> I interviewed a German Green MEP for my radio show, one recommended by
> Hinrich Kuhls. He was breathtakingly moderate. What's going on with the
> Greens? Ruined by state office?
Moderation is fine in, well, moderate doses. The problem is larger than that, it's that capital is transnational while the Left remains translocal. Eco-thinking is a clever and dialectical way of turning the reigning ideology of post-1970s austerity against itself, but it's still locked into orbit around the very thing it was meant to criticize. I don't have magic solutions, it's just something we brainworkers have got to work on. This isn't to let the Social Dumbocrats off the hook -- alas, the Reds aren't all that Red anymore, and Lafontaine would be a Rightwinger in Brandt's cabinet of the early Seventies. This is why I myself turn constantly to Adorno's negative dialectics, the thing is like the ideological Linux of the global Left. Tools and the keys to tools, because we have to find ways of turning the total system against itself...
Speaking of der Oskar, it's true that there was talk that he'd be kicked upstairs to the EU presidency. Doesn't sound like this will happen, that interview, if it's for real, is pretty much a declaration of war against what the SPD has turned into, i.e. the Party of the Euro. Who knows? Knowing Schroeder's penchant for backdoor deals, he probably promised Oskar the post, then dumped him when the going got rough. But a party which relies for its decisions on an expensive upscale opportunist and parttime lobbyist for VW, which is basically what Schroeder was in Niedersachsen, isn't worth a damn, now is it?
-- Dennis