Sunday, September 13, 2015

Deutschland schafft sich ab


Circa twenty years ago, after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the two halves of Germany were being painfully reassembled, the New Jersey-based company Franklin Electronic Publishers, where I worked as Editor-in-Chief, hosted two executives in lexicography from the venerable Langenscheidt company.   I picked them up at their hotel near my home in Princeton, and drove them to our headquarters in Mount Holly.   On the way, I asked them about the affect of Reunification on the German language.

To my surprise, they were not especially interested in the question.   More surprising was the reason :  in their estimation, the German language, far from being strengthened by the new political accession of fellow-speakers, would recede more and more from use, and eventually go the way of Danish.   And to my astonishment (particularly coming from German bilingual-lexicographers, for whom their language, and the desires of foreigners to learn it, is meat and drink), this prospect left them curiously indifferent.
By most of the Gutmenschen of today’s Europe, such acedia (misconstrued as sang-froid) in the face of the expected inevitable, would be reckoned admirable.   But I found it strangely troubling.

Nota bene:  The unreferenced expected inheritor of the German-language mantle  was English.  Little did they imagine that, in some now-conceivable scenarios, it could one day be Arabic.


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Falls Sie im Doktor-Justiz-Sammelsurium
weiterblättern möchten,
Bitte hier klicken:

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With comparable astonishment, the world now beholds Germany’s self-dilution, quite possibly leading to self-dissolution. 



Apart from the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this might be the beginnings of the most significant geopolitical (voire, demographic -- which ultimately trumps all else) development in our lifetimes.
To all this, I shall have no comment.
In part, because it’s not principally my battle (though I care about this deeply).
In part, because hardly anyone reads this blog anyway (nor is politics  really its brief; vielmehr, Theologia Mathematika).
But principally, because there is already abundant intelligent and impassioned commentary from Germans, and from all who care about Germany -- nay, Deutschtum überhaupt.  -- Not, however, in the pages of the MainStream Media, which has long been gurgling with Gutmenschenschwärmerei.   Rather, in the lengthy and well-reasoned readers’ comments, on sites like Telepolis or Die Zeit (in the latter case, massively contrary to the bisounours editorial line.)  [Later, I hope to append a selection of these.

Kurz gefasst:
Apart from Thilo Sarrazin’s monster bestseller, from which I have borrowed the title of this post, consult:

Hurra, wir kapitulieren! Von der Lust am Einknicken ist ein 2006 erschienenes Buch von Henryk M. Broder, das einerseits die Haltung der Regierungen Europas gegenüber Islamisten, andererseits die angebliche Zurückhaltung und Selbstzensur der intellektuellen Linken Deutschlands gegenüber dem Islam scharf und auf polemische Weise kritisiert. 

Hurra!  Wir kapitulieren !!!


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Interlude:    Die Deutsche Sprache schafft sich ab

Using my wife’s tablet, I attempted to bring up DeutscheWelle.  It brought up only the English-language site.  I specifically added “.de”; stubbornly, it changed that to “.com” and re-presented the English site.  So I went to the German Wikipedia and clicked on the link labeled “Offizielle Webpräsenz”:  it too brought me to the English site!

Well, maybe that’s just the tablet.  It has recently introduced a dumbed-down version of news.google.[…];  I was able to revert to the original presentation on the English version, with a few clicks,  but these didn’t work for the French and German.
So I tried it on the MacIntosh:  same deal.

Ultimately I found the real site by having bookmarked an article, back when you could still get to it easily, and from this clicked through to: http://www.dw.com/de/themen/s-9077.  [That is just today’s;  I never was able to pull up a permanent German homepage.]

[Weiteres zum Thema hier.]

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In Deutschland herrscht  “helpers’ high” (a.k.a. “Sommermärchen”,  “Glückswelle”, & “Willkommenshysterie”).   It is a strange phenomenon.  At the Bahnhofs, ecstatic welcome is extended to Germany’s future (and partly present) gravediggers.    This euphoria is hailed in all of Germany’s mainstream media, and nay-sayers are smacked with the “Nazikeule”.


Our genes stopped working.
Could you replace us please?
(We left the key  under the mat.)

The reasons for all this, surpass my understanding. 
The madness of crowds.   So was ist in Mitteleuropa schon passiert, zur Lebenszeit Freuds und Jungs;  aber weder dieser noch jener  hat das Phänomen  richtig zu bewerten gewusst.

For now, we’ll simply cite a sharp-eyed reader’s comment:


Und wehe es argumentiert jemand dagegen. Er wird zwar nicht als
"Volksschädling" bezeichnet, aber sehr ähnlich behandelt.
Stigmatisiert wird er, ausgeschlossen, erhält Redeverbot und ist
sozial ausgeschlossen vom kollektiven Glücksempfinden.

Und 1933 in Deutschland und 38 in Österreich war es sicher ähnlich.
Diese zermürbenden Parteistreitereien waren plötzlich weg, alle im
Gefühl der glänzenden Zukunft geeint.

Wir erleben ein Massenphänomen.
Wir erleben Politik der Gefühle.
Wir erleben Faschismus in einer ganz unerwartenden Form.


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Superb:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_8kc19DL70&app=desktop


[Update 23 Sept 2015]
Swimming in the river of humanity are shady characters, too, admitted criminals, ISIS sympathizers and a couple of guys from Fallujah, one with a fresh bullet wound, who when asked their occupation seemed confused.
“Army,” said one. His friend corrected him. “We’re all drivers,” he said.


[Update 8 Oct 2015]  Mum's the word:

Dieser Artikel kann nicht kommentiert werden.


[Nov 2015] "With Open Gates":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0hD7IffTJs


Allgemeines zum Thema:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/04/autolytic-empathy_30.html


[Update 9 January 2016]


Travelers’ phrasebook
Enjoy your stay in Germany !

[Update Juni 2016]

http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/ruhrgebiet/bin-laden-leibwaechter-klagt-gegen-abschiebung-100.html
Seit 2006 hat der Verfassungsschutz Sami A. im Visier. Er soll enger Vertrauter von Osama Bin Laden gewesen sein und zu seiner Leibgarde gehört haben. Die Stadt Bochum wollte ihn bereits mehrfach in sein Heimatland zurückschicken. Am Mittwoch (15.06.2016) hat das Verwaltungsgericht Gelsenkirchen entschieden, dass er nicht abgeschoben werden darf.

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