Sander Schimmelpenninck19 november 2023, 17:17
My last bit of hope was lost during the stupid Debate of the Netherlands on SBS 6. After the nonsense in the canteen of the Dutch right-wing, I know enough: things won’t turn out well for a while. The former working class, overcome by misplaced victimhood, disinterest, navel-gazing and decadence, will once again vote en masse against collective and self-interest on Wednesday. Even more right than last time.
During the debate, Frans Timmermans must have wondered why he wanted to enter Dutch politics again. He seems to have been putting the brakes on debates throughout the campaign, perhaps to avoid being accused of being an emotional southerner. In addition, people on the left seem so afraid of the big right-wingers that they hardly dare to sell their own ideas. Incomprehensible: while the left wants an attack on the status quo, it allows itself to be put on the defensive in this campaign.
Over by author
Sander Schimmelpenninck is a journalist, entrepreneur and columnist for the Volkskrant. He was previously editor-in-chief of Quote. Columnists have the freedom to express their opinions and do not have to adhere to journalistic rules for objectivity. Read the guidelines of de Volkskrant here.
During the SBS debate, Timmermans was bullied and harassed by Geert Wilders, with loud encouragement from the hooligans in the audience. He had to endure infantile, Trumpian jokes about his weight, and there seemed to be an ambush when a self-confessed pathetic lady started barking at him that she couldn’t make ends meet and wanted to get rid of her deductible. As if Timmermans, not the VVD, has led the country for the past twelve years.
Timmermans gave an excellent answer, but nuance and realism turned out not to be for the woman. The ever-despicable Wilders sensed his opportunity and responded with a reprehensible jibe: Timmermans should be ashamed of himself, because he had lost contact with the people. Because he gets redundancy pay. A shocking lack of respect for the poverty problems of the lady in question, but in the land of the blind the stupid youbak is king: the audience clapped their hands. Including the woman herself. ‘Wilders steals show’, were the headlines in many right-wing media afterwards.
Thanks to the constant carpet bombing of social media, we have come to normalize things that are not normal. The SBS debate was the perfect illustration of right-wing dominance; deliberate stupidity scores, as does sabotaging and debilizing the debate with irrelevant personal attacks. It’s maddening, but this is where we are as a country. In the Netherlands you have to cry along with the big mouth, find stupidity funny and elevate shamelessness to an art. Wilders could become prime minister in such a country.
Timmermans could have stooped to Wilders’ level. After all, he has a Hungarian on the couch at home, but he wants to get rid of all foreigners. And he whines about redundancy pay, but has been receiving tons of taxpayer money for years, because he has to provoke Muslims all over the world all day if necessary, instead of doing his job. But Timmermans has been told that he must behave like a worthy prime ministerial candidate.
The Netherlands just doesn’t want any dignity at all. It wants the terror of stupidity, it wants its rude head in the sand and a confident shot in its own foot. As long as people can afford disinterest in redistribution, it must apparently hurt much more. So let it happen. Give all those ignoramuses their extreme right-wing cabinet. Find out, choose collective impoverishment, hatred and the downward spiral of the stupid right.
Let that aggrieved lady find out that Wilders’ nonsense doesn’t make her a cent richer. That an extreme right-wing cabinet only reduces her social security. See whether racism and short-sightedness really make your own life better. If you don’t want to think, you just have to feel.
Also read
2023-11-19 16:17:18
#land #blind #stupid #youbak #king
