Trumpite Americans, when will you finally acknowledge your leader is a joke?

Between the US, the UK, and Australia, it's no wonder so many people believe that Angela Merkel is currently the leader of the free world.

I don’t think that people think that mate. She’s an arrogant lame duck who Europeans are turning against more and more.

Well, then that just makes things worse regarding the larger picture. The First World seems to have slid into some kind of anti-intellectual authoritarianism.

Indeed....and Merkel is one of the chief reasons why the extreme right and extreme left are growing in Europe. She is a perfect symbol of political elitism, from her support for the undemocratic elements of the EU and an ever federalised Europe, to her augmentation of the German population with a full 1% population increase from the Middle East (which doesn’t even include other migrants to Germany).

People seek refuge in the more extreme parties when they feel they are being ignored. Just look at Italy.

I guess I was momentarily wooed by her ability to string whole sentences together, and to not behave like a cockwomble in public. When you have Trump as your President, the bar gets set very, very low.

Not sure where to put this one.

Hilariously, the judge cited Trump's own words as part of the reason for allowing the lawsuit to proceed. Part of the Justice Department's case against it was that it would detract from his ability to run the country, but since Trump has been tweeting "I hope John Brennan does sue me!" and other shit about having his day in court with Stormy and others the judge said he doesn't seem to have any issue with litigation.

A two dimensional object would have trouble limboing under the bar trump set.

Again, Republicans actually doing what they accuse the Democrats of...

Or the St. Petersburg boys.

This practice goes back to Donnie's very first campaign rally in NYC, only he paid those actors a flat $50 for showing up.

There's much that Merkel can be criticized for, but the idea that her handling of the refugee crisis was actually part of an elaborate plot to "augment the German population" is laughable... I didn't take you for a conspiracy theorist.

Remember when Bush was president and he'd only say something stupid once a month and no one serously feared getting glassed by NK?

Man, those were good times.

Who said anything about a plot?

I am absolutely sure what she did was for honourable reasons and as a way to help those fleeing the war. But it did augment the population. There is no getting away with that. If you add an entire one percent to the population overnight and they are all of a different culture, it does change things. You're talking about around one and half million people in just a few years. That's a huge amount, and that does change towns and cities. That's just reality, and that is what has caused the backlash. Be in denial all you want, but the rise of the far right on the continent illustrates my point, especially since immigration is one of their chief support winning arguments.

That doesn't make what she did wrong, though. If her reasons were honorable, and she sought to help a significant number of immigrants who desperately needed it (and I've no doubt they did), then she did the right thing, and the unrighteous anger of the far right doesn't matter worth a damn. In the U.S., the far right became enraged when black people started voting. The far right became enraged when we stopped arresting same sex couples for "sodomy." The far right gets enraged when women level accusations of sexual assault at men in power. When it comes to doing the right thing, when it comes to helping human beings live, helping them survive, then the far right getting angry isn't justification against something being the right thing to do. They're going to get angry. How you deal with it is certainly difficult, because bigots and racists hold a lot of sway, but their objections aren't worth the shit they've drawn them from.

I remember when I was young and thought about being old one day. Now I’m pretty sure I won’t make it that long. Either through war or society collapsing due to climate change. Probably for the best since I’ll never be able to retire anyway.

I feel the same. If I make it to 50, I will be surprised.

I remember when I was young, I shined like the sun.

Yesterday then?

It is wrong in my opinion. It's wrong because these people are from a very different culture. Many are unskilled and ill educated. The consequence of that sort of mass, short term immigration is that communities often do not integrate, they ghettoise and cause cultural division and tension. We've seen it in the UK with high rates of South Asian immigration. Then there is the burden on infrastructure and public resources. A country must and should have a measured approach to immigration. These people will need to be supported until they are able to work. They will need to be housed. In many cases education will need to be provided. I'm sure you well know that I am particularly well aware of what it is to be a refugee having acted for so many. But an elected leader has a duty to the existing people of his or her country and their concerns as much as anything else and it is more complicated than simply throwing your arms wide open. Germany is a country of nearly 90 million and where immigration is concerned it can't just have a system that brings in mass refugees. Its immigration system also needs to cater for skilled migrants, students and so on, who are going to be the higher contributors to the economy and society in the short term.

Having thoughts and concerns over the rate of immigration and consequences of a high influx doesn't immediately make someone a racist or bigot. This is not Dinner you're talking to. In the real world immigration has to be balanced against the public interest. If it were truly about helping all refugees than Germany would be taking in a lot more than a million and a half. But even Merkel knows there is a line that has to be drawn. What I am saying is that she took too any too quickly, and that is what has lost her public support and helped fuel the rise of the right in Europe, a Union already dealing with high rates of immigration.

It's all very noble to think there are no borders and everyone just gets a long straight away and things are rosy and fine. But that isn't reality. There is a social, financial and political cost and that's why immigration should be reasonable and balanced against resources and the public interest. I think that there would have been less of a backlash if the intake had've been lower and had been staged, with more pressure put on other countries, especially the United States, to do their part.

Then we have to change the system from what it is, to improve upon it. One that can't adapt to an influx of humans, knowing full well that humans migrate, is a deficient system.

Well, it depends what you mean by "change the system". I didn't refer to a system. Rather the practical effect of short term, high volume immigration. You talk as if the ideal world is where we let every last person in who needs it, overload our countries and burden our resources with significant population increases. That's just not realistic for the reasons I have already stated. No, the ideal world is a world where people don't have to migrate in the first place for economic or safety reasons. But that takes time, is a multi generational project and is one that probably will never fully come to pass, and a great part of improving others countries is how we conduct ourselves on the international stage and deal with poor countries and undemocratic regimes (and I'll not talking about buillshit wars and exporting fake "freedom" slogans"!). In the short term it has to be a balancing act between the nation and the people who need help...and, like I also said above, one must also factor in a country's regular net migration when considering how many to take in during a crisis. Germany's, if anything like the UK's, will be running at several hundred thousand a year on average, without including the mass refugees Merkel accepted in. Western nations can't even come close to taking everyone for infrastructure reasons alone, so there has to be a balancing act whether we like it or not. So the debate isn't really about the morals, because morally we leave more to die than we help anyway. It's about how many and at what rate vs integration, resources and, yes, in a democracy, the will of the people (if you're an elected official like Merkel).

In an ideal world I'd love to see every good person on this planet saved from oppression and poverty, but that isn't possible to do with the world as it is and as it will be during our lifetimes. So I am trying to be realistic. In a hundred years, who knows? Whenever there is nationalism, isolationism and populism they rarely last in the long term. History has shown that, for all humaity's wars and bloodshed, progressive thought, equality, civil liberties and democratic values increasingly win out in the long term. A hundred years ago Europe was full of absolute monarchs. America was only sixty years beyond slavery. The age of colonialism was still strong. Women had no votes in most of the world. The very concept of a refugee didn't exist. Look how things have changed. The current lurch to the far right is being carried by older generations. The world is becoming more and more globalised and education is at a rate never before seen for humanity. The young people increasingly don't care about skin colour or what passport you hold. I have faith that the world will continue to progress and gradually become less hospitable for the poor and disenfranchised. That long term progression will do more to fight against the situations that create refugees than anything else. That's why it's as much about promoting basic human rights and values as much as it is taking in what we can during a crisis.

so then what are you worried about? If the US goes down the toilet this is your country's big chance to rule the world again with no competition.
You'll have the world driving on the wrong side of the road and mispronouncing "aluminum" in no time at all.

So why don't we call other elements "sodum", "titanum", Potassum", "Lithum", "helum", "radum", etc?

Left without comment other than, yes, it's real....

@El Chup, what you are describing -- eloquently and accurately -- is a challenge. But isn't it a challenge worth facing? We have been meeting it better than I thought possible, so far; but even to the extent that we have failed in some instances, isn't the likely outcome of failure still better than the alternative of sending away refugees -- which is what most of these people are, no matter whether they are called immigrants or not? No, we don't want immigrants to live in isolated cultural enclaves -- but isn't that still preferable to letting them die? Yes, we do have to come up with housing and infrastructure for a million people on short notice -- but if we can only put them in tents for some weeks, isn't that still better than sending them away?

Are you referring to my debate about Merkel?

Even taking in a million scarcely covers all those struggling in the world against persecution, war and poverty. It is a challenge we cannot meet, and yes infrastructure and domestic opinion is relevant. The latter because that is democracy, the former because cultural augmentation and ghettoisation are things that happen. Now, it is fair to say that augmentation and ghettoisation is a centuries old hallmark of global movement, but traditionally it has been a little more staged and immigrants have tended more towards integration than is presently the case. I would also add that accepting huge swathes of people without question undermines the asylum process because it is right and fair for the public interest of any country that asylum applicants actually qualify for asylum, therefore their claims must be tested by the state and judiciary. What burden does 1.5 million people put on such a system? I can tell you in the UK we could not face it as our system struggles already. Then there is the simple fact that in the real world there are people holding themselves out as refugees who are just economic migrants, sometimes who are looking to exploit the system and sometimes are even looking to commit offences. I can tell you of various clients that I have had that were, how should I put it, less than wholesome.

Of course idealistically the less people who face danger the better, which is why I laugh at Americans who say they have no space or resources when they have it in abundance compared top the nations of Europe. But we have to also consider the political and social ramifications. Is it worth saving those extra people if the cost is the rise of the far right and a potential society that prejudices minorities, both entering and domestic? Is it worth the cost of increased racism and bigotry? Is it worth the cost of social division? Is it worth the cost of things like increased Islamic extremism (often an effect in the West of social exclusion)? Do we have a duty to the existing population to make sure we have the resources to verify the legitimacy of those claiming refugee status? Do we have jobs to give entrants? What is the net migration we can sustain and how much of that do we want to be highly skilled? All these factors have to be balanced out against capacity.

You can't say "take as many as possible and just work it through". It's idealism.