'schland und die WM

and also my political musings on America in the context of sports, individualism and Alexis de Tocqueville–have fun everyone.

So I know that it's been more than two weeks since the World Cup (which I shall refer to as the WM–die Weltmeisterschaft–from here on out) started, but I haven't really had much of a chance to blog about it due to traveling and trying to finish presentations during that traveling. First off, let me just say how wild it is being in a country where not liking football (not gonna call it soccer, sorry not sorry) and particularly not caring about the WM is weird. As in you are very much the exception. And may I also say that I absolutely love it. I can't imagine a day where the streets of a place like Boston (or I guess a more appropriated analogy would probably be Urbana-Champaign Illinois) would close simply because the USA won a match in the WM. Emphasis on a. Not the entire thing just simply one match. That's what has been happening in Tübingen, you know when Americans aren't getting stuck in vagina statues. The Neckarbrücke (the main bridge in town) was closed for an hour yesterday simply because people were partying in the streets. A bus was caught in the middle of it, so the bus driver simply pulled out a newspaper and waited for the partying to stop. It's a crazy feeling to be in the middle of all of the hullabaloo. 

For this reason, I am glad that the WM seems to finally be catching on in America. But a friend of mine also posted an article from the Daily Beast entitled Why the Yanks Don't Get Futbol. In case you are too lazy to read the link, here is a brief summary. Essentially, the articles argues that Americans do not understand a sport like football, because football is in every sense of the word a team game. Now you may be saying or thinking, American football is a team game, basketball is a team game, baseball is a team game. What's more American than baseball. Pshaw, Americans don't understand team sports. But think about it, how much emphasis do we put on certain individuals within those teams. We talk far more frequently about Lebron James than we do about the Miami Heat. Or frequently you hear things like, another win for Aaron Rodgers and the Packers. You hear about how many homeruns Ryan Braun scored more than the actual score of the game. And you care, you care deeply about the stats of a certain player, sometimes more than the team overall. As this article puts it, for football, "the only thing that counts is the team: did they win?" The cult of individuality that characterizes many American sports simply does not exist. Thomas Müller scored a hat trick against Portugal, but you didn't hear about that. What you heard was that the Deutsche Nationalmannschaft beat Portugal 4 to 0. And that to me is incredibly refreshing. 

I read Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America as a freshman in college, and despite having written this book in the 1830s (first published in 1835), I think that it still is relevant in analyzing and theorizing as to why the United States of America seems to be so much different than the rest of the western world in so many aspects. This interested freshman year, but reading this Daily Beast article, I kept on thinking about to Tocqueville.  

Some context: Tocqueville traveled to the US during in the 1830s for roughly two years and went around observing and writing about what he saw, which later became Democracy in America. One of the most interesting part for me is his discussion and musings about American Individualism. He writes, "...I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each of them withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Mankind, for him, consists in his children and his personal friends. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, they are near enough, but he does not notice them. He touches them but feels nothing. He exists in and for himself, and though he still may have a family, one can at least say that he has not got a fatherland."

This individualism is still alive and well. I have heard so many times "I don't want to pay for another's person XYZ" whether it be healthcare, food stamps, education, you name it. This discussion doesn't exist in Europe. There is little to no controversy over their healthcare system. Hell, even the radical right-wing parties here don't want to touch government programs like that. And I believe the only reason that controversy over these things exists in America is because of this anti-traditionalist individualism that the United States adopted pretty much at its founding. While this individualism is certainly sometimes admirable, I also think it is what is keeping us different from the rest of the western world. It is why we don't have universalized healthcare or government-funded education the way that most European countries do. I guess you can view that favorably or not, but I think that it is largely to our detriment. 

Before I thought that Tocqueville had merely made a cogent point about our political thinking, but clearly that extends far beyond even into the way that we watch sports. To extend what Nico Hines was saying in his article, Americans can't and won't appreciate football in the same way that the rest of the world does until we confront and perhaps change this individualist lenses through which we as Americans see the world. 

A small PS: Sorry if this isn't exactly what you are looking for with this blog post but as an international relations kid with a pretty serious interest in politics and political theory, I kind of like my political musings. 

A short PPS, I had no idea that Ann Coulter had written this lovely little Op-Ed for the Clarion Ledger when I was writing this. 

So about that Deutscher Wahlkampf...

Disclaimer: This has really nothing to do with me or my German adventures. If you are not interested in me rambling about German politics, you should stop reading. 

So, I don't know if you remember me saying that I will use this to talk about my German adventures and whatever the hell else interests me. This blog post is the whatever the hell else interests me part. Given it is the day before the German election, today seemed as good as any to write up a little blurb about German politics and the German election. (Because well, what else would a nerdy IR/Politik major do?)

First things first about German politics. I am about to categorize people and parties as liberal and conservative. This is in no way shape or form related to the American definition of "liberal" and "conservative". The Democratic Party is far more right wing than the liberal parties in Europe, as explained by the two Cartesian planes below: 

So yes, when I speak about all of this, keep this picture in mind.

To start things off: there are quite a few preliminary differences between the USA and Germany in terms of a lot of things, but especially in terms of politics. Number 1: there are way, way more than two parties. Yes, I know in America, we have multiple parties, but in Europe, that actually means something. Currently in the German Bundestag, there sit 5 different parties: the CDU, FDP, SPD, Die Grünen, and Die Linke. So yeah, multiple parties. With these multiple parties, the governing party makes a grand coalition in the Bundestag such that they can pass things and get things done. As such, there is a ruling coalition and a minority coalition. Currently, the ruling coalition is Schwarz-Gelb, and the minority coalition is Rot-Rot-Grün. Which brings me to another point, each of the parties has a color, which I will delineate later. Finally, there are two German legislative bodies: the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. For lack of intimate knowledge of the Bundesrat and because it's not really the focus of the 2013 Election, I will be focusing solely on the Bundestag. 

Finally, before I begin all of this, let me know if I am factually inaccurate/biased/just flat out wrong. I am an American writing about the politics of a country that I have lived in for a mere three weeks, after all.

The Parties

**Note: these are just the main ones/the ones that interest me. There are many, many more. 

Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU): Currently the main partner of the dominating coalition and holder of the Chancellor's seat, the CDU is a rather conservative party or I guess a better descriptor is classically liberal. They are very big into the whole 'let business do it's thing' thing and is rather focused on the economy. With that said, they still believe that the government should provide a network for social welfare and help protecting the environment. 

Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP): The other 'pro-business' party, so they are all about the laissez-faire thing as well. The junior coalition partner to the CDU, there is the threat that they will not get enough percentage of the vote to have a presence in the Bundestag. 

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD): The main opposition to the CDU, the SPD is focused on the workers. Their main points that they put in my mailbox revolve around raising the minimum wage, more funding for education, more regulations on the finance market, etc. 

Die Grünen: Not surprisingly, the party of the environment. It's founding ideals focused on pacifism and environmental activism. Currently a part of the opposition to the Schwarz-Gelb coalition, the general sense that I have gotten from talking to people is while they are more left-wing than the SPD, they still are seen as largely rational, with achievable goals. 

Die Linke: The most left-wing party in the Bundestag, they are kind of like the SPD on roids. Zum Beispiel, while the SPD wants a 8,50€ minimum wage, die Linke is calling for a 10€ minimum wage, that kind of thing. Also, from what I have seen on Der Spiegel's Bundestag infographic, it doesn't seem that Die Linke vote for any measure unless it is introduced by Die Linke. 

Die Piraten Partei: As its name might indicate, the Piraten Partei is largely focused on the "digital revolution" and keeping government regulations out of the digital sphere. While it is not actually in the Bundestag, the Piraten Partei has gotten enough votes to hold seats in various regional parliaments and is quite popular among younger people. 

Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD): Most frequently referred to as the neo-Nazi party. The NPD is violently anti-immigrant, anti-Euro, and frequently flirts with being banned by the government due to Germany's strict hate speech laws. (While I want to go on with all the random tidbits of knowledge I retained from David Art's book, I will restrain myself.) They currently have no seats in the Bundestag, but I believe they might have a few seats in regional parliaments in the East (but that information could be out of date). 

The Election

So about this election. The biggest deal is that it is a Chancellor's election, which means that Angela Merkel of the CDU has the opportunity to be unseated. While there are many parties in this whole election, for the Chancellor's position, it's pretty much Merkel versus Peer Steinbrück of the SPD (who, the more I read about him, seems to be a lot like Joe Biden). Merkel is in a very good position to win, given her successful management of the fiasco that is the Eurozone and strong management of the German economy in the midst of all of it, and all of the news articles that I have been reading seem to agree that Steinbrück and the SPD have given up on winning the Chancellor's seat. However, there is one big problem of coalition partner. If the FDP doesn't get enough percentage of the vote, they will no longer have any seats in the Bundestag. This means that the CDU will have to find a new coalition partner, which will most likely be the SPD. They have outright refused to form a coalition with Die Linke, and I'm pretty sure they don't form one with Die Grünen. This leaves the SPD, with whom they did have a grand coalition prior to the current coalition. A coalition that did not end well. Which I guess means that things are going to get interesting.

In any case, this whole election is a lot more low-key than in the states. Here parties put up posters of the local candidates who are running and maybe a catch phrase or something, nothing terribly flashy. In my case, I have been seeing a lot of one Dr. Martin Rosemann of the SPD. 

So that's my spiel. If you have read this far, I commend you and thank you for listening to my political babbling.