I adore this. It’s got about a dozen great quotes in it.
diannesays
“You are not the people, you are the past” is one of the most succinct dismissals of the PEGIDA/AfD movement that I’ve ever heard. I love it.
quotetheunquotesays
Great video – I especially liked the woman and her bicycle pump. (“Look out, I’m coming … to inflate your tires!”)
“Remember, remember the 9th of November” indeed. Germany is a spectacular example of not forgetting the past, while not being imprisoned by it either. (Prime Minister Abe, please attend.)
Wonder what the chances are of this being heard by any Trump supporters? If they did, I suspect their main concern would be “Oh, the abuse! That poor child! They made her say bad words!
In the US dates are written Month/Day, in Europe they’re written Day/Month. So 9/11 could mean the 11th of September or the 9th of November, depending. I’ve decided that when someone tells me to remember 9/11 I’m going to assume that they mean to remember the 9th of November.
Neo Magazin Royale is pretty much the only worthwhile thing German public TV spends those Rundfunkbeiträge on these days.
rqsays
Rammstein should be proud.
Speaking of which: “We are proud of not being proud.” For some reason, that line appeals to me very much.
tezcatsays
Great video but I was expecting it to end with the dog licking someone’s face.
mudpuddlessays
@ quotetheunquote, #3
Wonder what the chances are of this being heard by any Trump supporters? If they did, I suspect their main concern would be “Oh, the abuse! That poor child! They made her say bad words!
No, I think they’d just try to pour scorn on the people behind it for trying to push “political correctness” on everyone, or some other such horse shit.
Rob Grigjanissays
Huh. Two great German performances to smile at in such a short time. This, and the men’s football team at the Euros (they wuz robbed, I tells ya). Best individual performance goes to the girl in the video.
Saganite, a haunter of demonssays
@#8 rq
It’s a notion I agree with very much, too. It’s the exact opposite of the “American Exceptionalism”-style bullshit that’s holding not just the US but similarly inclined peoples back from improving and achieving greatness. Getting rid of hollow nationalism is very important.
weaselrodriguezsays
@dianne
“In the US dates are written Month/Day, in Europe they’re written Day/Month.”
You are probably referring to the UK when you say Europe, most European countries actually use a “.” or a “-” as separator. In Germany and Austria we would usually write “09.11” or “9.11”, and I think these are also the most common formats in the rest of Europe.
Bob Fostersays
Germany — one of the most peaceful and civilized countries on the planet. Plus they can laugh at themselves. C’mon America, lets get on with it. If the fucking Germans can do it, so can we!
Germany — one of the most peaceful and civilized countries on the planet.
You know for sure the world has gone Wahoonie shaped when people say this about the clusterfuck that is my home country.
PS
I love the video
diannesays
@13: No, actually, that was just me being lazy and using the divider I’m used to as a random separator between the day and the month. I’m not sure if anyone besides the US actually uses the slash.
rietpluimsays
The Nobel prize for these people!
daemoniossays
Actually in Portugal the most common date format is dd/mm/yyyy, although we are promiscuous and also often use the dd-mm-yyyy format a lot. I kind of like the German dot system and have been known to use it.
On-topic, great video and extremely inspiring. I wish we’d all have the same attitude, but the trend in Europe unfortunately is leaning towards more nationalism – see Brexit and the refugee crisis.
voyagersays
I feel so silly, but I cried watching this. I wish my father was alive to see it. He passed onto me a certain German cultural shame for the atrocities of the Second World War. Dad immigrated to Canada in the early fifties from Germany. He seldom spoke of those early years in Quebec and ultimately Ontario, but I knew they were difficult. He worked like a dog to lose his accent and refused to allow me to learn to speak German. He was only 16 at the end of the war and in Hitler youth, but it was either that or prison camp. He had already lost his mother and a brother to the Russian camps. He felt so lucky to come to Canada and just wanted to be a proud Canuck. Today I think he is smiling and maybe proud to be German too, after all.
diannesays
maybe proud to be German too, after all.
Proud of not being proud. It’s the thing that first made German culture attractive to me. Growing up in Texas I simply can’t stand overt patriotism. Pride in learning your lesson and doing better next time…that I can relate to.
voyagersays
Yes, thanks Dianne. That is more exactly want I was trying to say. Proud that things have changed so much.
voyagersays
Sorry, I mean what I was trying to say. Two finger typing fail.
jcsscjsays
Whenever I hear 9 11 I think of Porsche.
Siobhansays
They also revised their sexual assault laws recently in a way that makes it easier for victims to press charges.
You know for sure the world has gone Wahoonie shaped when people say this about the clusterfuck that is my home country.
There is certailny a lot, and I mean A LOT, to improve in Germany. The church has still too strong a hold on politics and too much power over people’s fates. The sexism marches strong on and to pretend that homophobia, transphobia, fascism and xenophobia are things of the past is naive.
But I would not call German a “clusterfuck”. In the context of the world, Germany is one of the best countries to live in from my (limited) experience. I have met more prejudice when working and traveling in US than I have in Germany. Germany has great health care, great social services, great community cohesion and people are on average friendly, welcoming and accepting.
Of course not all germans have learned from their history, but just like the video shows a decent portion of them have. And that is extremely important.
The eternal asshole is alas omnipresent and loud, but in some place has less power than in others.
As one of those not-proud Germans, I have…issues with this video. It’s still very much mired in nationalism. Sure, they’re trying to invoke a tolerant and multi-cultural view of nationalism, but it’s nationalism nonetheless.
Except that this health care is a fucked-up bureaucratic mess of dozens of public and hundreds of private insurers. And don’t even get me started on how shit it is freelancers (in short, if you earn less than an assumed amount of what a freelancer would at minimum earn, you still pay health insurances on that minimum amount. This might actually get you into a hole, yay.)
great social services
No. Education is a mess, because each state does its own thing. That failed Studiengebühren-experiment left years of ruin and it’s not like the financial situation in universities is any better now. The Hartz 4 restructuring of unemployment benefits was brutal and it’s still constantly being dismantled further. I could write pages upon pages of how shitty it is, I could vomit.
great community cohesion
Get the fuck out. Rigaer 94.
people are on average friendly, welcoming and accepting
Yes, right, and that’s why there’s a burning refugee home every few days. Sure.
No, I very much agree with Giliell on the cluster-fuck. In fact, I’d say that term doesn’t got far enough, even.
Zeppelinsays
DrMcCoy: Having had some experience of the centralised, standardised education system in England, I’m very grateful that I got to have the rest of my education in “messy” Germany.
I’ve never felt more like I was living in some kind of oppressive totalitarian regime than in Sixth Form College, with politically motivated top-down standards and rules and bullshit quantifiable box-ticking metrics and brainless standardised tests hemming in teachers and students from every side.
It did nothing to improve actual learning and education, of course. But we sure learned which 8 specific words needed to be in our explanation of RNA transcription (or whatever) — because that underpaid tired schlub working for some education contractor, who marks standardised tests from all over the country all day based on a set of boxes to tick for each exercise…if they don’t tick all the boxes, we get a bad grade, the biology teacher is out of a job, and the school gets less funding.
The German education system has problems, but federalism isn’t one of them.
Rob Grigjanissays
DrMcCoy @28: Are there any countries which more closely approach your idea of competent governance?
ck, the Irate Lumpsays
dianne wrote:
In the US dates are written Month/Day, in Europe they’re written Day/Month.
In Canada, numeric dates are just plain confusion. Official government issued dates are often either yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy (occasionally using dashes or periods as separators instead), but the ridiculous U.S. format of MM/dd/yyyy is also very common. I tend to prefer yyyy-MM-dd, since it’s unambiguous, and computer sortable as an additional benefit.
Ichthyicsays
Rammstein should be proud.
They were. I saw a tweet from them that approved of the video.
I’d like my native country The Netherlands becoming the 17th Bundesrepublik ASAP.
John Moralessays
Proud of not being proud.
Remarkable.
twosevenoneeightsays
Please, please, take us Austrians back.
Loftysays
As a grotty great big German born man, I cried.
Saganite, a haunter of demonssays
I don’t really care what you use as separators for your dating system, but the order in the US system is just weird to me. I’m used to dd-mm-(yy)yy, where it goes from smallest unit to largest unit, but I’m also perfectly fine with (yy)yy-mm-dd, which is great for filing documents for easy access or whatever, largest to smallest unit. But going back and forth, mm-dd-(yy)yy? That I really don’t like. Why start with the middling unit?
bojac6says
@38 Sagamore – I once tried to find some sources on this. I always assumed it was because in American English, when a date is spoken, you say month then day. For instance today is “July 12th.” It’s just the rhythm of American English, as opposed to saying “the 12th of July.”. However there is no evidence to back this up.
Historically, writing a date as “July 12, 2016” first appeared in English newspapers, specifically the London Gazette in 1666 (Specifically “Septemp, 10, 1666 [sic]”). It quickly caught on and most letters from the 17th-20th century in Britain have that date format. Before then, dates were always “12th July 2016” in periodicals. While English papers adopted this day format, official documents maintained the more formal and wordy “the Twelfth Day of July in the Year Two Thousand and Sixteen.” However, American official documents used the new format from the very first one written. Right at the top of the Declaration of Independence is written “July 4, 1776”
It’s important to note that the modern calendar is really only about 300 years old and caring about what day it is is even newer. Language takes a long time to develop and adjust. But the take away is nobody really knows why the English language ended up with two acceptable date formats.
Nick Gottssays
Like several others in the thread, I prefer, and use, yyyy-mm-dd, the only system that really makes sense.
Why start with the middling unit? – Saganite@38
To go with the inches, pounds, and degrees Fahrenheit?
diannesays
Except that this health care is a fucked-up bureaucratic mess of dozens of public and hundreds of private insurers.
As a US-American my first reaction was, “BWAHAHAHA! You wimps don’t know from fucked up bureaucratic insurance messes!” But that is a bit too “dear Muslima” for my comfort when I thought about it. There are definitely gaps in the German system and it is a bit messy at times. Much easier to use and often better outcomes than the US, but that’s no excuse for ignoring the problems. Whatever system the Swedes are using, it seems to kick butt: cancer survival in Sweden, at least, is consistently higher than elsewhere in the world and is higher in both older and younger people. Cancer survival in Germany is consistently higher in younger people than in the US, but lower in older people, which suggests to me a bit of ageism in cancer treatment that really needs to be looked into.
I’m sorry, this is way off topic, isn’t it?
diannesays
Re dates: The US Independence Day holiday is usually said as “The fourth of July.” Go figure. I have no real idea how that happened. OTOH, the differences in spelling between British and American English (i.e. the dropping of “u” in some words) were, in fact, added to be obnoxious.
If some day all countries on earth had a grand unifying of standards, I would be in favor of going with the European style ddmmyy(yy) date system, pick any divider between the units, the metric system of weights and measures, and driving on the right hand side of the road. I am indifferent on the issue of whether a number should be written “1,234,567.89” or “1.234.567,89” and would suggest going with whichever the majority of the world already uses, not that I know what that is.
konservenknilchsays
Hah. It’s a great video, nice to see it get some international attention.
Important to note, Böhmermann is still under prosecution by orders of Erdogan and a rather bizarre law that everyone forgot about. By now, he has about 1,500 independent lawsuits after him, filed by Erdogan’s cronies. Let’s hope for the best.
Also, although it is an ancient joke, I adore the line “Read Kant, cunt!” ;)
konservenknilchsays
Hah. It’s a great video, nice to see it get some international attention.
Important to note, Böhmermann is still under prosecution by orders of Erdogan and a rather bizarre law that everyone forgot about. By now, he has about 1,500 independent lawsuits after him, filed by Erdogan’s cronies. Let’s hope for the best.
Also, although it is an ancient joke, I adore the line “Read Kant, cunt!” ;)
@DrMcCoy #28
WTF??? Did you even read what I wrote or did someone’s saing something positive about how Germany is run bring red haze in front of you eyes so you chose to interpret it in the most uncharitable way?
Because I clearly stated that there are a lot of problems in Germany, a lot of xenophobes etc. Those problems have to be pointed out so there can be progress. Which, btw, is exactly wha this video does. However you are answering to me as if I wrote that Germany is ein Wunderland where unicorns roam the country while farting rainbows and shitting gold nuggets.
I agree with the points you make. German education and health insurance etc. have their flaws that ought to be rectified by now because the solutions are known (can be seen in other states). But both, even in their flawed current state, are vastly superior to what you see in most of the world and are a dream come true to many.
The word “clusterfuck” is a very strong word. It (to me at least) implies a mostly defunct state. And Germany is far from that. Every metrics that I ever looked at showed Germany as above average.
Or do you think that the refugee crisis hits Germany so hard because all those desperate people want to get into a clusterfuck state? No, they are fleeing a clusterfuck state(s) and Germany is, very clearly, far better than that and one of the best options available to them.
It is fair game to criticise Germanys flaws and working towards their betterment, I do not wish to “dearmuslima” anybody. But overemphasising them seems improper to me. It is important to note that average German is privileged compared to a whole lot of people around the world (even within EU) just by virtue of being born and living in German state as it currently functions.
blgmntssays
The word “clusterfuck” is a very strong word. It (to me at least) implies a mostly defunct state. And Germany is far from that.
… if you are (at least) middle class, healthy or sought after “trained/qualified worker”. Other people will get defined away statistically.
No way. Nothing good for Germany ever came from Austria. Austria may still elect an actual Nazi as president, so we’d be fucking crazy to throw our lot in with yours.
+++
German social systems are generally OK if you are educated and able enough to fight. The problem is that the people who need help and support the most are those the least likely to receive it.
Yes, we’Re doing what is known as “Jammern auf hohem Niveau”, complaining while being on a high level. But still, it is horrible to think that there’s no better place in this world than this one which is clearly far from being OK.
Statistics is the only way to evaluate how large populations compare with each other. And in comparisons within population, there will always be people who fall under the average. We should work towards bettering the policies that govern our lives, but lets not pretend that anything shorter of utopia is useless. We can only try and improve our societies so that fewer and fewer people “get defined away statistically”, but it will never be perfect for the simple reason that people are not perfect and are diverse.
@Giliell #45
it is horrible to think that there’s no better place in this world than this one which is clearly far from being OK.
That I agree with. I actually think that Germany is not that much better than other EU states and is not as good as some of the people fleeing there think it is. For example when it comes to people bellow the powerty line in the context of the world is Germany still above average, but in the context of EU not so good and even some former eastern block countries are possibly better off in this particular regard.
I adore this. It’s got about a dozen great quotes in it.
“You are not the people, you are the past” is one of the most succinct dismissals of the PEGIDA/AfD movement that I’ve ever heard. I love it.
Great video – I especially liked the woman and her bicycle pump. (“Look out, I’m coming … to inflate your tires!”)
“Remember, remember the 9th of November” indeed. Germany is a spectacular example of not forgetting the past, while not being imprisoned by it either. (Prime Minister Abe, please attend.)
Wonder what the chances are of this being heard by any Trump supporters? If they did, I suspect their main concern would be “Oh, the abuse! That poor child! They made her say bad words!
My face hurts from smiling. That was so clever!
In the US dates are written Month/Day, in Europe they’re written Day/Month. So 9/11 could mean the 11th of September or the 9th of November, depending. I’ve decided that when someone tells me to remember 9/11 I’m going to assume that they mean to remember the 9th of November.
That was a pretty good Rammstein take-off, too!
Neo Magazin Royale is pretty much the only worthwhile thing German public TV spends those Rundfunkbeiträge on these days.
Rammstein should be proud.
Speaking of which: “We are proud of not being proud.” For some reason, that line appeals to me very much.
Great video but I was expecting it to end with the dog licking someone’s face.
@ quotetheunquote, #3
No, I think they’d just try to pour scorn on the people behind it for trying to push “political correctness” on everyone, or some other such horse shit.
Huh. Two great German performances to smile at in such a short time. This, and the men’s football team at the Euros (they wuz robbed, I tells ya). Best individual performance goes to the girl in the video.
@#8 rq
It’s a notion I agree with very much, too. It’s the exact opposite of the “American Exceptionalism”-style bullshit that’s holding not just the US but similarly inclined peoples back from improving and achieving greatness. Getting rid of hollow nationalism is very important.
@dianne
“In the US dates are written Month/Day, in Europe they’re written Day/Month.”
You are probably referring to the UK when you say Europe, most European countries actually use a “.” or a “-” as separator. In Germany and Austria we would usually write “09.11” or “9.11”, and I think these are also the most common formats in the rest of Europe.
Germany — one of the most peaceful and civilized countries on the planet. Plus they can laugh at themselves. C’mon America, lets get on with it. If the fucking Germans can do it, so can we!
You know for sure the world has gone Wahoonie shaped when people say this about the clusterfuck that is my home country.
PS
I love the video
@13: No, actually, that was just me being lazy and using the divider I’m used to as a random separator between the day and the month. I’m not sure if anyone besides the US actually uses the slash.
The Nobel prize for these people!
Actually in Portugal the most common date format is dd/mm/yyyy, although we are promiscuous and also often use the dd-mm-yyyy format a lot. I kind of like the German dot system and have been known to use it.
On-topic, great video and extremely inspiring. I wish we’d all have the same attitude, but the trend in Europe unfortunately is leaning towards more nationalism – see Brexit and the refugee crisis.
I feel so silly, but I cried watching this. I wish my father was alive to see it. He passed onto me a certain German cultural shame for the atrocities of the Second World War. Dad immigrated to Canada in the early fifties from Germany. He seldom spoke of those early years in Quebec and ultimately Ontario, but I knew they were difficult. He worked like a dog to lose his accent and refused to allow me to learn to speak German. He was only 16 at the end of the war and in Hitler youth, but it was either that or prison camp. He had already lost his mother and a brother to the Russian camps. He felt so lucky to come to Canada and just wanted to be a proud Canuck. Today I think he is smiling and maybe proud to be German too, after all.
Proud of not being proud. It’s the thing that first made German culture attractive to me. Growing up in Texas I simply can’t stand overt patriotism. Pride in learning your lesson and doing better next time…that I can relate to.
Yes, thanks Dianne. That is more exactly want I was trying to say. Proud that things have changed so much.
Sorry, I mean what I was trying to say. Two finger typing fail.
Whenever I hear 9 11 I think of Porsche.
They also revised their sexual assault laws recently in a way that makes it easier for victims to press charges.
@Giliell #15
There is certailny a lot, and I mean A LOT, to improve in Germany. The church has still too strong a hold on politics and too much power over people’s fates. The sexism marches strong on and to pretend that homophobia, transphobia, fascism and xenophobia are things of the past is naive.
But I would not call German a “clusterfuck”. In the context of the world, Germany is one of the best countries to live in from my (limited) experience. I have met more prejudice when working and traveling in US than I have in Germany. Germany has great health care, great social services, great community cohesion and people are on average friendly, welcoming and accepting.
Of course not all germans have learned from their history, but just like the video shows a decent portion of them have. And that is extremely important.
The eternal asshole is alas omnipresent and loud, but in some place has less power than in others.
Made me smile
As one of those not-proud Germans, I have…issues with this video. It’s still very much mired in nationalism. Sure, they’re trying to invoke a tolerant and multi-cultural view of nationalism, but it’s nationalism nonetheless.
@Charly, #25
Except that this health care is a fucked-up bureaucratic mess of dozens of public and hundreds of private insurers. And don’t even get me started on how shit it is freelancers (in short, if you earn less than an assumed amount of what a freelancer would at minimum earn, you still pay health insurances on that minimum amount. This might actually get you into a hole, yay.)
No. Education is a mess, because each state does its own thing. That failed Studiengebühren-experiment left years of ruin and it’s not like the financial situation in universities is any better now. The Hartz 4 restructuring of unemployment benefits was brutal and it’s still constantly being dismantled further. I could write pages upon pages of how shitty it is, I could vomit.
Get the fuck out. Rigaer 94.
Yes, right, and that’s why there’s a burning refugee home every few days. Sure.
No, I very much agree with Giliell on the cluster-fuck. In fact, I’d say that term doesn’t got far enough, even.
DrMcCoy: Having had some experience of the centralised, standardised education system in England, I’m very grateful that I got to have the rest of my education in “messy” Germany.
I’ve never felt more like I was living in some kind of oppressive totalitarian regime than in Sixth Form College, with politically motivated top-down standards and rules and bullshit quantifiable box-ticking metrics and brainless standardised tests hemming in teachers and students from every side.
It did nothing to improve actual learning and education, of course. But we sure learned which 8 specific words needed to be in our explanation of RNA transcription (or whatever) — because that underpaid tired schlub working for some education contractor, who marks standardised tests from all over the country all day based on a set of boxes to tick for each exercise…if they don’t tick all the boxes, we get a bad grade, the biology teacher is out of a job, and the school gets less funding.
The German education system has problems, but federalism isn’t one of them.
DrMcCoy @28: Are there any countries which more closely approach your idea of competent governance?
dianne wrote:
In Canada, numeric dates are just plain confusion. Official government issued dates are often either yyyy/MM/dd or dd/MM/yyyy (occasionally using dashes or periods as separators instead), but the ridiculous U.S. format of MM/dd/yyyy is also very common. I tend to prefer yyyy-MM-dd, since it’s unambiguous, and computer sortable as an additional benefit.
They were. I saw a tweet from them that approved of the video.
@Ichtyic I *had* to check, and yes, here is it: https://twitter.com/RSprachrohr/status/718499166838726657, complete with #MakeGermanyGreatAgain O_O
I’d like my native country The Netherlands becoming the 17th Bundesrepublik ASAP.
Remarkable.
Please, please, take us Austrians back.
As a grotty great big German born man, I cried.
I don’t really care what you use as separators for your dating system, but the order in the US system is just weird to me. I’m used to dd-mm-(yy)yy, where it goes from smallest unit to largest unit, but I’m also perfectly fine with (yy)yy-mm-dd, which is great for filing documents for easy access or whatever, largest to smallest unit. But going back and forth, mm-dd-(yy)yy? That I really don’t like. Why start with the middling unit?
@38 Sagamore – I once tried to find some sources on this. I always assumed it was because in American English, when a date is spoken, you say month then day. For instance today is “July 12th.” It’s just the rhythm of American English, as opposed to saying “the 12th of July.”. However there is no evidence to back this up.
Historically, writing a date as “July 12, 2016” first appeared in English newspapers, specifically the London Gazette in 1666 (Specifically “Septemp, 10, 1666 [sic]”). It quickly caught on and most letters from the 17th-20th century in Britain have that date format. Before then, dates were always “12th July 2016” in periodicals. While English papers adopted this day format, official documents maintained the more formal and wordy “the Twelfth Day of July in the Year Two Thousand and Sixteen.” However, American official documents used the new format from the very first one written. Right at the top of the Declaration of Independence is written “July 4, 1776”
It’s important to note that the modern calendar is really only about 300 years old and caring about what day it is is even newer. Language takes a long time to develop and adjust. But the take away is nobody really knows why the English language ended up with two acceptable date formats.
Like several others in the thread, I prefer, and use, yyyy-mm-dd, the only system that really makes sense.
To go with the inches, pounds, and degrees Fahrenheit?
As a US-American my first reaction was, “BWAHAHAHA! You wimps don’t know from fucked up bureaucratic insurance messes!” But that is a bit too “dear Muslima” for my comfort when I thought about it. There are definitely gaps in the German system and it is a bit messy at times. Much easier to use and often better outcomes than the US, but that’s no excuse for ignoring the problems. Whatever system the Swedes are using, it seems to kick butt: cancer survival in Sweden, at least, is consistently higher than elsewhere in the world and is higher in both older and younger people. Cancer survival in Germany is consistently higher in younger people than in the US, but lower in older people, which suggests to me a bit of ageism in cancer treatment that really needs to be looked into.
I’m sorry, this is way off topic, isn’t it?
Re dates: The US Independence Day holiday is usually said as “The fourth of July.” Go figure. I have no real idea how that happened. OTOH, the differences in spelling between British and American English (i.e. the dropping of “u” in some words) were, in fact, added to be obnoxious.
If some day all countries on earth had a grand unifying of standards, I would be in favor of going with the European style ddmmyy(yy) date system, pick any divider between the units, the metric system of weights and measures, and driving on the right hand side of the road. I am indifferent on the issue of whether a number should be written “1,234,567.89” or “1.234.567,89” and would suggest going with whichever the majority of the world already uses, not that I know what that is.
Hah. It’s a great video, nice to see it get some international attention.
Important to note, Böhmermann is still under prosecution by orders of Erdogan and a rather bizarre law that everyone forgot about. By now, he has about 1,500 independent lawsuits after him, filed by Erdogan’s cronies. Let’s hope for the best.
Also, although it is an ancient joke, I adore the line “Read Kant, cunt!” ;)
Hah. It’s a great video, nice to see it get some international attention.
Important to note, Böhmermann is still under prosecution by orders of Erdogan and a rather bizarre law that everyone forgot about. By now, he has about 1,500 independent lawsuits after him, filed by Erdogan’s cronies. Let’s hope for the best.
Also, although it is an ancient joke, I adore the line “Read Kant, cunt!” ;)
@DrMcCoy #28
WTF??? Did you even read what I wrote or did someone’s saing something positive about how Germany is run bring red haze in front of you eyes so you chose to interpret it in the most uncharitable way?
Because I clearly stated that there are a lot of problems in Germany, a lot of xenophobes etc. Those problems have to be pointed out so there can be progress. Which, btw, is exactly wha this video does. However you are answering to me as if I wrote that Germany is ein Wunderland where unicorns roam the country while farting rainbows and shitting gold nuggets.
I agree with the points you make. German education and health insurance etc. have their flaws that ought to be rectified by now because the solutions are known (can be seen in other states). But both, even in their flawed current state, are vastly superior to what you see in most of the world and are a dream come true to many.
The word “clusterfuck” is a very strong word. It (to me at least) implies a mostly defunct state. And Germany is far from that. Every metrics that I ever looked at showed Germany as above average.
Or do you think that the refugee crisis hits Germany so hard because all those desperate people want to get into a clusterfuck state? No, they are fleeing a clusterfuck state(s) and Germany is, very clearly, far better than that and one of the best options available to them.
It is fair game to criticise Germanys flaws and working towards their betterment, I do not wish to “dearmuslima” anybody. But overemphasising them seems improper to me. It is important to note that average German is privileged compared to a whole lot of people around the world (even within EU) just by virtue of being born and living in German state as it currently functions.
… if you are (at least) middle class, healthy or sought after “trained/qualified worker”. Other people will get defined away statistically.
No way. Nothing good for Germany ever came from Austria. Austria may still elect an actual Nazi as president, so we’d be fucking crazy to throw our lot in with yours.
+++
German social systems are generally OK if you are educated and able enough to fight. The problem is that the people who need help and support the most are those the least likely to receive it.
Yes, we’Re doing what is known as “Jammern auf hohem Niveau”, complaining while being on a high level. But still, it is horrible to think that there’s no better place in this world than this one which is clearly far from being OK.
@blgmnts #44
Statistics is the only way to evaluate how large populations compare with each other. And in comparisons within population, there will always be people who fall under the average. We should work towards bettering the policies that govern our lives, but lets not pretend that anything shorter of utopia is useless. We can only try and improve our societies so that fewer and fewer people “get defined away statistically”, but it will never be perfect for the simple reason that people are not perfect and are diverse.
@Giliell #45
That I agree with. I actually think that Germany is not that much better than other EU states and is not as good as some of the people fleeing there think it is. For example when it comes to people bellow the powerty line in the context of the world is Germany still above average, but in the context of EU not so good and even some former eastern block countries are possibly better off in this particular regard.