So... I don't know if this had much international coverage, but yesterday was election day in Germany. We had the choice between the
finest candidates! Let's introduce them, in the order of how many votes they received!
SPD: Olaf Scholz. The "social democratic" candidate actually "won" the very close election and is likely going to be our next chancellor. That's awesome! We get a very, uh,
economically competent new government! Dearest Olaf, formerly our vice chancellor and finance minister, is involved in
a bit of a financial scandal actually
several financial scandals, but,
of course,
he can't remember a thing from his meetings with the bosses of the bank owing a lot of tax money that Olaf refused to collect. And
he denies all political responsibility for the Wirecard scandal, so that's all right. Nothing fishy whatsoever went on there! The (somewhat awkward)
razzia in his ministry of finance (on suspicion of obstruction of justice in the customs anti-money laundering unit) is clearly just a maneuver by his political opponents. Can't wait for him to represent Germany on the world stage. If he's not arrested for one thing or the other in the meantime, I mean.
CDU: Armin Laschet. Affectionately known as "Würfel-Armin" (Dice Armin), the "Christian democratic" candidate is famous for true Christian levels of personal integrity, such as literally
making up grades during his time as a university lecturer. (What else are you supposed to do if you lose a pile of exams in the mail? Of course you "reconstruct" everything from the notes you took during grading the exams. If you end up with grades for students who didn't even take the exam in the first place, well, that just proves you were
extra diligent while taking those notes.
And never mind there's not even evidence you ever mailed anything anywhere.) Also,
he displayed Christian levels of homophobia during a 2017 interview, but, realizing these views are unpopular these days, lied about that in a 2021 interview - so, he's able to learn from strategic mistakes! Awesome! I have
no idea why even his own party dislikes such a good Christian, and why Angela Merkel (imho one of the at least
less unpleasant CDU members) pretty much refused to endorse his election campaign...
Green Party: Annalena Baerbock. She's all for protecting the environment, which is great! She's also very much for new climate-friendly technologies like, say, all-electric cars, and is happy to talk about them. If she's unsure about the difference between
cobalt (the chemical element) and kobolds (mythical creatures), well, that doesn't make me doubt her qualifications in the least. As a former competitive trampoline gymnast, she doesn't have to know these details! Also, the
plagiarism in her book is perfectly okay because
Niemand schreibt ein Buch allein (no one writes a book alone). Yeah. (In case you're wondering: I voted for Annalena, simply because in this company she seems to be the one with the lowest levels of criminal energy. Not that that's much of an endorsement. Also, clearly, politics need more athletes! In terms of the sheer
will to win, including but not limited to at the expense of her own party "friends", Annalena was clearly the strongest candidate. And, when in doubt, she'd at least win any trampoline competition in the Bundestag.
Hey, decision by trampoline competition may actually be a step up...)
FDP: Christian Lindner. A typical representative of his party's unchained
the-market-solves-all capitalism, he's certainly slick enough to never be caught at anything criminal - just occasionally
creative in his interpretation of facts. Oh, and his
double entendre joke about a female coworker is simply charming... But, really, in this case the person is not the main problem. He may actually be the most
honest candidate here - honest about endorsing inhumane social politics, that is. The
party is the issue... When still in school, I wrote an essay about
the concept of personal responsibility in modern Satanism and the FDP's election program - and actually received top grades because, yes, I was able to back the comparison with sources. (It's easy, what with the FDP's classical
poor-people-clearly-deserve-to-starve,
anyone-deserving-is-rich-and-vice-versa attitude.) I guess that says everything you need to know about this party's ideals. Christian Lindner himself, well - I guess the worst thing you can say about him is that he's a FDP member.
AfD: Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel. I guess they had two candidates because they were not going to win anyway, so, why decide on one? Also, it's strategically quite clever to have two completely different candidates: Tino is the darling of lower-class neo-nazis of the
get-drunk-and-throw-rocks-at-kebap-stands kind, while the more sophisticated Alice appeals to the "intellectual" crowd of
we-don't-hate-foreigners-we-just-don't-want-them-here. That widens the voter pool a bit... I guess. Though I'm quite sure most of their voters are not actually fans: they just took a good look at the "serious" candidates and then decided to choose the
f*ck-it-all option. It's not a coincidence that the AfD got their strongest results in the structurally and economically weakest parts of Eastern Germany - the former GDR - where, despite all promises from the "established" parties, the economic upswing has
not arrived... (It's not quite an
excuse, but certainly an
explanation.) By the way:
someone finally got Tino a poetry book! Let's hope he reads it.
With
these lovely candidates, well, I had bought a bottle of cider especially for the purpose of following that election... Unfortunately, the cider turned out to be bad, too. Very fitting.
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