Germany gazing into the abyss (federal elections)

[Husar]

That would probably have gone over well in the mid-90s after the initial 'high' of the Mauerfall passed. Fact is though that East Europeans are culturally more similar to Germans and less likely to end up of forming cultural enclave ghettos due to easier transition into the overall society to include upward mobility. I know I've seen enough sketch comedy from Britain about all the Polish and Hungarian workers that took British jobs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd8oX5NJt84

While open borders sounds good there always needs to be a limit, if the whole of Afghanistan or Nigeria wanted to move to Germany would that be okay? Just because someone wants to move to country X doesn't mean they have a right to. Closed borders and purely ethnic criteria are equally wrong, no need to go back to the Nazi or Communist periods. It is possible to restrict the immigration of non-EU migrants without being racists. The refugee crisis does need fixing but allowing all to enter and forcing the member states to accommodate a quota of refugees isn't the answer.
Unfortunately the solution would require Germany/EU to engage in a active foreign policy in Libya and Syria which includes the possibility of military occupation/peacekeeping until security is well enough established for local governance to be effective and responsive. Leaving the security and stability of Europe's periphery to the US and Russia is obviously not working for the EU which is directly impacted.

As for the election, it will be interesting to see the SPD and AfD as the 'opposition' seeing as the SPD opted out of a Grand Coalition. I don't envision them working together much if at all but seeing German politics with less consensus and more debate will be interesting to say the least.

It's not just about accommodating them all, it's also about helping Italy and Greece who get "flooded" with refugees regardless of fences.
I get that we can't just invite all of Africa and the ME to come here, the problem is that if the refugees get processedby a few countries which are overwhelmed. The fence option also came a bit late once a huge number of people were already there. They had to be helped and processed by someone. And of course the xenophobic approach always "works", the more you openly hate foreigners, the easier it becomes to claim they hate you back.

It's all just more "Me, me, me, me!"

Spain also gets overrun sometimes and they resort toillegally sending people back sometimes. What would we do if we did set up refugee centers in the affected regions? Would Poland let Italy, Greece and Spain do it alone again or would they also send money and personnel? Why are they not doing it now already if they have so much better ideas?

Also the forecasts show the CDU did lose quite a few percent, AfD is third strongest.
The SPD already excluded another "big coalition" with the CDU. That leaves the so-called Jamaica-coalition of CDU, FDP and Greens as the most likely new government. If they can't reach an agreement it might get even more interesting.

https://twitter.com/tagesschau/statu...469570/photo/1

edit: slightly different forecast plus article in English: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...a-1169587.html