Not By Elections, Though…
There’s almost always a silver lining and the silver lining (from my perspective, at least) in the German elections was the boost in the fortunes of the Free Democratic Party. The bad news was that such a large percentage of the voters voted for either the Social Democrats (not my first choice, but not as bad as they have been in the past) or the Left Party. Together, those two parties got 43 percent of the vote, while the Greens got 8.1 percent, for a majority. The problem in forming a government is that the Left Party is so odious (it’s led by “former” Communists) that, as the BBC put it,
This means there is a bloc of 54 MPs in the Bundestag who are not available for building a new coalition – which is why the other parties are finding it so difficult to form a new government, our correspondent says.
Whether we see an unlikely coalition, a grand coalition, or just new elections, it’s highly unlikely that the Left Party will enter government. It’s good to see them considered with a disgust at least similar to that normally reserved for the hard-right German nationalists.
Tom, your post is about some villains, Germany’s “ex” communists. But the accompanying doesn’t photo match the post. The Red Army soldiers who destroyed the Nazis weren’t generally communists, nor were the people of the Soviet Union in general. When they fought against the Nazis they fought not for communism but for survival, and for their homeland and families and friends. And when the Red Army soldiers lifted the Soviet flag over Berlin, it was a sign of the destruction of the evil of National Socialism, not a celebration of communism. It was a good thing.
The soldiers who did it were sent to Stalin’s prison camps after the war, for re-education ince they were suspect, having been exposed to the outside world.
I’m rabidly anti-communist, but the photo you’ve posted is one of a heroic victory, albeit one tinged with further tragedy.
The point is well taken. I didn’t mean to imply that the conscripts sent by Stalin to defend the motherland and then conquer half of Europe were at fault; still, the events represented in that famous photo were the means by which the communist apparatchiks who followed got control of the Reichstag, from which they weren’t booted out for decades. It looks like they won’t be able to elbow their way back in through elections.
(On a small matter — I doubt that you’re “rabidly” anti-communist; more likely you’re rationally so.)
Rational and rabid aren’t mutually exclusive. It means that I have good reason to be rabid.
(It’s similar to being a passionate advocate of liberty…)