[WS:] You would make an excellent psychic reader, Angelus.
Wojtek
On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 2:49 PM, Angelus Novus
<fuerdenkommunismus at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Doug wrote:
>
>> I wouldn't if he didn't hammer away constantly about how American leftists just
>>don't get how terrible things
>>
>> are in Germany. I'm just asking him to return the favor.
>
> But you forget I was responding to an article that really *did* paint the EU,
> and Germany in particular (!), as a workers paradise, with "strong" trade
> unions. And this at a time when the media is full of notices about the erosion
> of trade union membership in Germany!
>
> People like Geoghegan mistake unions engaged in social partnership with "strong"
> unions. Just because union members sit on the board of corporations, that
> doesn't mean industrial policy is decided for the benefit of the working class.
> In fact, serious leftists over here usually argue the opposite.
>
> And the only person on this list who has come under consistent criticism from me
> is Dennis, because he is so completely arbitrary in his pollyannaism. Just a
> year and a half ago he was singing the praises of the "progressive" EU. Then,
> German became the voice of fiscal austerity, not just in Europe, but worldwide,
> against the Obama administration (!), at which point it would have been too
> absurd to maintain that charade. So Dennis just quietly stopped referring to
> the EU, and switched songs to the BRIC countries. Sorry, that's not serious.
>
> Wojtek, on the other hand, is a special case. His idealization of the EU also
> seems bound up with a patrician conservative culturalist contempt for American
> in general. It's not just a case of social policy with him, but a more general
> case of showing off social distinction by carping about what idiots Americans
> are.
>
> Sorry, but I agree with Jim Heartfield on American culture. And the daily
> newspaper Junge Welt, very communist and anti-imperialist, hardly can be accused
> of pro-Americanism, said very astutely with regard to American literature:
> "Germany does not have any Thomas Pynchons or Don DeLillos. At best, we have a
> few Nick Hornbys."
>
>
>
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