Ms. Magoo on Tour

Angela Merkel is currently on a world tongue bath tour. The occasion is the release of her evidently quite turbid memoir.

A recent stop was in DC, where she was interviewed by Barack Obama. If held at Gitmo, this would be considered a Geneva Convention offense, but people actually stood in line for and paid for the privilege of attending. Of course, they are swamp denizens, and Merkel is a kindred species and Obama is their lord.

In her memoir confesses to not a single error in her long tenure. Zero. Kein!

The lack of self-awareness here is staggering. Germany is currently a basket case. Its economy has been in a prolonged recession. It is in political chaos and social ferment, due in no small part to the mass immigration of recent decades. The phrase “Germany is the sick man of Europe” has considerable currency.

Virtually all of Germany’s current travails can be laid directly at Angela Merkel’s feet. The two biggest problems besetting Germany are energy (which is a major cause of the broader economic malaise) and immigration, both of which are the direct result of Merkel policies. Energiewende (which I have pilloried for over a dozen years) with its renewables obsession and the closing of nuclear plants due to (checks notes) a tsunami in Japan has made German energy among the most expensive in the world. Not a good thing for an energy intensive manufacturing economy! The perversities of the post-Syrian War immigration wave are impossible to ignore–although the German government strives mightily to suppress opposition on the issue.

These were signature Merkel policies. Bad in substance, they were also served up with a huge dollop of supercilious sanctimony. Merkel condemned (and continues to condemn) anyone who opposed them as intellectual and crucially moral inferiors.

In brief, Angela Merkel is the Ms. Magoo of German politics (and world politics, given how she was and is lionized outside of Germany). A blind bumbler who left a trail of chaos and destruction behind her, all the while touting her achievements. “Merkel, you’ve done it again!”

The adulation she is currently receiving suggests she is an exception to Enoch Powell’s dictum that “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” And that may be Merkel’s true genius. That she saw what was coming and stepped aside to let others clean up the mess and take the blame. If so, well played!

But that would require a degree of self-awareness that Merkel apparently does not possess. She seems utterly sincere in her belief that she did no wrong, and indeed, did everything right.

But a lack of self-awareness is the most prominent trait of her class. As I’ve written since Trump emerged on the stage in 2015 the establishment/elite/ruling class is completely unaware of the baleful consequences of their overlordship, ignorant of how much they are despised by the hoi polloi, and clueless about their impending doom. Even as it stares them in the face, as evidenced by Trump’s decisive victory and the political chaos in France, Germany, and the UK.

Yet on and on they go, as supercilious and sanctimonious as ever.

We see it in the US in spades, with the Democrats’ complete inability to comprehend or come to grips with the massive repudiation they received a month ago. Obama is the best illustration of this, projecting on Trump and his voters all the horribles (e.g., vote rigging, lawfare) his party has committed, and failing to acknowledge that DEI, wokeness, mass immigration, climate extremism, etc., etc. etc., are widely detested.

These people need to go away. But they never will leave voluntarily. In their narcissistic self-regard they view themselves as God’s gift and their legacies as glorious.

So do to them what they hate most: mock them. Mercilessly. And start with Ms. Magoo.