Compare and contrast
Posted on UTC 2025-02-01 11:22
US dynamism
On the one hand we have the USA. It elected its President last November. Donald Trump and the Republican party were the clear winners with an historically large majority.
During his campaign, Trump had repeatedly laid out his programme with great clarity. Trump is often called divisive, but his programme was supported by a broad spectrum of voters from different backgrounds, races and ethnic groups.
Immediately after his inauguration he started to implement that programme via a barrage of executive orders and many mould-breaking appointments to his cabinet. After four years of Biden vacuity and decline, the energy displayed by Trump and his staff was breathtaking. Only time will tell just how much of his programme will remain intact after passing through the refractory administrative machine in the USA, but the momentum is with him.
You may find this procedure one-sided, perhaps even authoritarian, but Trump's programme and priorities were repeatedly set out during the campaign and he achieved a very clear majority. It's called a mandate and in a democracy he is expected – nay, duty-bound – to implement that mandate, being the expressed will of the majority of citizens of the USA. A majority of voters liked him, approved of his programme and gave him their vote.
German stasis
On the other hand, let's look at that model of European coalition government, Germany.
The country is in serious trouble in so many respects that discontent is widespread. The country's ruling coalition fell apart at the end of last year, unable to sustain its internal contradictions and lacking the will and the ability to address the many problems that face it.
The entire political process in the country is currently focussed on manouvering to game the coming election later this month so that it produces another feeble coalition of incompatible parties. A legislative programme such as the one Donald Trump ran on is not in sight – the only thing that matters is not policy, just cobbling some coalition together. An observer could be forgiven for thinking that none of these coalition parties actually wants to win outright. In contrast to Trump's clear programme in the USA, no German voter has any idea whatever coalition comes out of the next election will actually do.
Except, of course, for the AfD, the only party that has a realistic programme that addresses the real problems facing Germany, particularly the hot-button topics of immigration and the current energy lunacy that is destroying the country's industrial base ever more quickly. The AfD is attracting more and more support from voters because it is offering policies that they want.
We have already discussed the Brandmauer, the 'firewall' at length. It is an agreement amongst the other parties to have nothing to do with the AfD. They might get away with such an undemocratic agreement if the AfD were still a tiny party, but it has growing popular support and is achieving polling results that are comparable with the big two traditional blocs in German politics, the CDU/CSU and the SPD.
The growth of the AfD is such that it may become impossible to ignore it. Just disenfranchising by fiat more than 30 percent of the votes in a proportional representation system is profoundly undemocratic. It seems unlikely that there will be the sort of tectonic shift in the electorate that would make the AfD the majority party, but it is not impossible.
There are three possible outcomes on February 26th: The AfD achieves an absolute majority and could govern without the need to form a coalition. What a wonderful prospect! Well, pigs might fly, but let's not get our hopes up. And if it did happen, the government would be faced with the almost impossible task of dismantling a fundamentally left-wing administrative state that is much worse than its American counterpart. Trump can fire almost anyone he wants to, whereas the Germans can't fire anyone. The AfD government would be jumping into the driver's seat of the out-of-control schoolbus, only to find that none of the controls did anything.
More likely, but still not very, is a result in which the AfD gets more votes than any of the other parties, but not enough to be able to go it alone. They will have to form a coalition, but since every other party – at least for the moment – refuses to work with them, their term as a minority government will be crippled from the start. We'll see what happens when ministerial posts, salaries and limos are on offer. So much for German democracy.
Even more likely would be a partial win by the CDU, but requiring a coalition. If the AfD comes second, the firewall fun will really kick off.

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), M[er]z-94 Gruenfleck, 1920.
Kurt Schwitters, the German Dadaist, invented the term Merz to designate the inconsequential and meaningless nonsense produced by himself and the Dada movement in general which was passed off as art mocking high art. He bought a house and over the years filled it with Merz, calling it his Merzbau.
Schwitters specialised in making small (the work shown here is merely 17.1 cmx13.7 cm) collages out of whatever he had in his pockets or found lying around – mainly things such as tram tickets and laundry receipts. Part of the joke is that art gallery conservators have to work out how to conserve old, yellowing bus tickets for posterity. The other laugh is that the present example of Merz changed hands for 305,000 USD the last time it was sold.
I couldn't resist livening up this stodgy piece with another Merz besides the haggard Friedrich, both being inconsequential and confused nonsense. Image: Christie's 2016.
All bets are off, particularly since Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU, last week publicly made a fool of himself, managing to simultaneously enrage everyone else in parliament, except, delightfully, the AfD, who were left laughing their heads off at his gormless tactics. Even Angela (Mutti) Merkel, Merz's archrival, the architect of the great immigrant wave that broke over Germany in 2015 and which has scarcely ebbed, woke from her slumbers in Kyffhäuser[1] and came forth to warn the upstart Friedrich that he was a very naughty boy, sowing discord like that.
German citizens are up in arms at the catastrophic increase in violent crime caused by immigrants. The time not so long ago when the problem could be dismissed by flummery and equivocation is past. There are far too many dead and mutilated victims, with more added on an almost daily basis.
The CDU has been as soft on immigration as its other coalition partners. Immigration has been the problem that dare not speak its name. That has now all changed: something must be done about the growing number of rapes, sexual assaults, murders, stabbings and terrorist attacks carried out by immigrants.
Friedrich Merz, as co-author of all the immigrant waves that have swept into Germany, has to do something urgently or his party risks electoral disaster to the profit of the AfD, which is the only party daring to talk about this issue.
He attempted to introduce a bill in parliament last week which would – wait for it – tighten up border controls. No mention of getting rid of the violent lunatics already in the country. He even said he would accept the support of the pariah AfD to pass this bill, which simultaneously cheered and strengthened the AfD, while enraging all the other parties supporting the firewall.
The bill crashed and burned ignominiously: 338 votes for, 350 against. As a result of this clown show, Merz has managed to demonstrate to the electorate that 1) a substantial number in his own party don't want to restrict immigration; 2) no one in any possible coalition party wants to restrict immigration; 3) the CDU, now shown to be powerless on this topic, cannot present themselves as being concerned about immigration at the forthcoming election; 4) the only choice concerned voters have is to vote for the AfD.
So German voters have a choice: coalition wishy-washy as before, whatever the permutation, in which case business and decline as usual, or, as Elon suggests, vote for the AfD and watch the pigs flapping past, heralding a new beginning for Germany. Well, perhaps.

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), M[er]z-250, Grosser Tanz, 1921. [17.9 cmx14.5 cm, 870,050 GBP!] Image: Christie's 2016.
References
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Kyffhäuser is the mountain (and monument) in Thüringen under which the great Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Friedrich I, 'Barbarossa', slumbers, ready to awake and emerge to lead the revival of the great German nation.
Yes, yes, I know. If you need to explain a joke it is not funny. Then of course there is this, which looks at an alternative end for the great Emperor.
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