I am beginning to believe that no one doubles down on misery like Germans do. They’ve raised it to a high art.
Now, granted, to some extent, now that we’ve had a chance to sit back and watch the agonizing process of Western European politics unfold, there are the rare bright spots, like the effervescent and extraordinary Giorgia Meloni of Italy.
Yeah.
There’s her…and that’s about it.
The entire parade of weak-kneed, milquetoast, mewling-mouthed, mendacious operators, both nationally elected or appointed to the European Union’s rarified strata, are all cut from that same privileged cloth.
No wonder they hated Meloni and did their best to ice her out. Girlfriend hadn’t been raised in the club, the Brahmin club. The remnants of the old feudal order that still cling to Europe like a stenchy piece of fabric that’s so encrusted it practically stands on its own. With one good, solid washing, it would vaporize away, it’s so rotted, and that’s what the ruling order is concerned with.
So they, be it France, Germany, or even the United Kingdom to some extent, use the flexible levers of the complex Parliamentary system they developed over centuries, as the nobility was forced to give up their inherent rights to rule, to isolate threats and crush rebellions democratically.
Marine LePen’s losses in the second round of the French election after triumphing in the first, as opposition candidates struck bargains to deny the National Rally candidates a fair election. The ‘firewall’ around Alice Weidel’s Alternativ for Germany (AfD) party disenfranchising the voices of voters who expected their votes would have representation in the Bundestag.
Sometimes, it’s the spectre of history years past and old habits that are the undoing of the voting public, out of obstinacy. When they completely move against their own obvious best interest in a baffling way.
It has happened in the local elections this past Sunday in Baden-Württemberg, known as Germany’s ‘Auto Heartland’ – ah. Maybe you can see where I’m heading with this.
The area is legendary, and nearly on its knees.
Why one of Germany’s richest regions is gripped with anxiety
Baden-Württemberg’s election is overshadowed by worries over deindustrialisation
…A vast Mercedes museum on Stuttgart’s outskirts, opened by Angela Merkel in 2006, testifies to the car’s role in building Baden-Württemberg’s wealth. But the sector may be facing “the greatest challenge in its history”, says Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, the economy minister. Over 200,000 jobs in and around Stuttgart, the state capital, depend on it. Mercedes and Porsche are laying off workers. Bosch, one of the largest suppliers, will cut 22,000 jobs by 2030, many here in its home state.
Still more troubled are the smaller Mittelstand firms dotted around the state, many of which depend on the internal combustion engine, which faces obsolescence as cars electrify. Companies that might once have downsized are now being wound up, says Martin Mucha, a Stuttgart-based corporate lawyer. Firms’ travails are curbing tax revenues, forcing towns and cities to slash services. Stuttgart’s corporate-tax receipts have fallen by almost half in two years. Nearly half of voters tell pollsters the region could face the fate of Detroit, which fell into destitution and bankruptcy when its car sector crumbled.
The AfD, which rails against the power of German labour unions, has made inroads even here, in this affluent and most unionised region, because some are beginning to connect the Green transition, the vaunted Energie Wende, to the winding down of their standard of living. The Christian Democrats (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party are desperate to draw voters away from AfD, but they can’t sound quite that conservative, because they need to also attract voters who would be willing to cast one for the Green candidate.
…Baden-Württemberg’s rural spots are wealthy too, not at all like the ramshackle, depopulated areas of eastern Germany where the afd thrives. Take Hohenlohe, a region in the state’s north dotted with successful companies. Tim Breitkreuz, the energetic young candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats (cdu), is campaigning here. The houses are big and well kept. Unemployment is just 3.7%. Yet Mr Breitkreuz is locked in battle with an afd rival. A natural optimist, he says he has to dwell on problems to secure voters’ trust. At a cdu campaign event nearby, some party activists rage against what they regard as idiotic decisions imposed by lefties in Berlin, or dogmatic Eurocrats prematurely killing the combustion engine.
If Merz, who campaigned there in person several times, saw anything but a strong CDU showing, it would be a ‘strategic defeat’ and an ill-omen for upcoming contests.
…In Baden-Württemberg, the CDU currently polls at 27%. While this still makes it the strongest party, its lead is narrow. The Greens, polling at 24%, have nominated the experienced and popular politician Cem Özdemir as their candidate for minister-president.
…For Chancellor Friedrich Merz, weak results for the CDU in the southwest would represent a political setback, particularly if the party fails to capture the state premierships. Even without major losses, a combination of strong AfD results and stable centre-left governments would be widely interpreted as a strategic defeat.
To someone watching from afar, it is inconceivable that the Greens, who have been so much at the forefront of the energy disaster that is Germany right now – the Green candidate for minister-president, Cem Özdemir, worked closely with Robert Halbeck, architect of much of the current energywoes besetting the country – should be leading the polling or anywhere near the top.
Once yesterday’s votes were counted, however, it turns out they’d won the whole shebang. By a whisker, yeah. But still counts.
As German blogger eugyppius calls them:
Stupid people in Baden-Württemberg hand massive electoral victory to the Greens so they can continue to sacrifice their industry to the weather gods
In 2011, Angela Merkel idiotically accelerated the German nuclear phase-out just a few months after her coalition passed legislation that would’ve slowed it down by twelve years. Because of an earthquake and a tsunami that happened 13,000 kilometers away in Japan, Merkel suddenly decided that Germany needed to abandon nuclear power as soon as possible, although the Federal Republic knows neither tsunamis nor earthquakes and not even the Japanese drew this drastic conclusion from the Fukushima disaster.
Merkel’s real motivations were, as always, tactical: She hoped to deny the surging Green Party a winning electoral issue in the Baden-Württemberg elections that year, and so we can call her move a twofold failure: The Greens won over 24% of the vote anyway, which was just enough to form a coalition with the Social Democrats and force the CDU into opposition. And today, citizens of a denuclearised Federal Republic must live with a declining economy and ongoing deindustrialisation, thanks in large part to having some of the highest electricity prices in continental Europe. It was a multi-dimensional fractal f**kup, what Merkel did in 2011. We’re still paying for it.
Interesting background, no?
And yet, the voters voted to lather, rinse, repeat.
It’s like Chicago or something.
…Yesterday evening, the bill for all of this humdrum imbecility came due. The Greens emerged as the winners, if barely, with 30.2% of the vote – just a few points down from their historic high of 32.6% in 2021. The CDU improved over their last showing but managed to underperform even the most pessimistic forecasts, with a mere 29.7%.
Thanks to a slight edge in direct mandates, the CDU and the Greens will enter the state parliament with 56 seats each, but that may not matter too much. The CDU have asked the Greens if they might split the Minister Presidency between them, with Hagel and the “realo” Green Özdemir each serving two and a half years, like two little boys taking their turn on the bicycle. Özdemir has said no, because “we are adults.” In truth Özdemir is poised to become the next Minister President of Baden-Württemberg in yet another cursed Kiwi coalition.
This was a predictable outcome, and nevertheless it is astounding. The Greens and the CDU are the undisputed architects of German decline, and yet the prosperous voters of this beautiful southern state have sent both of these terrible parties back into the Landtag with an enormous mandate to do more of the same. This is proof number 5,234,345 that deep and lasting prosperity has the power to do what few other forces can, namely turn millions of otherwise sensible intelligent people into walking retards. Alas, there seems to be no way to de-zombify the voters without making them massively poorer.
DE-ZOMBIFY THE VOTERS
AfD did surge in the area for the first time, which was thanks to a 34% of the workers’ vote according to exit polls. Go figure.
Prognosis for Baden-Württemberg election 3/8/26: Greens hold at 32%, CDU up to 29%, AfD surges to 17.5%. Narrow win for environmentalists over Merz’s party. More green regs, high energy costs, welfare? Germany heads left—consequences incoming! Elections shape policy—watch Europe.… pic.twitter.com/yF6KIVaoHb
— Greg Madden (@GregMaddenUSMC) March 9, 2026
But this guarantees more of the same, driving the auto industry and everyone else out of their region and Germany in general.
I don’t know if it’s Stockholm Syndrome or repressed peasant genes that rise up at the worst time.
Whatever it is, don’t stick your own finger in your eye and then complain you can’t see.
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