SIGNS OF CULTURAL DECLINE AND GLIMMERS OF HOPE

By Albrecht Mueller

[This article published in: NachDenkSeiten, November 23, 2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/wp-print.php?p=2790.]




Whoever like me wants to avoid falling into culture pessimism faces a hard test these days. The signs of decline cannot be ignored: enforced conformity, disappearance of critical intelligence in the media, politics and science, anti-enlightened agitation, propaganda superimposed on almost every political decision-making process, political corruption, shameless private expropriation of public assets and cynicism in the elite. The temporary success of a citizen rebellion against selling off the city of Leipzig is a glimmer of hope.

I will name several signs of decline:

1ST EXAMPLE: OLD AGE PENSIONS

Last Wednesday the Tagesschau TV program imposed conformity and did brutal advertising for the financial products of the insurance industry and against legal pensions. Brutal means spreading sheer falsehoods. In its 11/21 broadcast, it repeated twice “that the legal pensions will no longer be enough as old age security.” “Only private insurance will be able to balance the reductions.” The German pension insurance institution that should champion legal pensions canvases for private insurance in different ways.

To me, the insurance industry and the banks have full control of nearly all political institutions so they work for them.

This propaganda has nothing to do with reality. The threatening old age poverty predicted in the study of German pension insurance, the theme of the Tagesschau announcements, would hardly be removed with private insurance. How can an expensive private financing system change anything? If one would tackle the problem, one must work immediately on a basic security for recipients of low wages, concentrate on the legal pension insurance and correct those atrocious deeds that systematically destroyed the efficiency of legal pensions in the interest of the financial industry.

2ND EXAMPLE: SQUANDERING PUBLIC PROPERTY

The German transportation minister canvassed brutally for the privatization of public assets with so-called PPP (public-private partnerships) products and power to be servants of private interests. Promotion of privatizing road construction is involved here.

3. CLASS JUSTICE

I have always regarded this label as somewhat sensational. The new reality teaches us something else. In many areas, we face entanglements of the administration of justice with political and financial interests. Emails, appeals and letters of concerned who refuse to be ignored reach us. The most blatant violations result from the political dependence of public prosecutors and from the fashionable tendency to accept money payments and not complete trials against members of the elite of our society. The latest cases are the ended trial against the head of TVI, Frenzel and the takeover of Mannesmann.

We have already documented how the administration of justice relates to the selling of credits according to a Frankfurt professor.

There is also obviously an entanglement between the insurance industry, experts and the administration of justice when insurance benefits after accidents are decided in courts.

Trust in the administration of justice disappears – obviously for good reason.

4. MEDIA RESISTANCE AGAINST THE MINIMUM WAGE

The unexpectedly harsh attitude of German chancellor Angela Merkel against introduction of a minimum wage in postal services has a very simple background. Influential media corporations like the Springer conglomerate are interested in the lowest possible wages. Angela Merkel knows the owners of postal services.

5. CYNICISM IN DEALING WITH THE SOCIALLY WEAK

Last week, Oswald Metzger and Professor Raffelhuschen spoke maliciously about recipients of income support. Both really do not deserve to be mentioned. That there are no inhibitions any more, no self-controls and no controls by the media is worth mentioning…