Same Procedure as Every Year

714 words ^[1]

Every country, I suspect, has its classic films that you watch on special holidays. In Germany, one of them is Dinner for One, shown on New Year’s Eve.

The performance by British comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden about Miss Sophie and her butler James celebrating Sophie’s birthday the same way it has been celebrated for decades (with James reenacting the guests who have since passed away) gifted us with the famous quote: “Same procedure as every year.”

How true. Last Sunday, Germany voted for a new government, which in effect turned out to be a vote for the old government. The eternal government. As expected, the so-called conservatives won, the CDU or Christian Democrats (Merkel’s party), who, these days, are neither Christians nor democrats and are conserving nothing except the status quo.

I have watched this pattern all my life. People are dissatisfied with the politics of the Social Democrats (SPD, current Chancellor Scholz’s party), so they are voting in the CDU. Four years later, they are dissatisfied with CDU politics, so they vote in the SPD. Rinse and repeat. I really, really hate that overused definition of insanity – you know, repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But it’s fitting in this case. Apparently, a large portion of the German voters suffers from insanity and therefore cannot see that if you continue to vote for the same thing, you get the same results.

So now they are in talks for a “great coalition”, meaning the CDU and SPD forming the government. (“Great” because traditionally, those were the two biggest parties in Germany.) Same procedure as every year. Every time we’ve had a great coalition, it’s “Never again!” Because the two parties cannot agree on anything, so nothing gets done. And so the great coalition talk is off the table for a term, and then the numbers work perfectly in their favor, and we get another great coalition. Rinse and repeat.

Emil Cosman ^[2] put it so succinctly: No, the conservatives didn’t win; the globalists did. He is correct.

Curiously, Sahra Wagenknecht, whose party (BSW, Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht) didn’t break the “five percent hurdle” that would have allowed them into the Bundestag, is alleging voter fraud. Well, apparently, there were cases of mail-in ballots for the AfD (coming in second place after the CDU) being destroyed, but I don’t think anyone bothered with the BSW. Its potential voters simply went either to the AfD or Die Linke, the leftist party. Sore loser is the most likely explanation.

So we’re stuck with the same politics for another four years. No, future Chancellor Merz, his party, and their great coalition won’t deport immigrants in any meaningful numbers, no matter their pre-election promises. Maybe they’ll do a bit for the economy, but I doubt it. Maybe they’ll accomplish what’s been the most important item on the agenda of every “democratic” party for months now: banning the AfD.

The only positive bit of news is that our megalomaniac Minister of Economy, the Green Party’s Robert Habeck, will resign. Finally. He has been acting increasingly erratic for a while now and was seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So maybe now he’ll get back to writing children’s stories.

I had a bit of a debate with two of my colleagues last week. There was me, the AfD voter; one colleague who votes Linke; and another colleague who had decided that the world was getting too crazy for him, so he would vote for the party his father had always voted for, namely the SPD. Mind you, he is also the one who thinks Angela Merkel did a fine job. I’m afraid he is the embodiment of too many German voters who live by Konrad Adenauer’s creed, “no experiments”. Yeah.

“Same procedure as last year, Miss Sophie?”

“Same procedure as every year, James.”

Miss Sophie is celebrating her 90th birthday the way she has always celebrated her birthday. Her four guests have passed away long ago, and all she has left is her aged butler who now has to stand in for her dear friends and who keeps tripping over the tiger’s head. I cannot help but think that there’s a parable in there somewhere.