So upcoming Sunday, Germany, country where the sun always goes down, will have its federal elections, where Angela Merkel is challenged by...absolutely noone.
The last polls I saw had her party at 37% of the vote, followed by the SPD at a mere 20%.
Running behind them are the:
AfD at 12%
FDP at 9.5%
Die Linke at 9%
and the Greens at I forgot percent (I think around 7%).
Here's a nice video where a friendly American explains some differences to the US election and some other basics about our election:
If you're somewhat informed, you may see several things:
1. The refugee crisis has not hurt Merkel AT ALL. In fact she is even stronger now relative to the other parties. It's as though the AfD (anti-immigrants) drew all of its strength from her political opponents (and current allies in government, the SPD) and weakened them a lot. This is why she is also known as the Teflon-chancellor, none of the criticism seems to stick on her.
2. A whole lot of people seem to be content with current politics despite the seemingly high criticism. The people who are not seem to seek the solution on the right side of the political spectrum. Both the AfD and the FDP (between democrats and libertarians in the US) gained a lot of votes.
3. Social justice is overrated, has been made unbelievable or is not really wanted, let's indulge in more neoliberal corporatism instead. Or maybe it's just that the Left suck up to Russia too much or that they're called populists similar to Sanders in the US. The SPD is basically seen as having betrayed its voters in recent years/decades by cutting social programs etc. The AfD only pretends to be social but actually seems to be pro-corporate, much like their heroes from the thirties.
4. Perceptions and memories seem really weird, hypocrisy and strangeness is everywhere. The AfD is German-national and pro-family (anti-homosexual) and their candidate for chancellor is an attractive woman who lives with her partner, another woman, in Switzerland. Merkel failed terribly to address the Diesel scandal, her incompetent minister arranged for corporations to introduce some half-baked improvements to Diesel cars and even the corporatist FDP leader claims the corporations should have paid much more and potentially not even made a profit for a while to pay for fixing the cars properly. The Greens are in control of the state that owns large parts of VW and the state's prime minister, a Green party guy, was defending VW. *insert facepalm* Obviously all the parties have flexible morals when it comes to money and winning elections. Only Merkel will win anyway thanks to her teflon abilities.
And the Left? They hate Capitalism and the US so much that they would rather cuddle with Putin (the AfD also believes we should cuddle more with him btw.). While I personally think they have some good points on social justice and stopping arms exports that only facilitate more wars in third world countries, they also have their share of annoying ideas, oh and they are also not fond of the EU.
And the Greens? A recent study found their voters want all kinds of change, but they only want other people to change and not change themselves, and they're mostly above average wage earners, too.
Needless to say that I feel that despite the relatively large number of parties, I feel it's hard to find one that actually somewhat represents me. I guess I will go with more social justice though, even though it seems relatively fruitless with the CDU having almost twice the percentage of votes as the runner up. The two possible coalitions at the moment are CDU + SPD as it currently is or CDU + FDP + Greens, which would mean more neoliberalism and pro-corporate politics most likely.
Here's also our age structure, evil people may draw their conclusions: http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/age_structure.html
What I really don't get either is how small business owners continue to vote for liberal parties promising lower taxes when these measures only ever help the big corporations that are the ones suffocating the small businesses (economies of scale etc.) in the first place? They place all the blame on the government suffocating them with taxes and then vote for the parties that historically only lower the taxes for big business regardless of their promises. It's not even surprising considering the biggest donors to political parties are rich people and corporations, as can be seen here(all donations over 50k€, since those have to be made public): https://www.bundestag.de/parlament/p...-inhalt/488236
What's also "funny" on that list is that the Danish culture ministerium is giving money to a very small minority party in northern Germany. I guess if V. Putin were on that list giving money to The Left and the AfD, there'd be a poopstorm all over the internet, but I didn't even know about this until I checked the list yesterday. I know it's small and seemingly insignificant, but it's a foreign government funding/influencing politics here.
Eh, I'm done, opinions and apologies welcome.
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