Friday, October 17, 2008

They Might be Able to Parrot Diversity, but they’ll Never Quite Understand Pluralism

Imagine someone running for the highest office in Germany, the position of Chancellor, but was the political protégé of, and announced ones’ political career at a social event in the home of a member of the Red Army Faction or the Baader-Meinhof gang. Now imagine dad ort in them there Vereinigten Staaten, 80 to 90 percent of the population wanted Germans to vote for that candidate because there’s something superficial about the candidate appeals to their vanity.

That’s an analog of the example Clarsimonius uses when discussing German ideas of how Americans should vote, and for that reason alone, Americans shouldn’t vote their way. Much in the way that looking through a child’s eyes and hearing their comments tells one a great deal about what they are shown and how they were socialized, it’s revealing.

Now over to Observing Hermann:

But having said that… I want you all to know that Germany and the Germans are expecting a whole lot of you this US-American Presidential Election year 2008. And you may or may not be aware of this, although I wouldn’t know how you could not be, but 80 to 90 percent of the German population expects you to vote for you-know-who. That’s right, him. And by you-know-who I mean you-know-who, not that other guy, what’s-his-name. I’m serious here, by the way. With the numbers, I mean. When I say 80 to 90 percent of the German population expects you to vote for you-know-who and not what’s-his-name, I mean 80 to 90 percent of the German population. No fooling.

Stop and think about this for a minute. This is significant. Unlike us in the US, Germans regularly go 80 to 90 percent for people, things and ideas they like and then later reject. It’s just the way they are. We are a bit backward in that respect, I suppose, rarely able to get half the population to agree upon much of anything, especially these days. I don’t know why we are that way, but we are. Germany has it much better than we do in this regard. Things are so much more, well, homogeneous here.
Via the formerly dormant David’s Medienkritik, a portrait of the populist German view of the United States tells you even more about this wisdom – it delights in any shred of a theory about the smiting, hopeful downfall, or debasement of the US. They also as an almost uniformly simplistic and near monolithic social entity, want Americans to vote for Barack Obama, who has such poor judgment that Ayers’ terrorist acts (having occurred when Obama was 8,) has given Barack Obama his entire adult lifetime to realize that the Weather Underground hated America in the exact same way the RAF, Red Brigade, and the Baader-Meinhof gang hated their nations and were willing to use violent coercion to force on the population changes that the public would not have wanted.

It seems that what they really want is to see a snuff film starring America, and they would also tell you it’s because they’re a concerned friend offering advice.

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