Devil vs. Deep-Blue-Sea

First I bitch and moan about the state of American politics, switching back and forth between the view that we are in thrall to a bunch of low-lifes with tribalistic instincts kissing up to corporate bosses, and the view that America is a perfectly functioning democracy - and that's the problem: we get the government we ask for. Then I swing to the other extreme and turn on all my friends who see things from the same perspective and lecture them on the importance of not turning things over to those on the dark side. Don't forget we have some very decent and capable people working in politics, I say. Think Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and don't give up the ship.

Then I swing back again, agonize over the thought that we have not been able to rid ourselves of this Trump cult and the charlatan may actually run again in 2024 and win. The Republicans have sold their souls to the devil and the democrats don't want to do what appears to be necessary - act like Republicans, compromise their values, find a strong leader to herd the cats they are by necessity as free(er) thinkers. And, to jump metaphors mid-stream, make their clammy hands into fists.

But how?

How do we manage that?

I've been following the German election, as the small handful of friends who have followed me lately know, and when asked to explain that semi-obsession I tell them it's because I tend to hold German politicians in higher regard. Maybe that's because the average German voter is better-informed and their history motivates them to work a tad harder at democracy. Or maybe it's because they're better at calling stupid stupid, and it's harder for the likes of a Ted Cruz or an Andrew Clyde (that bozo from Georgia who pronounced the January 6 insurrection a "normal tourist visit") to get traction.

What's refreshing about the political debate in Germany is that it sometimes veers off into remarkably serious territory when you least expect it. Like on the Markus Lanz talk show recently when a conservative CDU supporter laid into a leftie Left Party leader, admonishing her to remember hers is the party derived from the East German Social Unity Party that ran East Germany, built the wall, turned the whole country into spies, etc. etc. Whereupon she turned on the guy and said, in effect, "And yours is the party that absorbed all the old Nazis into it after the war, helping them get away with murder scot free, so there ain't no way I'm going to take my lessons on history and morality from the likes of you." Something like that.  That's her words as seen through an American lens; she was far more civil. But that's essentially what she said.

And speaking of viewing German politics through an American lens, that, it turns out, is a pretty good reason for taking the time to study the German political scene. You can see the conflict between the progressives and the conservatives unencumbered by distractions like all-hat-and-no-cattle Texas bullshitter Cruz. Or the road-kill slick of Lyndsey Graham, whose loyalties - and moral values - can turn on a dime.

I have an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that the alarmists are right when it comes to climate change. Can't prove it. Don't have the technical expertise. It's just a fear, probably over-the-line irrational, but it gets confirmed from all directions, so I can't let it go. I love, absolutely love, the State of California. It has been my home since I first discovered it back in 1963 and vowed to move here one day. Which I did in 1965 and despite 24 years in Japan and more time in Germany and Saudi Arabia, I never stopped calling it home. And now I watch it burst into flames every summer. I also watch Germany flood and Antarctica melt, and I'm scared for the future. I won't be around but I am blessed with a life full of lovable children and my heart aches for them. I am profoundly drawn to the environmental goals of Greta Thunberg and her "Fridays for future" and the world's various "Green" parties.

Because the Union Parties, the conservatives now bidding farewell to a leader, Angela Merkel, so impressive that they actually call her "Mommy" (Mutti), are more focused on wealth generation than climate change, they used the fear of communism as a campaign strategy by just such moves as that attempt to smear the Left spokesperson (Katja Kipping is her name) on the Markus Lanz program with the evils of the East German regime, dismissing her assertions that "The Left" have done a bang-up job of clearing out the rot in their midst and starting fresh, thank you very much, and don't lecture me....

Armin Laschet, the CDU leader who just came in second, rode hard on his Social Democratic Party opponent, Olaf Scholz, for not clearly stating he would not work with the Left Party, which has a "remove Germany from NATO" policy in its program. Scholz refused to take the bait, said policy issues would be worked out post-election when it came time for negotiations over which coalition would rule. But it's clear the left and right division could be defined by what in America gets labeled socialism (which Americans can't distinguish from communism much of the time) on the one hand and capitalism on the other. It also draws the line clearly between environment-first and economy-first advocates. If you listen carefully, both are actually saying both/and, not either/or, but the average German listener, I'm guessing (if I'm not projecting too much America-think on them) likely hears either/or.

The conservative argument makes sense. Christian Lindner is probably its most effective spokesman. He represents the "yellow" party - the Free Democrats, Germany's sometimes socially liberal, usually libertarian party. It's his view, and he's quite explicit about it, that Germany is good at technology and innovation, and we ought not to sell ourselves short; we can meet the carbon reduction and other environmentalist goals better, he says, by not threatening the economy with high taxes, as the left wants to do, but by encouraging innovation.

Never mind that that was one of Angela Merkel's weak points. She was all about economy, because that's what most people, especially those with more money, want - continued economic well-being, protecting the German car industry, for example, and removing much impetus for innovation in doing so. The FDP and the CDU see pretty much eye-to-eye on that issue. "You will never get your green goals unless you have the people behind you," you will hear the CDU and FDP charge, the implication being if you try and tax the rich you'll fall flat on your ass. I can certainly see the appeal of this line of reasoning, but I also can't sublimate my suspicion that for all its appearance of rational common sense, it has the scent of bullshit.

That's my point. That's what listening to the Germans make their points from the left and the right, free of the fog we in America have to contend with, does for me. Brings home the fact that we are dependent on expertise. And it's not just enough to say we should listen to scientists. Of course we should listen to scientists. But which ones? And what do we do with the political realists that say we have to persuade people to follow us, that we cannot do it without broad support? What if the masses are missing the very important claim that we are at the edge of catastrophe and fussing over economic policies at a time like this is shuffling chairs on the Titanic?

I am buffeted personally by friends who argue for leaving the fray to tend their gardens, listen to their music, read their escapist novels. And by others who suggest that democracy, which depends on an enlightened electorate, is probably on the rocks, that it was never more than a pipe dream anyway.

And by people who try to convince me that life is never anything more than a faith journey to begin with, that I should listen to my own advice and live by the wise men and the elephant story, that we never know as much about the big picture as we think we do. Maybe the optimists need to be given a hearing. Maybe the Christian Lindners are right and the engineers of the future will solve our environmental problems.

I really let the know-nothings get to me, those folks conditioned by religion to believe that faith equals wisdom. I hate it when people tell me that God answers prayer, that the folks at Auschwitz simply had a spell of bad luck. Or when if I just close my eyes and tap my red slippers together three times I can get back to Kansas. Or that Trump is a smart man because he's not a politician. And that he's rich because, well, because he's rich.

I want to know how we run a democracy with so many folks tuning out and so many others slipping back into pre-modern notions of white supremacy and other clearly non-democratic ideas. It's a three-way tug-of-war between obliviousness as a value, hope as all-we've-got, and surrender Dorothy.

I'll go with hope, of course.

And maybe tomorrow I'll be more positive about the world. 

I'm sure I will.

Pretty sure.

German Elections - Part III

The German election is now over with and the results are in. Olaf Scholz got 25.7% of the votes, a huge gain for the Socialists over the last election, while Armin Laschet of the Union Parties got only 23.1% of the votes, a huge drop in support for the party ruled by Angela Merkel these past sixteen years. Peek through the windows at Socialist Party headquarters and you’ll see them popping champagne corks. Tune in to the CDU/CSU headquarters, on the other hand, and you’ll see them crying in their beer. The Socialists have won.

Right?

Wrong.

The election is over, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, the real story is just beginning to play out, and that is how the next German government will be formed by means of painstakingly negotiated coalition building.

Remember the names of the coalitions, based on the colors assigned to the parties? We’re down to three possibilities, two coalitions and a continued partnership:

1. A Jamaica coalition: black (CDU/CSU Union Parties); Green; and Yellow (the FDP - Free Democratic Party)

2. A “Traffic Light (Ampel, in German) Coalition: Red (SPD - Socialist Party of Germany, a “social democratic” party); Yellow (FDP); Green

Since the Union and the Socialists pulled in close to the same number of votes, this means it’s all up to the Greens and the FDP (yellow) which of them they want to work with. They are now officially “kingmaker” parties. The Greens are closer to the Socialists and the FDP is closer to the Union. Something’s got to give.

Both of these would require compromises the party leaders have sworn they’d never make. The Green Party’s original raison d’etre was to save the environment, and they, along with the Socialists, want to tax the super rich in order to make that happen. The FDP is the party that represents the interests of the super rich, and their leader, Christian Lindner, is on record for having turned down a coalition before with the comment, “Rather than to govern badly, I’d rather not govern at all.” And think of them as Republicans shouting “No new taxes!”

The good news, to most German ears, is the fact that the party on the extreme left, “The Left,” is out. They got less than 5% of the votes, and will be in parliament thanks only to a peculiar rule which allows them to by-pass the 5% limit restriction because they have three “direct mandates” (which I won’t go into here). In any case they are now largely irrelevant, and their desire to pull Germany out of NATO is no longer a serious threat. At the other extreme, the AfD dropped 2.3% down to no more than 10.3% of the vote, so they too are unable to make waves. The government, whatever it turns out to be, will be a government of the middle.

The third option, a “Groko” (Grand Coalition)  would seem to be a reasonable one, with the two leading parties sharing power with their combined forces of 49.8% of the total vote. They’d need to throw a bone to somebody to get them over the 50% mark, and I have to admit I don’t know how that would work. But it’s not a serious proposition, since the government has been a Groko government for many years now, with Angela Merkel the senior partner and Olaf Scholz and the Socialists as the junior partner. They could just switch places, of course, and make Scholz the senior partner and Laschet the junior partner, except for the fact that 1) Laschet has been adamant about not wanting to play second fiddle, and 2) the huge drop in support for the Union indicates that Germans are looking for a change. Carrying on with business as usual would be a very bad idea.

So my money is on a socialist-led coalition with the Greens and the FDP - a Traffic Light coalition. But that is going to take some very powerful give-and-take negotiations. There’s huge pressure on both the greens and the FDP to put German unity ahead of party policy.

That, as we know, would never fly in America where the Republicans now openly support a right-wing power center under Trump’s influence, America be damned.  Can the Germans show they are better than that?

Midnight Mass - a Netflix streaming film review

Ever since my first serious reading of the Bible, starting with a couple of serious courses in Biblical analysis in college, half a century ago, it’s been clear to me that the kind of people who insist on calling themselves “bible-centered Christians” have almost certainly never read it carefully. It they had, they would recognize it as a story of a people rejoicing in the way their god beat the life out of their enemies, dashing their kids’ brains against the rocks, slaughtering all the men and pressing the women into sex slavery, killing young boys whose only fault was to have been born before the other children in the family, and drowning not only an Egyptian army in hot pursuit, but the entire human race, except for a single family, at one point.

The only way to read through those gruesome descriptions of sadistic punishment is to see them as wishful thinking, stuff of the imagination of a people tired of being abused and enslaved. The Old Testament writers are clearly getting back at all those people in power over them symbolically, or metaphorically. It you take them literally, they show a tribal loyalty that not only allows for savage destruction of entire villages and towns, but actually justifies genocide, rape (turning your daughters over to a mob to keep them from sodomizing your house guests), murder and enslavement. One of the greatest jokes ever perpetrated on the human race is the notion that one consults the Bible as a moral code. Sure there are passages that urge one to love one’s neighbor, to forgive one’s enemies and to sell all one has and give the income to the poor, but serious Christian folk, with precious few exceptions, recognize that as hyperbolic excess. The average Christian considers the Bible something to be read figuratively, not literally. To claim it should be read literally is to reveal to the world that you probably ought to be committed to the looney bin. Or at least that you have no clue the extent to which you're lying to yourself.

I was raised in a Christian environment, and most of the people I knew as a kid were decent folk. When you asked them about whether they really believed Lazarus was raised from the dead and Noah had two kangaroos on his ark next to two Tyrannosaurus Rex, they usually muttered that “that was a long time ago and nobody really knows what actually happened,” or “things were different then,” or “God had a different kind of relationship with the ancient Hebrews than he does with us.” Or possibly, “don’t bug me with those dumb questions.” I didn’t know anybody who was a literal fundamentalist. Those people crept into the culture (at least in my part of the country) long after I had left my small New England town.

Except the Catholics. They insisted that when the priest elevated the communion wafer and the goblet of wine they turned into the actual (sic!) body and blood of Jesus Christ. Which we were supposed to then swallow and digest. Yuck. The Lutherans of my youth hastened to inform me that Martin Luther had spotted that as some sort of science fiction, that what actually happened during Communion was that the Holy Spirit (whom we also regularly referred to as a ghost) came in, with and under the wafer and the wine. “This is my body” was not to be taken literally.

But they did. They really did, those Catholics. And they outnumbered the Protestants and the Jews among my closest friends, and I didn’t want to tell them what I really thought of that wacko notion, and held my tongue. Mostly. There were times when a “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?” may have slipped out.

And it wasn’t just the blood-drinking that I found bizarre. The prayers to Michael the Archangel that followed the mass also gave me pause. Asking him to “be our safeguard” against the “snares of the devil.” And - this part really got to me - “cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits

who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.” Really? You mean like trolls and leprechauns? What’s the difference between an angel and an evil spirit, by the way? And how does one spot them when one encounters them? Do only angels have wings?

I’m so very glad I tuned in the other night without bothering to read any reviews to Midnight Mass, written for Netflix by Mike Flanagan, just out this last Friday.  I figured if it was a religious program I’d find out soon enough and turn it off. It took me a couple episodes to realize it was a friggin horror flick! Not only a horror flick, but a movie about vampires. I hate horror movies, and I have never understood the appeal of ghouls and other scary creatures. The U.S. political scene is enough to keep me awake at night. I don’t need blood and gore.

But it was a mesmerizing streaming experience, one of the most gripping and engrossing films I’ve seen in ages. I’m not sure I would recommend it to everybody. I think you kind of need to have a religious background to appreciate what it’s all about. I don’t think I can come up with anything I’ve ever seen to match it. It’s a cross between a horror film and a treatise on the philosophy of religion, particularly the concepts of morality, redemption and life after death.

I hope I’m not issuing a spoiler here by saying it can also be seen, if you’ve got a perverse sense of humor, as a satire on the way Christianity as a noble pursuit has been hijacked by hypocrites and phonies with non-religious goals, as a means of acquiring power and influence, much as the Republican Party has now hijacked American democracy for similar reasons.

The story takes place on a small island thirty miles from the mainland which has been devastated by an oil spill. Most of the inhabitants have left to seek their fortunes elsewhere, leaving a small closely-knit community whose only social life seems to be centered on the local Catholic Church. When the story begins, two characters, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) and Erin Greene (Kate Siegel), one-time lovers, each with their own reasons for leaving, were back, Riley after serving four years in prison for killing a young girl after falling asleep at the wheel while drunk, and Erin after a troubled marriage and divorce. The central character, however, is the young priest who shows up with the information that their beloved regular priest, Monsignor Pruitt, has fallen ill on the mainland and he, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater), would be temporarily standing in. Nobody bothers to verify the information.

Three other characters play important roles in advancing the plot - the Muslim sheriff, Hassan (Rahul Kohli) - along with his son Ali (Rahul Abburi), who despite their conspicuously outsider status, are respected and liked except by Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan), a humorless tyrant of a woman who serves as a kind of lay deaconess at the church, an out-and-out anti-Muslim bigot. She is the kind of religious zealot that Saturday Night Live’s church lady (played by Dana Carvey) is meant to satirize.

At some point miracles start happening. First a young girl in a wheelchair gets up and walks. Then an old woman with dementia suddenly becomes her younger charming self again. Riley’s father, who has suffered for years with serious back problems is suddenly pain free.

To share more of the plot line is to ruin the experience of this edge-of-your-seat performance, so I’ll stop; I’ve already said far too much about what goes on. Despite a number of glaring anomalies - the fact that the village is 100% Roman Catholic and that mass includes one old fashioned Protestant hymn after another arranged by the Newton Brothers and sung with what is clearly professional voices - does not detract one whit from the narrative. The other major “anomaly” - if that’s what it is - that should be off-putting, but isn’t - are the long treatises on religion that the characters engage in from time to time, including a defense of Islam by Hassan against Christianity. They are serious topics, and would not be out of place in religious settings - which is why I said that the story would have greater appeal among the religiously informed.

The film is a life-long project of writer/director/producer Mike Flanagan (for background, see the excellent New York Times review by Darryn King from a few days ago here.) Flanagan, who grew up on an island (Governor's Island in New York Harbor), and is clearly working out some of his struggles with alcoholism and the fear that he could kill somebody when drunk and have to live out his life with the guilt - as well as his worldview as a relapsed Catholic. Flanagan is known for his horror films like The Haunting of Hill House, based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name and Dr. Sleep and The Shining by Stephen King, also of the same names. I’m still recovering from Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery, which I first read many decades ago, and I couldn’t get through Stephen King’s novels on a bet, so Midnight Mass is likely to be my last horror experience for some time.

At least it doesn’t have monsters jumping out at you.

Well, maybe once or twice.

Three Days to go

For the one and a half of you, my dear readership, who want me to continue to pursue blogging on the German election, here’s where things stand as of Friday morning, three days before the polls close at 6 p.m. on Sunday.

Remember, it’s all about clever color-coding. And it’s all about forming a coalition, in the end, since no single party has the numbers to go it alone.

A quick refresher: the parties line up, from left to right, this way:

• Far left - The Left Party
• Center left (holds greater appeal with the working class and trade unions) - The Socialists (SPD)
• Also center left (holds greater appeal with urban voters and the highly educated) - The Greens

• Center right - The Union Parties (CDU and CSU)
• Even more center right (appeals to the business-oriented, both large and small) - The FDP
• Far right: the AfD (Climate change? What climate change? Muslims go back where you came from) The AfD are not in the running in this election, since nobody wants to play with them.

For a more extensive review of the parties, click here.

So what is the most likely coalition that will run the German government in the coming years? Will it be:

• Traffic Light (Ampel): (1) red (SPD) and (2) yellow (FDP) and (3) green (the Greens)?
• Or R2G: (1) red (SPD) and (2) red (Left)* and (3) green (the Greens)?
• Or Jamaica (Jamaika): (1) black (CDU) and (2) yellow (FDP) and (3) green (the Greens)?

*as I indicated in a previous blog entry, this bizarre and confusing color coding is like a pothole in the road. The Left's color is officially magenta - and some call it purple. But since its origins are in the communist party of the GDR, the former East Germany, it gets to be called "the second red party" (besides the socialists) whenever coalitions are discussed.

This all means that two minority parties, the FDP and the Left, are getting a lot of attention these days: The FDP’s leader, Christian Lindner, is being called a Kingmaker because both the CDU and the SPD (one of them is almost certain to come in first in the election) may need him to form a coalition. In other words, two big questions are hanging in the air:

1. Who gets the yellows, the FDP?  This choice among the three possibilities gives Christian Lindner, the leader of the FDP an edge, obviously, since he’s got both the center-right CDU and the SPD for potential partners. Being right of center, he fits more easily with the CDU, but anybody in the know will probably call that an oversimplification.

2. The SPD has a more natural affinity with the Left, both being left-of-center parties, than with the FDP (yellows). But the Left wants out of NATO, and that’s too much to swallow for most Germans, so Olaf Scholz is walking a thin line. He’s trying to get the Left to soften its stance on removing Germany from NATO and at the same time won’t say the NATO stance is a deal-breaker. And his chief rival, Laschet of the Union Parties, is riding Scholz's fence-sitting for all it's worth, trying to scare the German public into believing if they don't vote Union, they'll be leaving NATO.

Those are not the only coalitions possible. There are two more:

• the "Germany" coalition: (i.e., the colors of the German flag): black, red, and yellow; and
• the "Kenya" coalition: red, black and green

But since the Social Democrats (SPD) have been in coalition with the Union Parties (CDU/CSU) for so long (their coalition has been called the “Groko" - die grosse Koalition - the “grand coalition") and they are tired of playing second fiddle and having to give up their socialist principles to play ball with Merkel’s party, now that she’s gone and the CDU leader, Laschet, lacks the Merkel appeal, these possibilities would seem to be not very likely. But again, we can’t take them off the table yet since national loyalties are so volatile and polls show German opinion fluctuates day by day.

When you listen to debates among candidates from all the parties, the first thing that hits you is the obvious - that all democracies have the same breakdown. The right maintains it’s in the best position to assure the they know best how to create wealth and manage it when they do. The left maintains that when the government is in the hands of the right, the rich just get richer and the poor fall through the cracks. The left stresses that the rich don’t pay their fair share; the right that taking more from the wealth-generators would only impoverish the nation in the end. Germany’s no different. The Socialists see themselves as the best party to represent the interests of the little guy, the right as the best party to serve the greater national interests more broadly around the globe.

And one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that while in Germany there are clearer lines between factions, and the factions are actually separated into distinct parties, we have the same coalitions in the U.S. Biden and Bernie Sanders, for example, fought bitterly over who would represent the Democratic Party in its effort to rid the country of the far-right wing of the Republican Party. But when Biden moved ahead in the primary, Bernie threw his weight behind him against the common threat and now they two run the Democratic Administration, along with others from the far-left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. At the risk of oversimplification, and without wanting to overlook important differences between German and American party politics, you might want to call the Biden administration a coalition of red-red-green (except that Biden is clearly center-right, not center-left, when viewed through a German lens).

And, to use the same German lens on the American right, it's as if the AfD, the Trump analogue, determined that it would demand the loyalty of all the center-right factions, moderate as well as radical right Republicans, and were able to scare them into caving to their demands, even though the signs are clear that American democracy could well implode in the process. In short, to the degree this left-right distinction still has meaning, the American middle is far to the right of the German middle. But that hasn't been news for a long time now.

The second thing that hits me is that democracy isn't holding up all that well these days. For a democracy to function as it should, its citizens have to be informed. But so many of today's burning issues require expert technical knowledge and people on both the American and European continents have lost faith in government. The climate challenge is clearly not being met, we are living in a pandemic, we seem to be entering a Second Cold War, and there's the sense that modern-day politicians are not up to the task. It’s one thing to urge maximal participation in government by the average citizen. But quite another to admit that there’s no way one can make sense of political parties arguing over whether the goal for getting rid of the combustion engine should be 2050, 2038 or much sooner. How the hell should I know?

If I listen to the left, we should already have done this years ago and the suggestion that we have no more than twelve years before the means to avoid the destruction of the environment become forever after out of reach means we've already failed. If I listen to the right, I hear the charge that the left is simply unrealistic and alarmist, and that we can’t fight climate change if the economy comes to a halt. Christian Lindner (FDP) insists we can count on the German people to continue being innovative and creative and somehow climate problems can be fought without raising taxes on the right. The left insists the current ruling coalition has demonstrated through ineptness that such faith is inappropriate. I want to believe the left is alarmist, but I can't help worrying they're right. Besides, how can I vote for political leaders (of either party) (speaking as an American now, not as a German, although something similar is going on in Germany) which enabled typical workers to earn only 12% more in 2019 than they did in 1978 while CEOs now earn 940% more?

A third thing that is obvious listening to political debates is the damage that Trump has done to the cause of international cooperation with European partners. Almost all the talk now is how to live in a world in which the U.S. can no longer be counted on. The recent decision by the anglo nations, U.S., the UK and Australia to screw the French and renege on their submarine deal only heightens that suspicion that the U.S. can’t or won’t be there in a crisis.

Sunday night we’ll know whether it’s Laschet or Scholz, the CDU or the Socialists, who get to form a coalition. But that will only be the beginning of the story. If you want to see what’s in store for Europe’s most powerful democracy, get ready for a whole bunch more talk about Jamaica, Kenya and traffic lights.

The intellectual skills of my Berkeley daughters

Berkeley is laid out on a grid. Most streets run parallel and perpendicular to each other, with a couple exceptions like Telegraph, which runs north and south at a slant. 

We walk the dogs twice daily and tend to stay within the space east of Shattuck and west of Hillegass, south of Blake and north of Ashby, or about 48 rectangular blocks, the east-west streets running “long blocks” about 528 feet in length and the north-south streets running about 290 feet (very rough estimates by somebody really piss-poor at math). If you use the square block I live on as typical (it may not be), Fulton to Ellsworth, west to east, and Ward to Stuart, north to south, there are about 28 households, assuming they are all single-family dwellings (which they are not – some are more)*. But using those figures as minimums, that means in the 48 blocks within which we walk there are approximately 1344 households. I’m going to assume that at least 40% of these households have dogs, judging from the numbers of dogs and dog walkers we encounter on any given day. That would mean over 537 dogs. Not all dogs get regular walks, but most do. We meet only a fraction of these putative 537 dogs, but regardless of who walks them at what hours, we can assume most of them are outside relieving themselves sometime during each day.

 

Taku takes the girls out twice a day. I go with them for one of those walks, late in the day because the medication I take makes me allergic to direct sun (I know, I know – hat and arm coverings, I know!) but I’ve come to realize I cannot consider those Schnüffelgangs, I call them, (German for “(take a) walk” is Spazier-gang, i.e., "promenade + go"; Schnüffel = “sniff”) proper exercise, because the dogs seem to want to stop and sniff every blade of grass between here and France.

 

But since they are my darling daughters, I tend to see everything they do in the best possible light. I’m given to understand that this is their main intellectual activity, identifying all the 500+ dogs of the neighborhood by the scent they leave on the grass and bushes and flowers alongside the sidewalk. The rest of the time they sleep, mostly. So these walks are very important, not just for exercise, but for intellectual stimulation.

 

When I get into bed at night, Bounce has usually climbed on ahead of me. (Miki sleeps with Taku on another floor. They don’t snore. Bounce and I do.)  I have to move her enough to be able to get my legs in, and she always looks confused as hell, trying to figure out what I’m doing. “Dumb dog,” I mutter, at times. “How many hundreds of times have we done this and you still can’t figure out you have to move and let me in?”

 

But then I remember that we are working from different sets of brain cells. She can’t speak, like I can. Can’t remember she has to move her ass when I want to get in the bed.

 

But then I cannot identify the scent of more than 500 of my neighbors, either. And I marvel at what brilliant kids Taku and I have raised, her and her sister both.

 

*Just took a walk around the block. I grossly underestimated: there are 41 houses facing the street on my block, and no fewer than six or eight of them are duplexes, making it more like 48, even 50 households. No matter, the number of doggie households is in the 500 range, plus or minus, unless I've got the 40% figure wrong and there are far fewer dogs. I could check with Miki and Bounce, but they are clearly creatures who value quality, and almost never fuss over quantity.

Democracy - not dead yet

Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz

Still watching the German elections up close. Still impressed at how alive German democracy is, when set against our situation where we're down to a single political party in the center of the political spectrum and a runaway train where the other party used to be. Germany still has a clearly marked line between progressives and conservatives. America's line is between people holding onto democracy by their fingernails and the other side stomping on their fingers trying to get them out of the way so they can run the show for the superrich, for white folk who fear black folk, and for people who believe if they could get to sit down with Jesus personally, he'd reveal that when he said, "Let the little children come unto me," he meant to say, "unless they're Mexicans."

In Germany, you still have a conservative block of decent people. Listen to the two union party chiefs, Armin Laschet of the CDU and Markus Söder оf the CSU (the Union is Angela Merkel's party, remember), and you sense earnest conviction and basic decency, even if you don't like everything they say and do as policy makers. That's the biggest difference between Germany and the U.S. - they still have a conservative party.

If I were voting in the German election, I would vote for the SPD, the Socialists, and their leader, Olaf Scholz. I see little difference in the challenges facing both Germany and the United States. The two biggies that concern me the most, climate change and the hollowing out of the Middle Class by greed, are the same no matter where in the democratic world you live. In Germany, as in the U.S., the rich are getting richer and the poor are going nowhere. Germany has a much better net for those who fall through the cracks, but the equity gap still threatens the sense of a national community, and the "haves" of both countries show little interest in sharing the wealth as they once did, in the U.S., up until Reagan's reign, and in Germany, also in the post-war years.

It's a three-way race. The third party in the race are the Greens, actually a union party also, with the cumbersome name Bündnis 90/die Grünen - Alliance 90/The Greens - made up of three formerly non-communist East German parties and the East German Greens in 1990 - hence the 90 - who joined with the West German Greens three years later. They are headed by a woman named Annalena Baerbock.

The arguments are the same. The conservatives worry that the call to distribute the national wealth equitably is an excuse to reward the unproductive elements of society. In the U.S., the Republicans

AOC with her dress designer

believe that Biden has turned out to be a stealth candidate, that Bernie Sanders may have lost his chance to lead the Democrats, but is getting his way in terms of social policies and the radical left, in the person of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example (see that wonderful dress she wore to the MET opening this week, with "Tax the Rich" written all over it), is getting away with murder. Murder being taxing the rich, obviously.

In Germany, where the campaign is focused on how the winner of the election (realistically, it's only a two-way between Laschet's CDU and Scholz's SPD, the socialists) will form the coalition he will need to govern, the conservatives (CDU/CSU Union Parties) are sounding the alarm that if Scholz wins he will form a red-red-green alliance (See my previous posting for an explanation of this color scheme). Specifically, it will join up with the Greens, whom opponents charge with "talking left and living right" (i.e., same as America's Berkeley-type lefties who are accused of being hypocrites who talk big on climate change and aiding the blacks and the poor, but at the same time live in their own exclusive neighborhoods and send their kids to the best private schools.) And even worse, they will join up with "The Left" - the party that actually advocates withdrawal from NATO and working closer with Russia. When I said alarm bells, I mean alarm bells!

How healthy you view German democracy depends on how you assess the fractured nature of popular opinion. Both progressives and conservatives, i.e., even "The Left" and the CDU agree the dark specter of the new-right party, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), is a neo-fascist party, not unlike America's Trumpist Republican Party, a real and present danger to democracy. Neither side will work with the AfD, who nonetheless have just over 12% of the seats in the Bundestag (Parliament). And if you look at the polls on where people stand in anticipation of the election on September 26, the undecided - or "none of the above" on some days, actually outnumber the supporters of either the conservatives or the socialists.

"Fractured" can be said to be in the eye of the beholder, however. Remember, although today the race is a tight one between the CDU's Laschet and the SPD's Scholz, until recently the two parties were in coalition, and Scholz was actually Merkel's Vice-Chancellor and the nation's Finance Minister. Hard to imagine an American government with a Republican president and a Democratic (much less socialist) serving as VP and Secretary of the Treasury. Defenders of the coalition system call this flexibility, not fracture.

Scholz is a moderate socialist. He has worked closely with The Greens before and is not keen on forming a coalition with The Left. But who knows what will happen when it comes time to divvy up the governing tasks.

It's probably of no consequence, but I note that both Scholz and Baerbock are from Lower Saxony, where my family originates. Scholz has a pretty good record as mayor of Hamburg, and they both currently live in Potsdam, just outside Berlin, where I would live if I could pick up the dogs and the husband and go (Berlin, not Potsdam). And if the husband spoke German. And if I didn't have to leave behind my nears and dears in the Bay Area, but could take them with me. Don't know if that makes it easier for the two of them to see eye-to-eye on political issues. Probably not.

I view the passion now emerging in the confrontations as healthy for a democracy. I was taken by surprise the other day watching a program (Markus Lanz) in which a conservative publisher, Wolfram Weimer, faces the leader of the Left Party, Katja Kipping, and says to her, in so many words, how dare you, the party of the Wall and the East German Secret Police, think you can speak for modern-day Germans? ("Die Linke" - "The Left" was formed on the ashes of the East German SED, the party that ran East Germany back in the day when everybody was pressed into spying on their neighbors. ) Kipping insists that her party has done a hell of a lot better job of clearing out the retrograde old guard and reforming itself into a modern-day supporter of democracy and says, again in so many words, "I don't take my orders from the likes of (you and) the CDU - you are the party that got started with the active participation of all the old Nazis, post 1945.

Ouch. Getting down and dirty there.

Like I said.

Real democracy.

Credits: 

Laschet, Baerbock, Scholz

AOC's "tax the rich" dress

The upcoming German election - a primer

Until just recently, the upcoming German federal election on September 26, which will determine Angela Merkel’s successor, if looked at from an American perspective, seemed kind of dull and uninteresting. But that’s because so many Americans are conditioned to seeing the process of choosing a national leader every four years as a time when they are expected to decide which man or woman trying to get the job has the most charisma. And by that I mean the ability to stand out in some way, as the guy you’d most like to have a beer with, the person most adept at holding their own in a debate, or the person who can raise the most money. Or, as was the case in the 2016 election, the guy most adept at lying to your face and getting you to believe his outsider-to-Washington status was just what the doctor ordered.

 

I have the impression – and I speak with no expertise here – that the fact that Germans don’t elect their leaders directly, but vote for parties instead, plays a role in downplaying charisma, or the personal characteristics of a given candidate. In any case, charisma, or the lack of it, is not a deal-breaker.

 

At the same time, if you tune in to the now very heated campaign discussions, there is plenty of talk about whether such-and-such a candidate is “weak” or “trustworthy,” so I could be on the wrong track.

 

That said, the German political scene is no different from any other. There is an in-built conflict between those who want to focus on the personal strengths of individual candidates and those who want to talk policy. And to understand the German scene, you have to be able to follow the speculation over coalition building, since that’s the point where the rubber meets the road. It’s not enough to say Germans don’t vote for individuals but for parties and the parties then choose their leaders. You have to recognize that with so many political parties it’s difficult for any one of them to get a majority, so forming coalitions is a must. And issues – pensions, childcare, rent control, the environment, relations with the U.S. and Russia, and all the rest, take on greater importance than personalities. Or so it seems to me.

                                 

As in any modern capitalist democracy, the parties fall along the left to right (liberal to conservative) spectrum. There are six of them that are consequential at the moment. They are, to give a quick-and-simple rundown, from left to center:

 

1. “The Left” – originally the successor party to the East German SED – the Social Unity Party – and saddled with that history. Most Germans find them “too red – i.e., they carry the stink, rightly or wrongly (I think wrongly) of the sinister and brutal nature of the authoritarian DDR.

2. The SPD – The German Socialist Party, Germany’s oldest and most long-lasting political party, survivor of both Nazi and Communist regimes, in which they were often the most substantial opposition. Germany’s original “labour party.”

3. Alliance 90/The Greens – originally centered around environmental issues, these two parties have merged. They are officially designated as “Alliance 90/The Greens” but are referred to informally simply as “Die Grünen” - “The Greens.” Now often associated with the urban elite, or “lifestyle lefties.”

 

And from center to right:

 

4. The CDU/CSU – the Union Parties – a permanent coalition of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and the Christian Democratic Union in the other fifteen German states. Pro-EU.

5. The FDP – The Free Democrat Party – a libertarian party fiscally right of center; socially often left of center

6. The AfD -  а recently-formed outsider party (which the other five refuse to work with) – the “Alternative Party for Germany” – formed as a new nationalist (anti-EU, anti-globalization,) anti-immigrant party. Germany's "none-of-the-above"/"you're all a pack of cards"/Tea Party analogue

 

To get a general idea of where the parties stand in ideological terms, the following graph may be useful:

 

Source:

 

 Angela Merkel ran the CDU, and the country, for the last sixteen years. Since she went public with her intention to retire, there has been a scramble to replace her, first within the Union Parties themselves, between Armin Laschet of the CDU and Markus Söder of the CSU, in which Laschet has come out on top, and between Annalena Baerbock of the Greens, who, despite political inexperience, seemed for a while to be the front-runner, and Olaf Scholz, of the SDP (Socialists), who has taken everybody by surprise by coming out ahead of the others in the most recent polls. There is widespread support for the view that Scholz leads not so much for his own positive reasons as for the lack of popular enthusiasm for either Baerbock or Laschet. On the other hand, many others insist that it is Scholz who is responsible for the sudden rise in popularity of the socialists, who have been out of power for twenty years. Pick your arm-chair expert to listen to.

 

Because Scholz has a clear lead at the moment – but remember, the situation is more volatile than it has been in years and changes practically from day to day – much discussion now centers around whom he would form coalitions with. At present, support for the six political parties, is as follows:

 

SPD – 25%

CDU/CSU – 21%

Greens – 17%

FDP – 13%

The Left – 8%

AfD – 6%

 

And I should point out that Germans use a “color shorthand” when referring to their parties, I suppose because it’s quicker and easier to say “red-red-green” than “The Left-the SDP-the Greens. Or “Jamaica (i.e., the colors of the Jamaican flag – black, yellow and green) rather than “The Union Parties, the FDP and the Greens,” although there's something remarkably German-nerdy about making everybody go out and learn to recognize the flags of Jamaica, Kenya and Afghanistan. Nerdy, but efficient (and don't you go off now and tell everybody I'm showing my weakness for surrendering to national stereotypes.)

 Flag of the nation of Jamaica

The color designations, and the current national support for each of the parties at present, is as follows:

 

Red - SPD – 25%

Black - CDU/CSU – 21%

Green - Greens – 17%

Yellow --  FDP – 13%

Magenta – The Left – 8%  - When being distinguished from the SPD - on a chart, for example; otherwise it is commonly lumped together with the SPD as “the other red party.” This means that when you want to put “The Left” and “The Socialists” and “The Greens” together, you refer to the coalition as a  “a red-red-green coalition.” I know, confusing as hell, and takes some getting used to.

Blue - AfD – 6%

 

Flag of the nation of Kenya

The colors of the Jamaican

Flag of the nation of Afghanistan

flag are black (Union), yellow (FDP), and green (Alliance90/Greens) - there is also the “Kenya Coalition,” aka the “Afghan Coalition,” : black (Union), red (SPD) and green (Alliance 90/Greens);

and the “Traffic Light Coalition,” i.e., red (SPD), yellow (FDP) and green (Alliance 90/Greens).

OK. That’s it for an introduction. Hope this helps to make sense of some of the concepts being thrown around in discussions of the way Germany has for choosing its next chancellor.