for my feckless government to sort out the visa paperwork I filed in February ( “Sorry, did we say 4 months? Now it’s a 13 month wait – don’t call us until next May”).
I am watching the natural gas/energy looming crisis in Germany with great interest; will she notice that she is warm and her family back home is possibly not? This will be an interesting winter.
No, nothing on the national level. The only state election left this year is for the Parliament of Lower Saxony.
Thanks!
In a sad sign of the times, Radio Bayern Klassik (mit Klara Jäger!) this morning advertised its new listener contest. The prize was not a new car or two weeks in a luxury villa on the Mediterranean coast, but …paying your heating bills for a year.
Not just Germany, most of Western Europe. For example: In 2006 I was reading American ex-pat Bruce Bawer’s <i>While Europe Slept</i> when I overheard a group of European businessmen commenting contemptuously about my choice of reading material. Another example: People in the Netherlands telling me that Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh were “islamophobic” troublemakers who had only themselves to blame for being murdered in one case and threatened with murder in the other–and that Geert Wilders deserved to be in prison for calling for a drastic reduction in Muslim immigration.
I am impressed with your mention of the major media taking a critical stance toward Germany and its “greening of the energy grid.”
Here in California, the major newspapers have done nothing but congratulate Gov Newsom on winning so many of his desired legislative outcomes for our once Golden State. These include more hideous water restrictions, and of course, more “sustainable energy policies.”
It is probably the same blaring of trumpets for Newsom on local TV news stations, except I no longer watch those.
(My dad stayed in a castle in Bavaria in May 1945, with a bunch of guys in his army unit. He always spoke of a desire to go back there, as the people were friendly and the countryside so gorgeous. (In studying the history of the Third Reich, I often noticed that references were made as to how Bavarians had little use for Hitler’s ideas.)