The word “liberals” means something else in Germany than in the US. The closes analogy would be Democrats=SPD and Republicans=CDU, which are the two biggest parties. When Hitler took over, the CDU fell in line while the SPD resisted. The SPD then was also a lot more leftist than it is now. It’s pretty much centrist now and only slightly more to the left than the conservative CDU.
Oh yeah, that’s way worse! But it doesn’t make me very optimistic about Germany’s future either, even without the Trump tragedy.
Our current government literally just collapsed today so… yeah.
I agree that he probably won’t last the four years but even if he does he is already too senile to set any policy. He was also already more than happy for others to do the actual work of creating policy because he’s incredibly lazy last time.
So I think Vance (and Musk) will be the real rulers behind King Trump. I don’t think either is really that much interested in religion and racism but both are incredibly sexist and/or transphobic. So sadly a lot of horror and pain will be delivered to women and transgender people. (Which doesn’t mean immigrants are safe.)
Musk will also push for deregulation/privatization of technology so that he can become even richer. This will lead to more monopolization/enshittification and stifle innovation for years, maybe decades. Vance will go along with it due to the Thiel-connection.
Additionally, Putin has made sure that Musk will also champion his interests even if Trump is unable to due to senility. The US will become a de facto ally of Russia and a geopolitical enemy of Europe in a similar vein as China (meaning not openly).
The military-industrial complex will quickly warm to the new reality of an autocracy and the US will start a new war somewhere. Probably in the Middle East. Maybe not within the first four years though. It will be used to distract from a crashing economy and the very real climate catastrophe (mirroring Ruzzia).
I wish all of this were ideas for an alt-history book and not a possible scenario for our future.
As a German aware of my country’s history I can only shake my head in sad recognition and try not to feel utterly hopeless not only about the future of a once-great country but the entire world.
We’re in the endgame now.
CITIZEN! DO NOT BE ALARMED! YOU WILL FEEL A SMALL TICKLING SENSATION AND THEN DEATH!
Also, he blatantly corrupt. If you pay him enough money, you can be sure that he will rubberstamp anything you want. He’s probably even relatively cheap if you stroke his ego enough.
And their jaws literally desintegrated. And they still had to fight for their bosses to change anything. Also, the non-toxic alternative was only slightly more expensive.
Yes, but it’s important to note that confirmation bias is always present in our views of the world because our brain tends to keep things simple by prefering confirming to contradicting information. It just has been amplified by recommendation algorithms meant to increase engagement by showing you “more of the stuff you like”, thus trapping you in a filter bubble you might not even be aware of.
Also, Trump and his cult is a truly unique phenomenon that won’t be easily reproducable. Just look at how desperately Ted Cruz tries to be the next Trump and fails spectacularly.
The habitual drug abuse, no sport except for golf (because the body is a battery and you die earlier from sport according to him) and an exklusive diet of coke and hamberders probably didn’t help either.
If you watch interviews with him when he was younger, his cognitive decline is shocking. He still comes across as sleazy asshole though.
I’m waiting for the moment he calls her the n-, c- or b-word, or a combination thereof.
Which they made bigger in Jurassic Park, so that’s actually proving the point. A bigger raptor species was only discovered after the first movie.
There’s no guarantee you will get more money! Get the same money or less guaranteed instead!
In the context of Germany, “liberal” means being for capitalism unbridled by the state but still generally progressive policies culturally, with more rights for minorities and such. The corresponding party is FDP. So in some ways it’s the exact opposite of the US idea of “liberal”.
Someone considered “left” would be for more social policies and government control of capitalism (traditionally SPD), extreme left would be following tenants of communism, opposed to the US and friendly with Russia (The party The Left and the new Sarah Wagenknecht party)
Someone considered conservative or “right” would be against social policies and try to reduce control of capitalism (CDU) extreme right would be plain fascists (AfD), ironically also aligned with Russia now.
The Greens are a special case, since they were originally a single issue party concerned with environmentalism, but since the SPD has largely vacated their social policies since Schröder was chancellor, they have become more and more the new “social” party.
There are also a huge number of smaller parties that are unable to reach more than five percent, which is necessary to be included in the govenmental body of the Bundestag. Most of those are single issue parties (there is even a beer party). The FDP has become so unpopular that it might also share that fate soon.
To come back to your original point, there were no “liberals” when Hitler was elected. There were conservatives, socialists and communists. The conservatives aligned themselves with the fascists and the socialists and communists were outlawed and thrown into jail/executed.