Germany is heading for general elections in about three weeks. Lots of political discussions on TV, in the newspapers, in the WorldWideWeb, as well as in the blogosphere , lots of political propaganda everywhere. A “Fateful” and “Vital” Election, one to choose the general direction and the destiny of our nation for perhaps decades to come, they say. And yet…
I am mystified and somewhat terrified to find that in all the discussions and propaganda and with at least five major parties competing, and one or two marginally relevant others, some thoughts (that I e.g. have) are left undiscussed, unmentioned, unthought (?). Am I so off the track in my thinking, have we got so many taboos already (things we must not say nor think without being classified as lunatic fringe or worse)?
Our main problems, from what I hear, seem to be:
- government is spending more than it takes in and has been doing so for quite a time
- government is raising more and more taxes (in a way and by rules and regulations fewer and fewer people really understand) thus stifling market, economy, confidence, activity, everything
- more and more people are unemployed costing dearly
- more and more people are growing old and have noone to look after them and care for them, with nursing costing more and more money and health costs skyrocketing and (everything having to be financed based on the Holy Principles of Solidarity and Social Fairness) driving labor costs skyhigh thus increasing unemployment
- there are fewer and fewer children, society is aging and population numbers declining (yet we are buildung more and more houses destroying what landscape is left, btw)
- parents seem to be increasingly unable or unwilling to “cope” with and raise their own children, so that there is an increasing need for kindergardens and all-day-schooling paid for by society (so that parents have time for themselves and can go to work - which more and more of them do not have)
- having children is one way to poverty, they say, and society has to refund parents (and I always thought that reproducing was a basic biological impulse and people did it for their own happiness and well-being and living-on - and children loved their parents and paid back all the efforts and “investments” by helping and supporting their parents when they grew old thus - in a material way - even providing a part of the “old-age-pension” everybody should have; but then I forgot that we do no longer personally provide for those we know and have around us, but rather anonymously contribute to the Common Good ™ and so my concept crumbles, excuse me).
- Solidarity ™ and Social Fairness ™ are becoming more and more important, meaning that fewer and fewer people with incomes of their own have to contribute larger and larger portions of their income to the General Good ™ in order to provide for all the unemployed, elderly, children and everybody else who is less and less able to or willing to provide for him- or herself
- every second marriage in Germany ends in divorce with “patchwork” families having become the rule and no longer being an exception
- Education seems to be at an all-time low with German pupils and students being outperformed by young people from other countries
Subjective Observations of my Own:
- traffic on German roads is coming to a standstill, traffic infrastructure is hopelessly undersized in comparison to what kinds and amounts of vehicles are rolling over our roads causing people to spend increasing time in traffic slams, increasing the costs of transproting goods or people.
Nevertheless wherever a road is being repaired or built I see some machines and one or two people spending months and months doing the job - wouldn´t more people achieve more in less time? so are there perhaps jobs after all and noone wants to or is allowed to do them?
- Morals and Morale are deploringly declining, violence is increasing, political discussions are almost exclusively detail-centered, with the only “values” still being discussed being “solidarity, social fairness, social equality”.
- more and more people are telling you that, unfortunately, they cannot accept a certain (lowly paid, may be) job because then they would not get any public money any longer thus decreasing their income by working or at least would earn the same amount of money by working as they receive being unemployed
- Even I find myself leaving out some efforts, some tasks, some sources of additional income calculating that with all the taxes and deductions I would have to pay additional earnings would really not be worth the effort
- I do not understand my own tax return (in fact I have to pay someone heavily for producing it) and - perhaps even worse - I do not understand my own accounting. In fact I receive certain amounts of payment from public insurances (usually some six months after my work is done) without knowing exactly or even approximately how this is being calculated and without knowing anybody I could ask, as calculation is done by computers with a lot of budgeting and equalizing and comparing to others or to the average, with rules changing every now and then and with the final result arriving long after the actual work it is meant to pay for is done and remembered. So I do receive some money and I do pay some money and I pray to God that somehow both makes some sense and noone is cheating me and that my accounting somehow reflects my work - and I can never be sure of any of these prayers. Could I earn more by adopting alternative priorities in my work or adding special offers or just doing things slightly different? No idea, no way for me to find out, so why try, really …
- There are a lot of educational efforts to teach our children about contraception and safer sex; we are handing out “the pill” to 13-year-old girls in huge numbers - partly funded by public health insurance, of course - (and condomes, of course) arguing that after all contraception is bettter than teenage pregnancy (are there no other alternatives ???? taboo, taboo, I am sorry) and then we are distributing ever increasing amounts of tax money in order to make people have and raise children and lamenting the decrease of birth rates and the breaking up of stable families with stable relationships (the latter not really being deplored by those who have always felt that giving children into public care as early as possibly is preferrable to exposing them to the dubious climate and values of a traditional family)
So here are my thoughts (very incoherent, I know, some of them outright reactionary and probably quite unrealistic, and most of them, deducting from political discussions I watch, either not worth thinking or so scandalous that they really deserve being put under taboos):
- when I was a child there were Families. Husband and Wife bore the same name, as did their children. Divorces were an exception (at least in my experience) and divorcees were somewhat notorious. There were lots of “Traditional” families with hubby going to work and earning the family income and mum raising the children and caring for a suitable environment for the family, perhaps even caring for granddads and grandmums. From my child perspective this somehow seemed to work. It is certainly mere coincidence that some things then happened in the same period of time: Housewives were bored and started to join the work force in overwhelming numbers (and - amazingly - families no longer can afford a stay-at-home-mum or -dad, cannot make a living out of only one working parent - although very often now we have two-unemployed-families); “get out of the new way if you can´t lend a hand”-old people were left and young people built or rented and moved to homes of their own with demands for old people´s homes and nursing facilities for older people magnifying; “singles” abounded; family bonds deteriorated with divorce numbers exploding; unemployment rose; demands for child care increased tremendously (I never went to a kindergarden, well, you would have guessed, wouldn`t you?) and children´ s educational results deteriorated to the point that we now have relevant numbers of analphabets and at least poorly educated; psychological and behavioral diseases in children are exploding in numbers (ADD, depression, aggression); public deficits soared; church attendencies declined to a point where only a fringe of people still regularly attends church; psychotherapie (paid for by public health insurance) thrives and more and more psychosomatic diseases are being diagnosed, socially accepted and treatment paid for by public funds; retiring early has become a rule rather than an exception as more and more people see themselves as not fit to work beyond 58 years of age; allround social security has become a well-understood Right of everybody and nobody would ever earnestly consider being grateful (to whom, by the way - everything is dealt out by “the state”?) for receiving public funds.
- So what if…
- … at least some (!) politicians started a kind of desecularization and reproselytization earnestly campaigning for traditional Christian (I have said the word, I am sorry, I just could throw in “morals” again and be done with it) values.
- …priests were able to and dared to campaign for traditional Christian values more openly and publicly and even outside their churches and closets (we did have priests who worked as politicians, as well, do we have some still? but of course priests are part and a product of the society they come from, so how wide-spread are traditional Christian values among German priests, really???)
- …we returned to one-parent-at-home-raising-the children families (thus reducing unemplyoment numbers and costs of child care and care for grandma and granddad and thus also costs of labor and taxes)
- …grandma and granddad returned to live within the family, contributing their part of child care, traditing their life experience and providing transgenerational continuity and stability (thus reducing costs of child care and care for grandma and granddad and thus also costs of labor and taxes)
- …one of the things we teach our children at home was Respect for their teachers at school instead of just always blaming children´s learning and discipline problems and lack of educational achievement on poorly performing teachers without looking for more intrinsic reasons.
- … we made a 180 degrees turn and started to stop non-marriage living together, divorces, gay marriages (I am sorry, I am a hopeless revisionist, I know, please forgive me), but - so what - even discouraged open homosexuality in favor of traditional forms of man and woman living together and producing and raising offspring to carry on our society. Taboo, taboo, taboo, I know, sorry again, I am not sure I really mean it, am I being fascist after all? No, please, I hope not.
There were times when being an illegimate child was considered a serious disadvantage in becoming a German Chancellor, and of course noone would want to go back to such a stubborn and reactionary climate, now that the Mayor of Hamburg and the Mayour of our capital Berlin are openly professed homosexuals, as - to my knowledge - is the leader of the second opposition party (soon to be a minister in the next government) and both the present Chancellor and his likely successor have experiences in being divorced (Mr. Schroeder even several times) thus being at eye level with the German Secretary of State with all his experiences in violent protests, bashing policemen and - of course - divorce and lots of other things both intriguing and frightening. Mind you: This is NOT against homosexuality, NOT against people who have suffered a divorce, NOT (of course!) against “illegitimate” children, I am just opposed to proclaiming all this - lifestyles which run contrary to traditional familiy values - as “normal” and alternative role models for our society; in my view they are not and can never be; we can tolerate a certain percentage of people living according to these lifestyles privately, but in greater numbers society as we know it (not only moral, but even all material aspects of society) becomes threatened and endangered - do what you want and must in private, I won´t mind and will not hold it against you, but don´t go around strutting and boasting and trying to promote these kinds of lifestyle, that is what I think.
- … we started reinventing the notion that PRIMARILY everyone is responsible for himself or herself and those near and dear and that solidarity and social fairness COULD be reduced to trying to prevent people from falling into utter need and poverty without a fault of their own. Meaning, for example, that PERHAPS a TV screen is NOT part of basic social and human needs that have to be provided by the community, that Vacation Days (!) are not part of the social security our unemployed have a right to hope for (?????) and that anybody hoping to earn a living does have to take any kind of work and income option possible and can not really have a right to reject jobs that he or she finds not agreeable, acceptable or “reasonable”.
- … we started to rediscover the ideas that some kind of social differences, some kind of material inequality, some kind of social polarity and difference, that the notion that those who are diligent, resourceful, but even those who are healthy or beautiful or intelligent without their own doing will gain more than those who are lazy and drowsy, and also those who are ill or ugly or not-as-intelligent, that this notion is not scandalous and perverted and unthinkable but really part of what the world is like, part of how things do and should work and the basic prerequisite for a situation in that achievement pays and underachievement does not thus making people try hader all the time. Included in this is the realization that people are people after all, humans humans, and given the choice to earn the same living by doing somethings as well as by doing nothing we will always choose the easy way - everything else is grotesquely wishful thinking and the communist / socialist principle of making everybody achieve according to their abilities and providing everybody according to their needs is just utter stupidity and nonsense proved so ever so often (which state based on these principles did ever work?)
- … with 5 million people unemployed what if they helped build and repair our traffic infrastructure, our streets and highways, in no time so that our traffic flows thus helping regaining momentum and perhaps even economic growth (not too many costs really, we have to pay for all the unemployed people anyway. What if we made our unemployed nurse our old aged and care for our children - we are paying them anyway. What if we made them at least care for their own elderly and for their own children? Couldn´t we even recruit some of our unemployed into the Army thus contributing to Europe´s military strength which really is a laugh? Would not cost a thing, as we have to provide for them anyway, and it would make them do useful things giving back some dignity and pride and reducing hopelessness and despair. Unthinkable, I know, and I am ashamed for what I put down here, really.
- Proving that I am just living out a lunatic attack: what, if we made our unemployed go to church and attend compulsory holy masses. Hey, suddenly our churches would be full again, priests could provide emotional and spiritual relief, could deliver their messages, some of our TV talk-shows promoting any kind of debauchery and perversion could be given up and church attendants might get spiritual and intellectual impulses as never before. Perhaps people WOULD start feeling better and more motivated, perhaps even psychological and psychosomatic woes would decrease, I don´t know. Sorry really, I know this is insane and not really thougt through - and, of course, so totally incompatible with a modern secular state that I deserve all the scorn and rejection and intellectual revulsion you can muster. I just thought that exposing people to moral ideas and spirituality might enrich them more than watch women in TV shows trying to find out which of four likely candidates might be the father of a given child (although I agree that this is quite important,as well, one does like to know, doesn´t one?) or young men reporting how it felt to sleep with five women, two dogs and one cat at the same time (fascinating though such experiences really are)
- Couldn´t we, at least, stop double-speaking: I can´t hear the words “solidarity”, “socially fair”, “just”, “peace” and “lasting” or “long-term” any longer - as these seem to be describing the major aims of ANY political party and ANY politician in this republic and yet all of these tell us that parties and politicians are really all that DIFFERENT and our fate depends on whom we choose and elect I gather these words are NOTHING but fake and propaganda and empty and meaningless clichés and thus an insult to my ears and really not worth listening to. Stop lying, you brutes, stop cheating, stop being so annoyingly stupid and pompous and please let me forget all about this election right now, please, please. Being so fond of catch-phrases here are alternatives, btw: “SUBSIDIARITY”, “SELFRESPONSIBILITY”, “SELFRELIANCE”, “ACHIEVMENT” - help yourselves!
It is NOT that I think all this here could be accepted by a majority of people in our country, not by one of the major parties, either, I just really wonder that NOONE seems to think such thoughts, NOONE says something like that, there is not even a lunatic fringe of politicians arguing into these directions. Taboos - or are these thoughts really so alien, so outlandish, so absurd that the miracle is rather that I have been able to think them and write them down?
I am sure everything I wrote here is utter nonsense and I am certain that I have really meant only half of it, the rest being due to my poor mastery of the language I am writing in, and I apologize to anybody who might be hurt or revolted and after all this is only just a blog and the article is going to scroll away and nobody is reading this anyway, so let us just pretend I never wrote this after all, shall we?
Hey, whom are you going to vote for and don´t you just agree that whoever wins will pave the way for a marvellous future for all of us and all the generations to come? Life is just great and so is Politics and so are our Politicians! Nil desperandum.
U.N. Owen (guest blogging on Hillside Meditations, thanks for the opportunity)
politics, bizzarre, suck, liars, cheat, loosers, stupid, sick, sicker, sickest, election, campaign, Angela+Merkel, Gerhard+Schröder, Gschwerl, traditional+values, German+elections, Wahlen, Deutschland+Wahlen, Germany+Elections, values, Elections+Issues, virtues, morale, Bundestagswahl
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, appeared in a local TV report and was mentioned in several newspapers all over Bavaria - I was then heading a ministry-of-health funded project on computer-mediated communication among diabetic adolescents ( “Projekt-D”) .
