Taste Crimes

T'other day in Deutschland, with my de facto mother-in-law shaking her head over the refugee tide and what was going to be done with them, I did flip to flippant and point out the unfortunately-timed coincidence of the local supermarket suddenly doing minced meat for a euro and the Sweeney Todd parallels that brought up. Then I come back here and left and right are both laying into Merkel either for being a shit politician or for closing the borders once the situation got out of hand. Plus the usual bunch of sad little minds who don't know anything about Germany since 1945 and will take any opportunity to recycle stereotypes of German domineering.
Merkel was indeed foolish in assuming that having Germany take too much on would somehow evoke sympathy and co-operation in the rest of the EU, that being, apart from Sweden, a collection of self-centred welfare states with dicky economies, Southern European terminal basket cases and Eastern European nationalists who don't quite understand what membership of the club means. But the thought itself was noble and no-one outside Germany really seems capable of equating the idea of German leadership with humanitarian ideals, even 70 years after the war. That fact mortifies me; being overreaching in your aspirations is hardly a sin in comparison to what most of the others do, i.e. retreat into a hole and fire off potshots. And Merkel is a right-of-centre politician, for Christ's sake. Meanwhile, we get into a navel-gazing flap just because an opposition leader is elected to stand who's actually different from the standing Government, God forbid.
Imagine a Corbyn-led Britain, scaring off a few multinationals and sharks with more stringent corporate taxation and fairer employment policies. GDP might drop overall for a few years, but the safety net, that makes the UK a first-world country in comparison to the GDP-wealthier but socially stone-age America, would be strengthened. The only thing the really stands in the way of this, when you turn to the electorate, is the poisonous notion that everything that was got rid of, e.g. nationalised companies as a large-looming example, was somehow all best done away with, despite virtually everyone's daily experience to the contrary, particularly when it comes to trains. In short, too many things were given over to private-sector control, more than in comparable economies, they turned out shit and then we don't dare to go back to some form of state control because we're so bloody progressive for having done the U.S. model before anyone else in Europe. As it stands, I'm embarrassed about my nationality right now, almost to the point of those American backpackers during the Gulf Wars who stuck Canadian insignia on their luggage just to avoid the formulaic comments.