Wow, such a breadth of choice

The Germans are non-ironically having an election in which Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz are the two front runners.

The choice seems to be quite simple.

Either you vote for Angela Merkel’s CDU and face the death by demographic replacement which will surely arrive by the year 2050 as things continue as they are, or alternately you vote for Martin Schulz’s SPD and face the death by demographic replacement which will surely arrive by the year 2050 as things continue as they are.

There are some policy disagreements that they have on other issues and usually I would actually go to the length of highlighting them and describing them, but when it comes to the issue of Germany it frankly doesn’t even matter anymore. After all, if Germany is going to seriously cease to exist as a nation then making projections about a nation which will not even be populated by the same people would be a pointless exercise from the perspective of ethno-nationalism. It is extremely sad.

In any case, let’s see how the situation looks in the polls at present, for this thoroughly pointless election:

POLITICO, ‘SPD in the lead according to German poll’, 19 Feb 2017:

Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) have slumped to second place in an opinion poll conducted by the Emnid institute, with the Social Democrats (SPD) in the top spot for the first time since 2006.

The SPD’s climb comes after the party picked the former President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, as its candidate for chancellor.

Emnid’s poll of 1,885 voters found that the SPD would get 33 percent of the German vote, while Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, would get 32 percent.

Schulz’s party has gained 12 points in the last four weeks, according to German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

The SPD’s surge in the polls will add more pressure on Merkel, as she seeks her fourth term as chancellor within an uneasy CDU/CSU alliance. Merkel has faced tough criticism from the sister party over the controversial decision to temporarily open Germany’s borders to refugees in 2015.

This the latest in a series of polls that shows SPD’s rapidly rising popularity among German voters. Emnid’s poll chimes with separate findings by Politbarometer, a long-standing German election poll from German broadcaster ZDF, which showed Friday that only 38 percent of voters would like to see Merkel carry on her job as chancellor and that 49 percent preferred Schulz.

But Germany hasn’t completely fallen out of love with Merkel. ZDF’s poll also found that 71 percent of Germans think that the current chancellor is doing a good job, despite her party’s drop in popularity.

German elections are scheduled for September.

Such vibrant campaigning

Meanwhile, the way that Martin Schulz is conducting his campaign has drawn criticism from Wolfgang Shaeuble, a very strange-looking criticism at first brush:

POLITICO, ‘Wolfgang Schäuble: Martin Schulz is the German Donald Trump’, 10 Feb 2017:

Martin Schulz, the German center-left’s candidate to be chancellor, is behaving like U.S. President Donald Trump, according to German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

“If Schulz calls upon his supporters to chant ‘Make Europe great again‘ then that’s almost literally [like] Trump,” Schäuble told Der Spiegel in an interview published Friday.

He said Schulz, a former European Parliament president, was acting in a “populist way.”

Schäuble said Schulz needed to “think a little [bit more].” He warned that in times when there is a surge in populist movements, politicians should be careful with their language.

The SPD’s move to nominate Schulz as their candidate for chancellor in the September 24 federal election led to a surge in party membership applications. Opinion polls show that backing Schulz helped the party to its highest approval rating since 2013.

At first a person would think, “Hmm, something is very wrong here, in what important way does Martin Schulz resemble Donald Trump, aside from the use of a similar campaign slogan?”

Surely Schaeuble is just a ridiculous old man who is approaching senility, and he has begun to make even less sense than usual in his statement?

Nevertheless I decided to actually give Schaeuble’s statement some thought. Could I manage to find some unintended ‘sense’ in Schaeuble’s seemingly nonsensical statement?

After about twenty milliseconds of deep thought – which in neurological terms is basically ‘instantly’ – I arrived at the answer. First, take a look at this quote concerning Schulz:

Haaretz / Avraham Burg, ‘Say a big ‘thank you’ to Martin Schulz’, 14 Feb 2014:

[...] Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament, is a close friend of mine. On most issues connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we disagree. He is closer to the Israeli mainstream, and his positions resemble those of Labor Party chairman Isaac Herzog. He once told me, during a frank and stern conversation, “For me, the new Germany exists only in order to ensure the existence of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” [...]

Secondly, take a look at this quote concerning Trump:

The Hill / Elliot Smilowitz, ‘Trump: ‘Stay strong Israel,’ my inauguration is approaching’, 28 Dec 2016:

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday morning ripped the Obama administration’s treatment of Israel and pledged to end the “disdain and disrespect” for the country.

“We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect. They used to have a great friend in the U.S., but not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)! Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!” Trump wrote in a series of tweets. [...]

If you look at it from that angle, then Schaeuble accidentally spoke a kind of truth in the midst of his babbling, somehow.

There indeed is a resemblance between Schulz and Trump. From the perspective of Jewish Zionists in the global sense, the two individuals are almost completely identical.