In Germany (my other country of citizenship) we’re currently being lead by a coalition of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their minor coalition partner, the neo-liberal economic hard right FDP.
The FDP did very well in the last election and finished third with 14.6% of the popular vote (compared to the pitiful 23.0% for the Social Democrats (SPD) and the decent 33.8% for the CDU/CSU, which was still a worse result for them than in the last elections). They maintained a tidy lead on their two competing minor parties, the left-wing Greens and the lefter-wing ‘Left’ party. And once it was all wrapped up in a tidy package, the average German seemed pretty content with getting on with it. After all, a Big Coalition government between the two major parties as had ruled during the previous electoral term is always a terse and strategic affair. Now the direction was set, and the direction was to the Right!
The only problem is that the current government seems more able at only two things: becoming less popular and bitchfighting evarey day and evarey night. The question is, how could Germans lose their confidence in the new government this quickly? Didn’t anyone vote? Nope, the 70.8% participation rate was the lowest since the emergence of the German Federal Republic after WW2, but that was still higher than the 62% the U.S managed for their ‘historic’ election of Obama (and that was their highest turnout since 1968!!!) .
No, there’s something different going on. That something different is the FDP’s program. Everyone loved the talk of tax cuts, but it turns out that most Germans don’t favour U.S style economic shit-storm reform. To be fair to the FDP their leader was hardly coy about the insane highs to which he wants to drive the social-democratic regression in Germany, but it seems a positive bias went in his favour.
People voted for him because of tax promises, while ignoring the proposed extensions of a failed series of social spending cuts and market liberalisation that would slam the poor and endanger the comfortable safety in which Germany’s middle class wallows.
Now most Germans, including the FDP’s coalition partners at the CDU, have awoken to the implications. It all becomes so much clearer once one realises that the ‘lazy parasite’ to be impoverished for the sake of the economically fit could be oneself. But for the grace of good health and a good jobs market go even the well-educated to the dreaded strata of lower income.
Perhaps if I were riding the progressive wave of change that all these coming calamities must throw up I would thank the despicable Westerwelle for his hatred of the poor. Perhaps then I could think “He was the last drop”.
As it is I can only scratch my head at a people’s ability to realise the blatant truth three seconds too late again.