Dear Reader,
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been listening to a series on the outbreak of the First World War this week, but I’m in a rather fatalistic mood about the future of German politics.
After the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, cabinet ministers in Berlin and London avoided thinking about the impending catastrophe by going fly fishing or translating Plato. I presume psychologists have come up with a name for this type of behaviour. Perhaps its called Arch Duke Avoidance Disorder, ADAD for short.
Thankfully, the stakes aren’t as high today. Nonetheless, it seems to me as if we are heading full-speed towards one of the biggest crises in the country’s modern history and Germany’s elite are once again suffering from severe ADAD.
I saw a spot on a national broadcaster the other day where they went through each party’s chances at the upcoming election. Strangely, the segment ended after the analyst was asked to predict how the SPD, the Greens, the CDU and the FDP would do.
But there are at least two other parties in the mix… and one of them is on course to come second!
The collapse of Scholz’ government is the loudest signal yet that things are breaking down. The old system is crumbling, but Germany would rather engage in a game of ‘he said, she said’ than address the more troubling direction things are going in.
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