East German nostalgia grows

How much of an authoritarian command state has modern Germany become under its present conservative leadership?

It's gotten so bad that a new poll shows that a majority of folks in eastern Germany believe life was better under the old East German communist system.

You're going to scoff at this story, but it's true. If you don't believe it, blame the poll, not me.

Why is there such a sudden nostalgia for East Germany? I can guess. Maybe it's because of social controls that have defined reunified Germany under the Merkel administration. For instance, the German government recently decided to completely ban all video games it deems "violent."

This followed Germany's total ban on paintball.

As personal conduct is regimented more and more, powerful corporations are allowed to operate with fewer and fewer limits. Even if the first scourge plagued old East Germany, the second did not.

One German said, "Most East German citizens had a nice life." He points out that while East Germany had a secret police, so does reunified Germany - as its broadcasting agency collects information about the public.

Maybe this nostalgia will cease once reunified Germany gets a democratic government. It's hard to claim it has one now, after the video game debacle.

Reunified Germany also cedes much of its autonomy to the European Union, which recently had a succession of several right-leaning presidents itself. Like the Bush regime, the EU has been guided by the policy of "regulation for thee, not for me." As Germany follows this mantra, dissidents call modern Germany a "dictatorship of capital."

Another little tidbit I found a while back: East German students did not wear school uniforms. Public school uniforms remain rare in reunified Germany, but not completely unheard of.

Apologists for the "dictatorship of capital" will defend surrendering personal freedom in the name of the "free market." Not unlike Americans who defended the dictatorship in Singapore in the '90s. But their argument is bogus on its face.

You can reasonably argue that capitalism and communism are just two sides of the same corroded coin. Indeed, about the only major difference between capitalism and communism as most people know it is that capitalism gives corporations the authoritarian role that governments have under communism.

If you're scratching your head that anyone would prefer East Germany over the current situation, maybe it's because the "free market" is not the perfect system that the media portrays it as.

Like I said, if you doubt this story, blame the pollsters - not me. They conducted this poll. I didn't.

(Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,634122,00.html)