[PEN-L:1285] Re: Russia <---> Germany II

[valis <valis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ah, school's in and there's Dennis at the blackboard, once again making us
wonder why we're wasting our time on this side of the Atlantic at all.
Not that I'm drawing parallels in material or political circumstance,
but the Nazis won at the ballot box in '33 after the Germans had observed
nearly a decade of scary Stalinist demolition and state-building at fairly
short range, a spectacle that had to mesh well with NSDAP campaign themes.
Today, what with the Net, remote TV cameras, etc, might not a very short
period of Russian chaos upset the current will to progress in Germany?
I can recall how the Eisenhower incumbency benefitted from unsettled
foreign conditions in the fall of '56 (dog-wagging was a more cooperative
enterprise back then).
                                                                   valis

> The SPD and Schroeder have this sewn up. Practically every poll ever taken
> shows that the German electorate thinks long and hard and makes up its mind
> in the year before the election, and that's that. So sind die Deutsche.
                ......................................................
> I expect full citizenship rights to be granted to immigrants, just like other
> European countries, plus more funding for higher education, and some small
> increase in the tax bite on the rich. Nothing too huge, basically a kind of
> Jospinism a l'allemand. Of course, the class struggle will grind on, only
> with the working class in a more favorable position -- IG Metall has been
> growling about the need for major real wage increases for some time now
> (and those people don't make policy threats lightly), the students
> went on strike last year, heck, people in general are pissed and not going
> to take this neoliberal crap anymore.