Ok, so following on my last, now I will give Konrad Werner a bit of credit for his ‘manly good sportsmanship’ in lieu of any genuine gratitude for bringing the ‘teuton hordes’ to read at my site (my blog hits from Germany have dramatically spiked.)
And amazingly, the English of Werner’s rebuttal is quite ok, actually the high style of self-satire seems to be his true calling (Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’ is perhaps the greatest of examples of this avenue in quest for truth.) But alas, I also fear Mr Werner is suffering ‘Stockholm syndrome’ wherein one becomes enamored of one’s abuser. And he did miss a point or two but this last is easily corrected-
I know that modesty should stop me from mentioning this, and I know it’s really self-indulgent, but hell, I can’t help it. I need to share this happiness. I have a fan. An actual fan. In other words, someone who reads these articles all the way through. He’s called Ron and he keeps writing about me. At first, when you read Ron’s latest commentary on my scribbling, it looks a bit like a stream of abuse that ends with a drawing of a grotesquely large frog standing on its hind legs sucking a man off. This, the caption explains, is a metaphor for my English. You might think you’re a bad writer, but has your command of the written word ever been compared to amphibian fellatio? No, I don’t think it has.
Stockholm syndrome: noun, feelings of trust or affection felt in certain cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim toward a captor:
But then Ron offers a real insight. For years I’ve been struggling to name the thing that’s been missing in these commentaries. I used to lie awake at night, my tormented sweat-soaked sheets twisting up around me, trying to grasp that fleeting, unknowable thing that would make my work whole, and then along comes good old Ron and sums it up in one effortless line: “Werner lacks this thing called ‘Teutonic vision.’” That’s it. I just don’t “see” like the Teutons – the Germanic tribe that harried the Roman Republic in the first and second centuries BCE, and whose vision has been passed down genetically to all German people today.
Ron suggests my lack of “this thing called Teutonic vision” is the reason why I never noticed that all the old Kaisers were paedophiles, (or something, didn’t really get that bit), but there must be so many other things that I’m blind to as well. What other depraved things do Germans do beyond this non-Teutonic fog before my eyes? My poor genetically-handicapped mind strains itself to imagine these despicable acts. I mean, what’s the use of reading German newspapers and talking to German people and being in Germany if you don’t have Teutonic vision?
Actually Werner nailed it. Only I should have named it ‘post modern teutonic vision’ wherein the sufferers either do not lick their lips at sight of statues posing sexually suggestive little boys decorating the great monuments the Kaisers built to themselves or, perhaps don’t even notice this statuary at all. In this case Werner is blessed with a culturally significant social blindness and therein poses the precisely correct question: “What other depraved things do Germans do beyond this non-Teutonic fog before my eyes?”
Rest assured, the answer will be forthcoming.
And I wonder who does have Teutonic vision? The Christian Social Union have a bit presumably. You need some kind of tribal perspective to be able to tell all the Bulgarians apart, and indeed the Austrians and Hessians and Baden-Württembergers and Berliners, so you know who is allowed to vote for you and who isn’t.
This is indeed astute observation relating to the CSU and precisely reads into my deliberately open-ended innuendo. Fortunately, for myself, such small tribal differences may be blurred, in that as a satirist who can easily trample any rules of distinction, in the main, in my sight all conservative Germans are Huns. Oh, but wait:
The CSU has been doing its thing again this week: openly opposing its coalition partners the CDU and the SPD by deciding that actually no, it doesn’t agree with the pension plan that was in the coalition contract and which its leader signed just last month. Once again, with a municipal election coming up and the Alternative für Deutschland sharpening their looney minds, the CSU is consciously positioning itself slightly but distinctly to the right of Merkel. Last week I pointed out, in my sorry froggy-blowjob style, that it was a bit undemocratic that a regional party should wield national influence. But now I think of it, it’s hardly fair on the Bavarians either – effectively, no one in Bavaria can ever vote for Angela Merkel and the CDU, seeing as she never fields any candidates there. So when the municipal elections come up in March, not a single Municher or Augsburger or Nuremberger can say, “No, I’m just normal right-wing (Merkel), and not I’ve-got-Teutonic-vision-and-I-hate-Bulgarians right-wing (Seehofer).” That can’t be right, surely? There must be some Bavarians who like Merkel and would like someone from her party – someone mainly normal – running their local councils? But hey, what do I know? I’m just a sexually depraved frog.
Here, preceding, is where Werner’s lack of ‘post modern teutonic vision’ altogether causes his missing the point. His apparent idealism and faith in the underlying good of humanity undermines his perception of political reality. There is no question it is possible some (at least two or three) right-wingers from the south of Germany might cringe at the more ‘open and honest’ expressions of racism by a back-stabbing Seehofer or Friedrich, but to expect Merkel would sincerely reject this and provide avenue to alternative, is to expect ‘Mutti’ would knowingly enter into a circumstance of uttering “Et tu Brute” with partners whose political heritage had been sired and nursed by authentic and unrepentant NAZIs.
This brings us back to the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ and the fact of mental state. The hostage Patti Hearst married her jailer after she’d been busted for joining her kidnappers’ Symbionese Liberation Army. Who is jailer and who is hostage here? Merkel to Seehofer and Friedrich? Seehofer and Friedrich to the CSU electorate? The CSU electorate to their Hun (read unrepentant NAZI) heritage? Konrad Werner to his idealism? The bottom line is, when one associates with criminals in politics, there will be criminal social tendencies manifest. This determines in honest point-of-view, either there is accountability or there is none, bringing us back, as promised, to Werner’s “What other depraved things do Germans do beyond this non-Teutonic fog before my eyes?” The short answer is:
Merkel and the CDU should be held accountable for this criminal association with the CSU and its impact on the direction Germany takes. I hold Merkel responsible. Werner does not hold Merkel responsible, rather wishing ‘Mutti’ would let her kids play with someone less mean… but alas for Werner, Merkel is not and never has been a responsible mother. She does not care one whit about making any sacrifice for her children’s ethical development, but only cares for German sovereign wealth protection, banking and industrial output at any cost to other nations. So, with the CSU history of keeping her CDU in power, German exports (armaments especially) are artificially under-priced in circumstance where the Euro benefits German industrial manufactured items that otherwise would be cost prohibitive in the same moment Greece cannot devalue its currency and become competitive, burying the common shop-keeper. Now it becomes a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t have ‘post modern teutonic vision’, because if you can see this and do nothing about it, you’re crassly, criminally selfish, and if you can’t see it, it logically follows one can do nothing about what one cannot see and you benefit from crass, criminal selfishness nonetheless:
And just in case you missed it, the war-mongering Kaisers sexually suggestive statues of little boys were never declared ‘degenerate art’ by the NAZIs, the CSU, the CDU or anyone else I am aware of in Germany. The social scientist in yours truly is of the opinion this makes a statement about a certain cultural heritage and is why Merkel’s ‘Kaiser-esque’ expression of democracy resorts to selling deadly armaments abroad and telling parliament after the fact. Political blow-jobs all around, it would appear.
Oh, and afterthought… the ‘left’ in Germany is allowing this all to go on, when they could be in governance except for cowardice and refusal to compromise (a perfect ‘cluster-fuck’ in the mean vernacular) on all parties part, Greens, SPD and Die Linke alike (with ‘post modern teutonic vision’ extra credit awarded to the SPD for joining Merkel’s criminal cabal)
‘Post Modern Teutonic Vision‘ (a.k.a. Werner blogged me!)
Ronald Thomas West 