Author: gdrthinktank

After this Day in Washington, DC

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

They voted for him. They held days of prayer in their propaganda temples for “our President Trump.” They are his strongest base, and any other choice to them would constitute a “road to socialism.” Pastors, ministers – whatever the correct label it is for these charlatans – told the little minds, the recipients of the dumbest propaganda imaginable sitting right in front of them, not to vote “for the other side” – for that would certainly end up in “socialism.”

What now – after this day in Washington? A brothel is a cleaner place than any American church.

They did not know a day like today could happen? They did not realize four years ago what they voted for? And they did not realize it before last November?

If so, they are just like him – like their “President Trump.”

I do not know how you will heal this country with such people, Mr. President-elect. Because – every change usually starts in the brain. These people have no brain.

What will Trump do next?

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

I do not know any country in the modern western world where a political leader, not to mention a chancellor or a president, had survived any 24 hours in office after first summon and then threatening election officials to “find” a few thousand votes to change the outcome of an election. These were the methods of sinister East German communists and the dictatorship I was born in, and it may be the style of a country somewhere in the Third World. When I moved to America 23 years ago because of my wife, I did not expect to witness something like this again – not in the United States of America.

Mrs. Kelly Loeffler – do you really know what you are talking about by saying “The road of socialism does not go through Georgia?” You have the nerve to babble such baseless nonsense while millions of children, women, and men in your own country are suffering in poverty as a result from economic despair and the consequences of a deadly pandemic? Do you have any solutions to offer at all besides of spreading propaganda of the most primitive sort and playing Americans for a sucker? You are suffering from a delusional disorder when talking about an “American Dream”, but I am sure you are aware of your own baloney you can delude Americans with.

If ten (10) former secretaries of defense from both parties consider it necessary to remind their own military of basic democratic principles to remain neutral during the transfer of power, then I am inclined to the view that there must be a serious concern that Trump could pull more shenanigans in his remaining days as president instead of leaving the White House voluntarily on or before January 20th.

One can only hope for a transition without violence on Washington’s streets and elsewhere in the country. Idiotic as it sounds, but there are millions of people still in support of this president, no matter what he says or does. Are there really that many Americans incapable of understanding reality?

Make it Celsius, if you will

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

Miles, yards, feet, inches, and … Daniel Fahrenheit!

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

Referring to my previous blog about the indispensable transition from a ruthless American economic system comprising certain semblance with elements of 19th century capitalism, another absolutely innocuous subject matter comes to mind that nonetheless carries quite some nostalgic smack with it. Although it is, without doubt, also of far less importance in light of current social problems, the matter nevertheless reveals the sometimes hilarious, widespread mentality in a country where many folks are serious in referring to a Second Amendment, which in recent decades has been completely turned on its head in terms of its original meaning written a cool 231 years ago and ratified two years later. As an aside: The man who penned the infamous lines of said Amendment – James “Jamie” Madison, who would later become the nation’s fourth president and the last of the founders to go – certainly had to use candle light for his literary fabric, provided he used his little quill either in the wee hours or later at night.

Even a bit more ancient than the presumptive law of the gun most Americans deluding themselves with, is their procedure to figure out what the temperature of the day or night might be. In doing so and in a slightly mispronounced style, they use a man’s name who was of German ancestry, born in the year of 1686 in the city of Danzig at the Baltic Sea, back then under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. I have been to Danzig, which today belongs to Poland and is named Gdansk, several times in the 70’s and 80’s. Its downtown is certainly the most magnificent I have ever seen. According to my father, who knew Danzig from his childhood, the historic inner-city was restored almost to the detail after heavy air raids and besiegement at the end of World War II had reduced to rubble nearly the entire city.

The subject of our story – Americans are more familiar with the name than almost anybody else in the world – is Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, the man from Danzig who in 1724 invented the thermometer in conjunction with the scale named after him. He basically is the father of the mercury-in-glass thermometer, which scale became the first standardized measuring unit to be widely used for temperature.

Only a few years later, in 1742, the Swedish astronomer, physicist, and mathematician Anders Celsius (1701-1744) introduced the Celsius scale, an improvement and to date in conventional use throughout the entire Western world of contemporary style. Celsius’ method provided more accuracy, not least because of its conversion to a decimal system.

There are sources claiming that Fahrenheit was furthermore used worldwide to measure temperatures until the 1970’s. Such assertion catches me by surprise, for as somebody growing up in the – what we considered it back then – underdeveloped ages of Socialism, I can only state that, at the time and at least from the 1960’s on, there was not a single country at least in Europe using Fahrenheit instead Celsius. Even the expression was unbeknownst to us. As for Germany, I can say with certainty that most people including me were at loose ends with the term already back then, not to mention the significance of the man who invented the thermometer almost 300 years ago. This certainly constituted a lack of knowledge as well.

At least, Americans today are not completely alone in this world to hold unswerving faith with Mr. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit. According to researchers, the Fahrenheit scale is used to date by the following countries: Marshall Islands, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Liberia, Palau, The Federal States of Micronesia, and – you bet – The United States of America.

Poorhouse USA

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

The United States’ Free Market Economy, which in reality is not much different from cold-blooded, exploitative and pure capitalism, has proven a catastrophic failure in handling a serious crises like the current pandemic. A disaster is set to unfold more and more as millions of people are facing unemployment, eviction, and hunger – a human tragedy that does not differ essentially anymore from a Third-World-Nation. 90 million Americans in their wealthy country either cannot see a doctor because of nonexistent or insufficient health care insurance, or they do not dare doing so for generic financial reasons.

The incoming administration will tackle the crisis in a different and slightly better way, but not even rudimentarily resolve America’s horrifying, deep-rooted problems: Biden/Harris and a Congress filled with lobbyists for billionaires will not implement provisions that would lead to the transition of an urgently required and of course costly, contemporary Social Market Economy, in which the emphasis of “Social” is on equal terms with “Market.”

If the United States cannot find a path to a social-democratized system, if Americans do not understand that their society is in dire need of regulation to achieve social justice in order to survive, if Americans keep ignoring their own history and instead confuse everything that once had been in place already in their country with “Socialism”, then the United States of America will continue on its course of deterioration.

Trump’s Nonsense-Tweet about Germany

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

On 9 December, 2020, a day when the United States sadly lost more people (3,054) due to the Corona Virus than on the attack on Pearl Harbor (2,403) and during the terror assaults in 2001 (2,977), the dumbest president ever in place arrogantly tweeted the following:

“Germany has consistently been used by my obnoxious critics as the country that we should follow on the way to handle the China Virus. So much for that argument. I love Germany – vaccines are on the way.”

True, Germany had a record number of 590 deaths on one day due to the corona virus. This is a reason for a sitting American president to ridicule via tweet a country where, in contrast to his own, human lives matter and a social, caring system is in place to help the people. There, people can stay home while maintaining a livelihood. For the very same reason Germany can afford to go into another hard lock-down over Christmas.

The German government under an attentive chancellor Angela Merkel – a true leader, by the way – is at least attempting to tackle problems in a responsible and realistic way to protect their people.

In contrast, the self-declared genius from the White House has downplayed the virus from the beginning while millions – many of them bible-thumping folks – kept supporting him. Instead of pointing his finger to others, this so-called president, a loser and psychopath all through, should have cleaned up the countless deficiencies in his own Christian country. Besides, in the US 87 people per 100,000 have died from the virus, in Germany 24.

If they had a conscience combined with sane judgement, those of the holy folks who have voted for Trump and support(ed) him would be ashamed for the rest of their lives. It is not going to happen. So far for a special alignment of Christian morality. People attuned to a bit more authenticity want no part of it.

One can only wish for Trump’s disciples to stay in their propaganda temples for which they have the balls to use the term “churches”, locked up from outside if possible, never come out again and keep praying twenty-four seven. The lunatic still occupying the White House could only become president because of the pathetic failure of millions of brainwashed Americans completely out of touch with reality.

Johann Wichern’s Forgotten Advent Wreath: German Christmas Rites in America

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

With an Epilogue from President Harry S. Truman

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

For many years, while living in Florida and Georgia, I have wondered why the paganic Christmas Tree (German: Weihnachtsbaum) and even Santa Claus (der Weihnachtsmann) have adapted a widespread popularity in the US, but not the equally traditional advent wreath. This observation is remarkable, all the more so because this particular wreath (Adventskranz) of German origin has a classic clerical history – as opposed to Santa and the illuminated tree used in nearly every living room nowadays in Western Europe and large parts of America as well.

German Advent Wreath in Blairsville, Georgia, December 2020

Whereas a decorated tree was already known in the days of the old Egyptians and then merely revived in a modern style by Germans during the time of the Holy Roman Empire[1] not even 300 years ago, the advent wreath has a much shorter history. Social reformer and evangelic-Lutheran theologist Johann Hinrich Wichern, one of the founders of the home mission movement and initiator of a rescue work for neglected children and adolescents in the northern German city of Hamburg, invented the wreath in 1839. Originally assembled with a candle for every day in December and larger candles for every Sunday, it later became a four-candle wreath only with the first candle lit on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Eve. This occasion is hence called the first of advent, followed in a consecutive order until the fourth candle is ready to light on the last Sunday before Christmas.

The original wreath from 1839 was intended to serve as a symbolic lifebelt for stranded, poor young Hamburgers, of which many where orphans. Wichern provided shelter for them in a way that was unique back then: For the first time, destitute were not kept in closed shelters penned up in a single, large room, but just a few at a time living in smaller houses instead, enjoying generous liberties such as freedom of action.

In light of grim developments in our present world I would like to include the following true piece of history in my little Christmas story – directed in particular at those Americans deeply lost with the term “socialism” that is permanently thrown at them these days by scheming gull-catchers from the political right:

The Hanseatic city of Hamburg rose to a rather flourishing place after the Napoleonic wars, but only twenty percent of the inhabitants profited from the wealth. For decades the church ignored to see the misery of the poor and their necessities as a society of the proletariat, which led to a widespread renunciation from religious services on part of the destitute populace. At the time of our story, only eight percent of the Hamburgers received the communion compared to nearly hundred percent in the preceding century. Already then the society had reached a point of secularization. Johann Wichern exhorted the churches to look closely at the plight of the poor and to attend to the social crises.

In order to finance his mission, our theologist, himself born into a family of poverty and certainly not equipped with socialistic ambitions, successfully called upon the Christian conscience of the wealthy merchants and demanded their help in supporting those in need financially [2].

As for our little artifact, it took several decades until the wreath went on its triumphal procession through German lands. After World War I, in the early 20’s, Christian youth associations significantly contributed to the propagation. A catholic church in Koeln (Cologne) was first to display the wreath during service in 1925. In Austria, it expanded not before the end of World War II.

When I grew up – in the 1960’s and 1970’s in the (please note!) socialistic part of Germany – the advent wreath was ubiquitous on East German kitchen tables like knife and fork for dinner; not a single household and family home have I witnessed without the Christian relict on display. In retrospect, these historic facts are especially mind-blowing to me: All the other Christian holidays were legally observed in the midst of a socialist, totalitarian regime as well – with stores closed, people home from work and fully compensated for Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost (both Sunday and Monday), first Christmas Day (December 25), and second Christmas Day as well (December 26). These were all legal church holidays back then, and they still are in Germany to date besides some more non-church holidays.

So, the advent wreath never really made it from across the Atlantic to the United States, probably for reasons of its delayed publicity in its homeland and the fact that the bulk of Germans had arrived in America long before. But it’s paganic brother, the Christmas tree, befell an enormous popularity in next to no time after German immigrants had brought the tradition with them to Pennsylvania as early as the 1830’s.

Notes:

[1] Though German culture, tradition and history hark back more than a thousand years, German people living in medieval times were at loose ends with the term “Germany.” From the 13th Century on, only single German states, dukedoms, baronies, bishoprics, and fiefdoms with autonomous rulers existed in a loose complex of territories and a subordinate emperor with only limited fullness of power. The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman, defined by 17th century historian Samuel Puffendorf as an “unclassifiable body comparable to a monster” (see Robert B. Asprey: Frederick the Great, XV). – A German nation state as such did not exist prior to the formation of the Second German Empire, founded by Otto von Bismarck in 1871.

[2] In view of the current (early December, 2020) debate in Congress about another stimulus package, it might be reasonable to call wealthy corporations to account in the corona crises instead of granting them immunity through liability protection and shuffling off the entire financial burden to the ordinary taxpayer and future generations. Yes, following the same principle of Johann Hinrich Wichern in 1839 toward the super-rich: Would that be foolishly called “socialism”, so be it. President Harry S. Truman was a Democrat, but history remembers his words, spoken in 1952: “Socialism is their [the Republicans] name for almost anything that helps the people” (Quote: Harry S. Truman, 12 October 1952, Syracuse, NY). As we can see, it was not that much different back then.

Relief

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

It’s not for Republicans, it’s not for Democrats: Finally a good, inspiring message for all well-disposed Americans after four years of idiocy, chaos, bullying, and elusive stupidity: Former presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama volunteer to promote confidence in a vaccine’s safety. President-elect Joe Biden asks Americans to mask during the first 100 days of his presidency.

I am not American, but I will mask as I did before not only for my wife’s and my own safety, but also for the safety of others – and also to show my support for the new administration.

The new president will face tremendous problems, but it is nevertheless a relief to feel the normalcy coming back through people in charge who are at least trying to lead. And this is a good message for all Americans, regardless if they are aware of the damage done to the country in the past four years or not.

Kaput(t)[*]

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

This country – the United States of America – has produced an abnormally increased proportion of illiterate, deluded people who are in denial of any reality, inconvincible apparently for mental reasons and, therefore, irrevocably inept to include rational arguments in their conclusions: be it related to science, the severity of a worsening corona pandemic, man-induced climate change, or the credibility of the most recent election. The disease in the public mind is obviously more widespread than the Coronavirus itself.

Reason and responsibility for the American catastrophe not full-blown yet rests not only with the right-wing media propagating falsehood and deception supported by the nuisance about the term “socialism”, but also with religious delusions beget by many churches. This is the pathological combination that has created the foundation for the emergence of a president who bullies, talks, and acts in a manner of a fifth-grader. The man is sick, and so are those who have allowed him the position he is in.

Aside from the majority of lowbrow Trump supporters exists a worse and worse discernible minority of voters ascribed to the educated class and yet in full swing for dull phrases of the political right – come hell or high water. To them, any political path left of the current Republican Party would be a blank check for the American drift straight into socialism. Not only will it be difficult, if not impossible, to dissuade intelligent but ideologically blinded people from their wrong track – the abject failure of the Republican Party altogether in their Trump-mania will leave a dangerous vacuum in the democratic center-right spectrum of the American Republic.

These are the dominant reasons why the United States of America is presently spiraling downward in a faster and more disastrous development than any other country in the modern Western world, coupled with the consequences of a deliberately downplayed Coronavirus and a misaligned “Health Care System”, ruthlessly designed for maximum profit to the advantage of the few versus harm and suffering of the many.

More mischief in the coming months is inevitable.

Notes

[*] “Kaput”, often used in American English, is an expression borrowed from the German language, properly written with two “t,s”: kaputt – meaning something is broken, irreparable, down the drain.

The Handy Merger: American Socialism, Fantasy, and “Alternative Facts”

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

 “We are standing in the breach against socialism.”
Senator David Perdue (R-GA) in a contribution on his campaign web site on 16 November, 2020.

“We are the firewall … We are going to hold the line against socialism, right here in Georgia.”
Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) in a campaign appearance on 20 November, 2020.

“Stop the Spread of Socialism.”
Slogan on a campaign flier distributed by the Republican Party to households in North Georgia on 20 November, 2020.

Note: The author of the following article has spent the first 30 years of his life in socialism in East Germany, the former GDR, until the Berlin wall fell in November 1989.

As richly ironic as it is in the presence of scientific and historic facts versus millions of Americans nevertheless falling for political demagogues radiating hollow slogans, it can be repeated mantra-like over and over again, just to fail as often in appealing to a sound mind:

“Socialism is a System or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.”
Source: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), page 2162.

It is worth noting here that any legal, accompanying measures within a political system – for instance, a nationalized Health Care System – has as much to do with socialism as a tomato grower in Georgia would have to do with the backside of the moon [1].

This should be easy enough to understand. I personally have – not voluntarily – lived and worked in such a system of socialism, and I can assure that there is nothing even close to that form of society existent or in arrangement in the United States of America. Those Americans suggesting the country is on its way to socialism or this is what the Democrat’s operative, final objective constitutes, are probably equally exposed to the delusion that Satan and Rumpelstiltskin are in existence and on their way somewhere in the woods.

The unsolicited flier from the Republican Party coming to my house could not have been delivered to a more inapt recipient: Having been exposed to dull paroles by the communists throughout my younger years, they did not even reach our minds and, instead, were quickly disposed where they belonged: to the garbage dump of history. At any given time, the vast majority of the people living in the so-called communistic German Democratic Republic (GDR) retained their ability to distinguish between what was right and what was wrong. The historic fact that East German people by the hundreds of thousands in the fall of 1989 took their quest for freedom to the streets, did not simply emerge overnight. It resulted from the ability to think for ourselves and recognize reality, admittedly supported by the proximity of a free, yet inaccessible democratic West Germany, with close relatives living there and the unhampered reception of West German TV- and Radio stations in the East.

As a resident in the United States for now 22 years, the unlikely emergence of someone like Donald Trump as the country’s president has led me to the conclusion: There are obviously millions of Americans literally incapable to think for themselves outside their domiciliary companionship or their churches. This is a frightening perception, for any democracy in the world is in jeopardy if not only the thinking of a few alone, but the thinking of millions operates on a different level of facts and truths. Ironically, the astonishing assertion of former White House advisor, Kellyanne Conway, that there are “alternative facts”[2], has – at least in my judgement – coined the entire presidency of Donald Trump. There were “alternative facts” emerging from the White House almost on a daily basis, including the denial and downplaying of a deadly virus circulating in the US with the unimaginable loss of 255,000 American lives so far (as of this writing).

There are clear signs that the ubiquitous prevarication, accepted as facts in shockingly large parts of the American society, will not vanish with the disappearance of Donald Trump as president. The contrary seems the case, and political windbags like David Perdue are the beneficiary demagogues of such incomprehensible, unbiased gullibility. Perdue is the same man who not only repeats his dull paroles about an alleged socialism he has no clue about again and again, but had childishly mocked vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, this October by repeatedly and deliberately mispronouncing her first name in a campaign appearance. Needless to say that such an individual, behaving like a 5-year-old in Kindergarten, should never have a place in any function of public responsibility.

There is nothing constructive to expect from colorful figures like Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. They don’t have a concept of socialism; they are using the phrase repeatedly as a catchword to delude the people, knowing about the fishiness widely attributed to any smack of socialism in the US. Lawmakers who have no reservation or conscience to sell their own people for a sucker with brainless slogans for the sole purpose of reelection have their own ego and their own clientele of profiteers in mind – and nothing else.

Notes

 [1] The Second German Empire, founded in 1871 and the first German nation state in existence, is regarded as the ancestral homeland of social security. The Reich’s founder, Otto von Bismarck, introduced the compulsory insurance in 1883, including health care insurance in the same year, followed by accident insurance in 1884. – Bismarck, for sure, was far from being a socialist: Under his instigation and leadership, the Anti-Socialist-Law passed the German Reichstag in 1878, de facto banning social democratic, socialist, and communist associations and activities. – Although I am hesitant to mention it: A widely unknown historic fact is that social security in Germany was significantly extended by Adolf Hitler – the very same leader who sent not only Jewish people, but also hundreds of thousands communists, socialists, social democrats, liberals, unionists, and centrists to the infamous concentration camps.   

[2] The remark is mentioned in Bob Woodward’s 2020 book “Rage” on page 262. – After White House press secretary Sean Spicer had presented false statements about the attendance numbers of Trump’s inauguration, Conway stated in a press interview two days later, on 22 January, 2020: “We have alternative facts.”

Send Me Back

gdrthinktankLeave a comment

Upon return from an excursion to the Facebook-side of the Georgia Republican Party, I was followed by two comments that in a microcosm lively suggest the ferocious and polarized status of the United States of America. In view of the upcoming runoff in Georgia, I leave it with the reader to decide which one of the comments might be ideologically infiltrated, leaning toward a dangerously incorrigible political trend – and which one might implicate a more rational perspective:

Mrs. Diana McGowan Pate, apparently a lady in her 70’s, wrote:

If GA is NOT your Home Country, then GO BACK to wherever it is!

Mr. Jim Richardson wrote:

Unfortunately for the state our educational system has produced people who do not understand the basic concepts but instead follow demagogues with simple answers. Note the predictable “Go back” comment? That is the kind of ignorance and tolerance that can be expected from a population so poorly educated and easily manipulated.

You are certainly welcome in my Georgia because clearly we need smart people who can see through the veil of lies we’re being deluged with from our political “leaders”.

The two comments are a result of my second attempt to ask Senator David Perdue (R-GA) about his definition of the term “Socialism”, and where Socialism in the USA is either existent or planned to come into existence. On a flyer arriving at my house in Blairsville on 20 November, 2020, Perdue and his fellow party member, Senator Kelly Loeffler, appeal to the public to “Stop the Spread of Socialism”, but neither was any further explanation added to the claim, nor did I ever hear any of the two candidates substantiating their assertions with any plausible evidence about where in the USA Socialism is in a condition of materialization.

An updated version of my request to Senator Perdue will follow soon on this blog site.