October 26, 2010

Again: I told you so, Americans!

Here's another "Educating Americans" entry, part of the backlog due to my blog block. Our oh-so-conservative (I always get a neck like a red biscuit tin if I see that epithet applied to that woman) chancelorette's contradicting statements re Islam were met with interpretations from plainly wrong via deeply silly to patently ridiculous and only a very few twigged that she is simply as timeserving as a streetwalker, just less ethical.

Since our Catholic head of state -- that's the one with the tattooed concubine second wife Merkel hove into office -- called Islam a part of Germany, things have become a bit muddled here. Of course, he is right, he just doesn't mean it that way. Islam is a part of Germany, as I have written many times before, since the German elite embraced the "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem" as co-organiser for the Holocaust and certified Islam to be a practical and attractive religion for soldiers. Elite and opinion makers still love Islam, just changed the reasons for it a bit, and when Merkel then made that contradicting statement about "Mulitikulti" having failed, the confusion was complete. In fact, she could have said that the moon is made of green cheese with as much conviction.

The fact that a considerable part of the voting public didn't take too kindly to Merkel's head of state pro-Islam rhetoric -- Thilo Sarrazin must have hit a rare bulk backbone-nerve -- made her backpedal like a Tour de France contestant down L'Alpe d'Huez. As I put it in the comment section of an earlier entry here: that woman is an utter opportunist. She has come to understand that her spineless stance in the Sarrazin affair hasn't won her any brownie points with her potential elctorate. Never forget that she weasled her way all through the most vile of all Eastern Bloc communist systems.

I explained, too, why it drives me up the wall if Christian Democrats are labelled "conservatives". They are Sacré Coeur Socialists, always have been. When I was a child, a Protestant in a leading position in the "C" parties used to be somewhat suspicious. It was a Catholic stronghold with a notable wing close to the Catholic social teachings. The few remnants of former political glory of this old representative of political Catholicism have been utterly destroyed by the Communist Protestant pastor's daughter by now.

Why is it so difficult to understand that? Just keep in mind that she was born in Hamburg (West Germany for those of you who don't know) and her parents went from there to the Stalinist GDR, the most suppressive of all dictatorships behind the Iron Curtain, out of their own free will when she was a child and where she grew up, was socialised and politicised. Can you tell me about the mind of somebody who made such a decision? Again: THAT was the environment in which Merkel grew up. And later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, she joined the Christian Democrats without missing a beat and made a career as Helmuts Kohl's "Mädel" (girl), as he put it so endearingly. Now go figure.

Bonn, 25.06.1992: Angela Merkel, then Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's cabinet together with her mentor. There she accomplished "equal opportunities" law and the "right" of patents to a nursery place for their children. "Conservative", Christian Democrat, family policy at its finest.

Here, here, here, here, here and here I commented on our chancellorette. Read it and THEN get an opinion.

I wrote, for example, about the above cartoon, showing Merkel reproaching Pope Benedict ("That's a no no, Ratzinger! As far as Holocaust denial is concerned you'll have to set things straight at your end at last, got me?!!") while protesters outside her window are shouting: "Kill the Jews", "Jews to the gas" and "Allah bless Hitler", as it, in fact, happens in Germany. The caption says: "Sweeping at a remote door in the limelight", referring to the German proverb saying that one ought to "sweep [away the dirt] at one's own front door first". During a press conference Merkel had demanded from a great height that, in the affair about the ex-excommunication of renegade Bishop Williamson by Pope Benedict, that "it must be dealt positively with the Jews", adding: "As far as I see, these matters have not been satisfactorily clarified yet." What made this so interesting, and, typically, it was largely overlooked by the mainstream media, was that she made the above statement while standing beside Nursultan Nasarbajew, the president of Kazakhstan, because the press conference was the one following his state visit. Nasarbajew, the autocrat, Nasarbajew, weighed down by international accusations of corruption, Nasarbajew, the Sunni Muslim.

No, dear Americans, believe me: That woman won't do anything about anything (but ANYthing) that is near and dear to YOUR hearts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very enlightening. I didn't know Merkel's parents were dyed-in-the-wool commies. You're right. I can't think of any way she's gone out of her way to help Americans. She's done just the bare minimum necessary so Americans can't complain much.

Alligator said...

Certainly a lot of our commentators took her words about multiculturalism and Islam at face value. I admit when I first read her comments I was electrified and said, "I wish our leaders had this kind of testicular fortitude"

However, it's most helpful to hear the situation explained by someone who is on the scene, so to speak, and understands the politics at play here. Few of us in this country, pundits or not, fully understand the political scene in other nations, just as many in other nations do not fully understand what goes on here.

The_Editrix said...

'gator: Of course it must seem extraordinary to the media consumer that Merkel said that. I am not blaming him (you). I am blaming "conservative" opinion makers, journalists, pundits, the conservative political classes, for falling for that sort of bovine excrement. They are scratching the mere surface of a very complex phenomenon, yet think they are entitled to (mis)inform others.

Specifically conservatives are pathetically grateful for any line that seems to comply with what they think IS "conservative" that they fall for any rhetoric that seems, however remotely, to fit into what they'd like to believe.

Bruce: In the same spirit: Why doesn't anybody (and again I am talking about the opinion makers) take the trouble to have a look at Merkel's Wikipedia entry? It says under "Early life":

"Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg on 17 July 1954, the daughter of Horst Kasner ... a Lutheran pastor and his wife, Herlind ... a teacher of English and Latin. Her mother was once a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany...

Merkel's father studied theology in Heidelberg and, afterwards, in Hamburg. In 1954 her father received a pastorate at the church in Quitzow (near Perleberg in Brandenburg) which then was in Communist East Germany, and the family moved to Templin. Thus Merkel grew up in the countryside 80 km (50 miles) north of Berlin. Gerd Langguth, a former senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, states in his book that the family's ability to travel freely from East to West Germany during the following years, as well as their possession of two automobiles, leads to the conclusion that Merkel's father had a "sympathetic" relationship with the communist regime, since such freedom and perquisites for a Christian pastor and his family would have been otherwise impossible in East Germany.

Like most pupils, Merkel was a member of the official, Socialist-led youth movement Free German Youth (FDJ). However, she did not take part in the secular coming of age ceremony Jugendweihe, which was common in East Germany, and was confirmed instead. Later, at the Academy of Sciences, she became a member of the FDJ district board and secretary for "Agitprop" (Agitation and Propaganda)."


And then one just has to connect the dots.

To both: I am always amazed, too, how little is known about the fact that there is no conservative tradition in Germany, at least no ethical conservative tradition, yet all foreigners have in mind is the piked helmet and "Prussian militarism" when specifically Pussia had an unmatched tradition of early liberalism. Maybe I ought to write in depth about it.

I have discussed this as a side issue here (follow links to further entries as well) and here (comment section).

Alligator said...

"To both: I am always amazed, too, how little is known about the fact that there is no conservative tradition in Germany, at least no ethical conservative tradition, yet all foreigners have in mind is the piked helmet and "Prussian militarism" when specifically Pussia had an unmatched tradition of early liberalism. Maybe I ought to write in depth about it."

Precisely. This is what I was getting at. We don't really understand what is going there. It is human nature to tend to look at others experiences through your own prejudices. Therefore, when Merkel makes statements like that, it will resonate because of our own experiences, not because we know anything about Merkel or the environment that produced her.

I think such an article would be helpful. As we used to see from a blogger we know, Germany was always framed in discussions based on Prussian militarism and Nazi past. Certainly, that is part of German history and had a profound affect, but it is erroneous to stereotype all of German history and politics through those lenses.
Am I right?

The_Editrix said...

Sez the 'gator: "I think such an article would be helpful. As we used to see from a blogger we know, Germany was always framed in discussions based on Prussian militarism and Nazi past. Certainly, that is part of German history and had a profound affect, but it is erroneous to stereotype all of German history and politics through those lenses.
Am I right?"

You are SO right, 'gator! And as for the "blogger we know": never forget that his world view starts with some Norse mythology (what little he is able to comprehend about it) and ends with Adolf "Call me Norse God and not Austrian Housepainter" Hitler. My little country, from which so much good and so much evil came, is well rid of this sort of commentary. It is a curse to be born as a German and trying not to be an apologist of one's own past without appearing to be self-hating.

For those who have called me both (and sometimes at the same time): Fuck you ... errr... Go to hell.