I could post this to any of the many Kelly threads. I watch the discussions, with a kind of detached interest. (I once have posted that I'd vote for Kelly, but with an eye only at the German situation it could make remotely sense to cheer for Bush, for that would make it more probable that we keep the red/green government) What comes is just a little comment with no intention to turn the discussion away from the main theme.

A part of the discussion (and you know which part I mean) reminds me of Germany in the late 1920s and ewarly 1930. The left was very split up in the right wing lefts, the social democrats, and the more radical left, the communists. And then there were the Trotskysts, the independent lefts of the USPD and and and.

A big discussion was who was more dangerous, Hitler or the moderately left, from the point of view of the working class and their (mostly not working class) leaders. (I am far from saying Bush = Hitler, that would be very wrong in my eyes for many reasons; my focus is on arguments within the left about what is best in a particular situation)

The communists had the mantra that the most dangerous ennemy of the working class are the social democrats for they put a veil on the problems. Everything the social democrats do is even worse for the real interests of the working class for it hinders the necessary revolutionary development. Hitler was only for laughs, dangerous were the compromising appeasers (called 'Radishes' then: red on the outside, white within). The communists did not support social democrat and conservative-liberal governments, for it is necessary that the living condition of the working class has to get worse before they are ready for a really revolutionary step.

Hitler came and communists and social democrats alike (communists more so, to be correct) were killed, forced to flee, put in concentration camps. That the German communists fleeing to Moscow in the 1930s had a not much larger chance of surviving comrade Josef S's friendship than they had Hitler's concentration camps is an extra irony of history (but I digress).

The game who-is-more-radical that divides different factions of the left can, in the worst case, unite them again, as common losers.

But do vote as you feel like, perhaps four more years of Bush could save Schr6ouml;der.

Wolfgang (who, in Germany, votes Green or pink, that is social democrats)