💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~maria › log › 2021-07-15_german_election_year.gmi captured on 2023-12-28 at 16:01:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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This year Germany has elections. Not province, not city, national elections. This means months of lying, cheating, bribing and anything goes, and I'll be rubbing my head.
So anyone not from Germany probably won't know (unless you're into this stuff maybe), you don't vote for a person, you vote for a party first and then you vote for a direct seat. Germany is divided into like 280 something election areas, each one sends a person directly from local politics into the Bundestag. The idea is simple, someone to represent the area you live in. And while some parties bring up the big guns (and tell you upfront who'll be chancellor if they are the largest party inside the ruling coalition) it won't ever tell you about the ministries and other important roles.
So tl;dr, you vote for a party and you vote for a person from your area to go into the government.
Traditionally Germany has had a far left party (who wants reduced capitalism, cheaper housing, jobs for everyone, a social safety net, etc, etc), the social democrats (left, but mostly a worker party, they don't oppose some elements of capitalism as strong), the green party (more of a central, part leftist construct of originally environmentalists), the liberals (says all, doesn't it, they are for free market, less regulations, but also not very conservative) and finally the christian democrats (a conservative, industry loving, religious, partly fundamentalist rightwing party). Coalitions were interest-based, so liberals and christian democrats, social democrats and green party, the left party no one liked too much.
Across the Merkel era the christian democrats have adopted a bunch of green and liberal values, and even some social democratic values. They moved towards the center to appeal to a bigger voting circle (or so they thought; basically the older you are the more likely you'll vote for them). The social democrats moved towards the center, because they felt the christian democrats would steal the voters from the center. With the rise of climate change and other environmental issues, the green party suddenly gained momentum, which lead both democratic (all parties are democrats, I mean those with democrat in the name) parties to move even further to the center, leaving a huge gap towards the political edges.
The rightwing gap was filled by a conservative party called Alternative for Germany (abbr. AfD) and it collected a lot of people who left the christian democrats or that were party-less. They are the ideal "I don't like any of this, my reasons are made up, but I don't have a real concept" party. The leftern gap was vaccuumed by the left party, who are now arguing mostly amongst themselves because the more extreme wing and the center wing can't agree on shit.
tl;dr most parties moved towards the center and the parties in the corners don't have a good idea/concept to actually collect voters.
Well, yes, technically it is. However, politics work like a pendulum. Party A suggests something rightwing, Party B argues something leftwing is better, they agree on something in the center. The details aren't too important because everyone is happy they agreed. This is also true for asynchronous ruling. Party A passes a leftwing law, 4 years later Party B modifies the law to be more rightwing. It ends up somewhere in the center.
When both parties are in the center, their ideals are ultimately quite similar and differ in the details. So they argue about minor things and feel it to be a great victory if they get their way. Ultimately it makes little difference.
When 80% of the votes get handed to a center party, how do the parties (and there's 4 now) in the center try to convince you they are better?
A moment for you to guess
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Exactly!! They lie and discredit the other parties. Sometimes even if it discredits themselves. The current state of things is, the christian democrats claim the green party will destroy the economy by implementing environmental laws, they also claim the social democrats and the left party will definitely ruin the country because socialism (mind you, we're living in a social democracy that is built on socialist ideas like worker protection laws, social security, mandatory health insurance and many others). The social democrats try to fall back to the "but we didn't do bad in the last legislation" and "we have great, mind-breaking ideas, we just won't tell them to you yet" and so on and so forth.
Who the fuck cares. The differences between the parties are so slim and the promises so enormous that none of this will happen. We have a law (from 10 years back or something) that regulates how pigs are held and treated in pig farms (where the Bavarians get all of their pork from) and to give farmers more time to adjust, they christian democrats literally declared that pigs aren't animals, so they don't apply to the law for another 5 years! Between then and now, the liberals, the social democrats and the christian democrats were in the government, none of them did anything. So why would I believe any of those people would even care about climate change, about worker protection, about home office laws, when they can just bend the laws a little here and there and then pat themselves on the shoulder after 4 years because the country didn't burn down or something.
Ultimately I am not against democracy. 30 years ago when a party fucked up they could count on losing voters. But when all of the parties are little different, none have great ideas, none have courage, and also none fuck up royally, just a little at a time, then it stops being a thing to vote for A, B, C or D, because the difference it makes is small. And if someone fucks up, all you can do is replace one with the next and history repeats.
The issue with the center is this. The christian democrats have shown that you can be a center party, fairly successful, give cookies to the industry giants, get rich on money from the industry (if not during the legislation, then afterwards, you'll get a job on the board of a random company) and reap few consequences from the voters in the process. Other politicians wnat some of the spoils, too.
And if you vote for the two remaining parties in both wings, you'll end up with a pile of shit. They have neither ruling experience, nor a concept to rule.
It just doesn't matter. One should go to the election anyhow. Why? Because otherwise all of the boomers give the christian democrats another legislation period. That'd make 20 years of the same bullshit. Sometimes listen to different bullshit is still better.