I am not an expert on Trump nor on his economics in particular. I am disgusted, though, by the way he is treated by German politicians, the media and a German public totally void of critical thinking and absolutely in thrall with the canon of political correctness dictated by politics and the media.
It is eery to experience the degree of Gleichschaltung (the bringing into line of all minds in the country) concerning Trump in Germany. Trump-bashing is a social convention in this country, like saying "good morning". It is frightful to live in a country that is incapable of seeing anything good in the top man of our most important ally, or apply a differentiating mode of perception instead of resorting at the mention of his name to foaming hatred.
The perception of Trump in Germany, like the perception of environmental (and many other) issues, being void of rationality is of a purely religious vein. The last sentence concludes a long preamble to the hypothesis that I had originally in mind when deciding to write this comment:
Trump seems to have remobilised the lower strata, who have long since been betrayed by the neoliberalised left. At the same time, Trump is putting a pronounced emphasis on the national interest, thereby restrengthening the importance of the nation state in the public mind, which is being deceived by the left's irresponsible flirt with a stateless world (the EU is a clear example that supranational constructions work as effectively as the national state only when the supranational becomes a fully fledged national state, which the EU is incapable of becoming, and hence chronically dysfunctional).
The social democratic paradigm is indispensably centred on the strong and sovereign nation state as the only means to guarantee full employment, a benign balance between capital and labour and the protection of society's vulnerable strata. Whatever one thinks of Trumps policies in particular, he could well be triggering impulses that add momentum to a resuscitated social democracy, much like he has given vital impulses to the role of government in protecting scientific freedom and establishing checks on a politicised, government-dominated "science".
Lastly, Trump has got balls, if you pardon my French. He is the only politician in the leading nations of the West who is not afraid to have an own opinion and defend it against the Zeitgeist, thus breaking the shackles of political correctness (that creeping form of ideological totalitarianism so loved by the post-social-democratic left).
Trumps courage and independence of mind has unleashed an intellectual civil war in the US, which I thoroughly welcome because it is reducing political apathy, reinvigorating pluralism and democracy. Political competition is the essence of freedom.
In Germany we have not seen genuine political competition between the major political forces and parties under the sorry reign of Merkel. I hope the impulses sent by Trump will reach our sleeping political order and the broad population and convince them that uncritical reliance on the political class is a bad idea, although it had seemed otherwise, when by a kind of political Minsky effect (stability creating instability) decades of responsible social democratic politics in post-war Germany had gradually enticed the people to turn into mere political consumers rather than critical participants in the political dialogue.
Always worth listening to:
See also Awakening from the Stony Sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment