Some of us have counted Angela Merkel out due to her frequent self-inflicted wounds on herself and her party, the CDU. But in the current Cicero Beverly Crawford, Professor at UC Berkeley, looks ten years into the future as Angela Merkel is starting her third term as Chancellor of Germany. How did she do it? By taking a page from Bismarck’s ‘Eisen und Korn’ (Iron and Wheat) strategy of forming alliances from seemingly oppositional groups. Merkel succeeds in creating a ‘Stahl und Silber’ (Steel and Silver) alliance between aging retirees (30% of the German population in 2015) and corporate leaders. She brings in new guest workers to replenish the ranks of workers in Germany while virtually eliminating political asylum for other foreign groups. She also eliminates the relative isolation of France and Germany by reaching out to the United States through transforming NATO into NACTO = the North Atlantic Counter-Terrorist Organization . This comes after the terrorist attacks on Los Angeles, London and Frankfurt in 2011. What about Turkey? Integration into the EU is postponed indefinitely. Oh, and Joschka Fischer becomes the new editor for Die Zeit.
Professor Crawford looks into a future that is recognizable today. For a look into an alternate past that is strangely like the present, I strongly recommend Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America (no German translation available yet). In this ingenious novel, Charles Lindbergh defeats FDR for the US presidency and keeps America out of the war raging in Europe even as he leads the country into a benign fascism. All of this is viewed from the narrative perspective of a young Jewish boy (Philip Roth) growing up in Newark, New Jersey. The author Roth has perfect pitch in his depiction of 1940’s America. I especially appreciated the fictional ‘editorials’ of the New York Times calling for Jewish ‘moderation’ even as the nation slips into anti-Semitic violence.
Is The Plot Against America far-fetched? Not at all, which is why it has resonated with so many readers in America. The American press stood by while the Bush administration launched a preemptive war based on bogus intelligence. How many Americans have spoken out about the mounting evidence that the US Government has engaged in systematic torture – even killings – of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo? And finally, was anyone surprised last week when a new poll showed that half of all Americans agree that the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans should be restricted? Our support for our own Constitution appears to be very weak indeed.
