評論
打印
If Donald Trump is the world’s most colourful politician, Angela Merkel is probably the least. She is resolutely tedious even by the standards of German politics. The new German verb merkeln means “to do nothing, make no decisions or statement”. She never talks about a “German dream”, and you will not see her campaign under the slogan, “Make Germany great again”.
如果說唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)是世界上最多彩紛呈的政治人士，那么安格拉•默克爾(Angela Merkel)很可能就是最單調乏味的那個。即使按照德國政壇的標準，她也是絕對乏味的。德文新動詞“merkeln”的意思是“什么也不做、什么決定也不作出、什么聲明也不發表”。她從不談論“德國夢”，你也不會看到她的競選活動喊出“讓德國再次偉大起來”的口號。
Even when she suddenly opened Germany’s borders to more than one million people last summer, she phrased this quixotic act in pragmatic language: “Wir schaffen das,” “We can do this.” Germany’s centre has largely held since, despite big advances for the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland in last Sunday’s regional elections. Even amid the migrant crisis, most mainstream German politicians have remained boring pragmatists. Their aim: very slowly improve most people’s lives a little, while averting disaster.
即使是在去年夏天她突然向100多萬人開放德國國境的時候，她談及這種唐吉坷德式行為所用的語言也是務實的：“我們可以做這個”(Wir schaffen das)。自那以來德國的中間立場主流大體上保持下來，盡管反移民的德國新選擇黨(Alternative für Deutschland)在最近的地區選舉中取得重大進展。即使是在移民危機期間，大多數主流德國政治人士也依然是乏味的務實者。他們的目標是：非常緩慢地漸漸改善大多數人的生活，同時避免災難。
That distinguishes Germany from other large countries. In the US, France and Russia, politics is couched in the language of dreams, greatness, heroes and utopia. There are pragmatic political cultures and utopian ones, and, oddly, it’s the pragmatists who get closer to utopia.
這把德國和其他大國區分開來。在美國、法國和俄羅斯，政治都是用有關夢想、偉大、英雄和烏托邦的語言來包裝的。世界上有務實的政治文化、也有烏托邦主義的政治文化，吊詭的是，更接近烏托邦的是務實者。
Utopian politicians raise high expectations that they can only disappoint. Every American president campaigns as a great leader who will restore the American dream but then governs in prose. Pretty soon people start complaining that he hasn’t delivered the American dream, but of course he hasn’t: by definition, dreams are not reality.
烏托邦主義的政治人士提出了很高的期望，但他們只會讓人們失望。每個美國總統在競選時都將自己宣揚為能夠重建美國夢的偉大領袖，然而施政時還得回歸現實。很快人們開始抱怨他沒有兌現美國夢——但他當然不會：顧名思義，夢想不是現實。
Utopians rarely improve people’s lives a little. That’s partly because they are guided by hallowed old documents rather than by modern best practice. A daft old document such as the Communist Manifesto is particularly damaging but even a wise one such as the American constitution often misleads. For instance, the main reason the US has more than 30,000 gun deaths a year is the second amendment, adopted in 1791.
烏托邦主義者鮮少能讓人們的生活得到漸漸改善。部分原因是他們以被推上神壇的古老文獻為指導，而不是依據現代的最佳實踐。像《共產黨宣言》(Communist Manifesto)這樣愚蠢的陳舊文獻的破壞性尤其大，但即使是像《美國憲法》這樣的明智文獻，往往也會誤導人。比如，美國每年死于槍支的人超過3萬，其主要原因就是1791年生效的第二修正案。
French politics, too, is packed with misleading old verities. One — derived from the French Revolution — is that “the people” should always be mounting the barricades to thwart the government. Another verity, treasured by the French left, is that “the workers” (imagined as figures in a socialist realist statue) must fight anything proposed by “the bosses” (imagined as top-hatted capitalists in a 19th-century cartoon).
法國政治也充斥著誤導人的陳舊信念。其中一條來自法國大革命，“人民”永遠都應該豎起路障阻撓政府。另一條信念被法國左翼視若珍寶，內容是“工人”（想象成社會主義寫實雕像中的人物形象）必須反對“老板”（想象成19世紀漫畫中戴著高帽的資本家形象）提議的任何事情。
Most utopians don’t even strive to improve people’s lives. They aim for something greater. Russia annexed the Crimea to regain imperial greatness, and no matter that western sanctions then made Russian lives worse.
大多數烏托邦主義者甚至不會費神去改善人民的生活。他們的目標是更加宏大的東西。俄羅斯吞并克里米亞是為了恢復帝國榮光，哪怕西方的制裁讓俄羅斯人的生活更加艱難。
In Germany, by contrast, dreams of greatness have been taboo since 1945. The first postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer campaigned under the slogan: “No Experiments”. A later successor, Helmut Schmidt, famously advised: “Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor.”
相比之下，在德國，關于偉大的夢想在1945年以后一直是禁忌。戰后的第一任德國總理康拉德•阿登納(Konrad Adenauer)的競選口號是：“不做實驗”。后來的繼任者赫爾穆特•施密特(Helmut Schmidt)給出了著名的建議：“有想象力的人都應該去看醫生。”
Merkel got an additional anti-utopian inoculation: she spent her first 35 years in a failed utopia, East Germany. She rarely tells her own story, perhaps for fear of sounding inspirational, but she graduated from Karl Marx University in Leipzig, and later, for her physics PhD, had to write an additional “Marxist-Leninist” thesis. Her topic: the farmer-worker relationship in the farmer-worker state. She got a bad grade for overemphasising the farmers.
默克爾本人還得到了一劑額外的反烏托邦主義預防針：她人生的頭35年是在東德，也就是一個失敗的烏托邦里度過的。她很少訴說自己的生平故事，可能是擔心聽起來引人遐想，但她從萊比錫卡爾馬克思大學(Karl Marx University)畢業，之后為了自己的物理學博士學位，她還不得不額外撰寫一篇“馬列主義”論文。她的論文題目是“工農國家的工農關系”。因為過于強調農民，她的得分很低。
Freedom for Merkel means freedom from ideology, explains her German biographer Stefan Kornelius. She is the politician as wonk: facts and analyses rather than stirring rhetoric. Asked once on TV what the word “Germany” inspired in her, she replied: “Pretty, airtight windows.”
默克爾的德文傳記作者斯蒂凡•柯內琉斯(Stefan Kornelius)解釋稱，對默克爾來說，自由意味著不受意識形態桎梏的自由。她是關注政策細節類型的政治人士：比起令人心潮澎湃的言論，她更看重事實和分析。有一次，默克爾在電視節目上被問及“德國”這個詞會讓她想起什么，她回答：“精美、擋風的窗戶。”
Most northern European political cultures are similarly boring. I grew up in the Netherlands in the 1980s under another Christian Democratic leader, Ruud Lubbers, of whom it was said that when he read from the Bible at party meetings it sounded like a cookbook. After 10 years in office he boasted: “I have made the Netherlands duller.”
類似的，歐洲北部多數國家的政治文化都很乏味。我在上世紀80年代的荷蘭長大，當時另一位基督教民主黨人魯德•呂貝爾斯(Ruud Lubbers)任荷蘭首相。據說，這位領袖在黨內會議上朗讀《圣經》的時候，聽起來就像在讀一本烹飪書。在任10年后他自豪地說：“我讓荷蘭更乏味了。”
Britain has shuffled towards this boring pragmatic tradition. Quietly and gradually, the country has dropped “Great” from its name. Even Brexit campaigners aren’t selling imperial dreams; instead, they depict a plucky little England signing trade deals alone. Luckily, the UK has an escape valve that American politics lacks: all British fairytale fantasies can be projected on to the royals. That allows the prime minister to be just a functionary.
英國也在緩慢地轉向這種乏味的務實傳統。這個國家悄然之間漸漸把“大”字從國名中去掉了。甚至連退歐運動的活動人士也不兜售帝國美夢；相反，他們描繪了一個英勇的小英格蘭獨立簽署貿易協定的前景。幸運的是，英國有一個美國政治缺乏的安全閥：所有的英國童話幻想都可以投射到皇室成員身上。這讓首相可以只做公職人員。
Boring pragmatic functionaries often make people’s lives better. Northern European countries lead the world’s happiness rankings. Germany has cut unemployment to a historic low of 6.2 per cent without trashing its welfare state.
乏味務實的官員往往會讓人們的生活更好。歐洲北方國家在全世界的幸福指數排名中名列前茅。德國在沒有放棄福利國家體制的情況下，已將失業率降至6.2%的歷史低點。
But the pragmatists’ greatest achievement goes unseen: averting disaster. In John le Carré’s novel A Small Town in Germany, a British diplomat calls this his lifetime mission. He says, “Every night, as I go to sleep, I say to myself: another day achieved. Another day added to the unnatural life of a world on its deathbed. And if I never relax, if I never lift my eye, we may run on for another hundred years.”
但人們還忽略了務實者的最大成就：避禍。在約翰•勒卡雷(John Le Carre)的小說《德國小鎮》(A Small Town in Germany)中，一名英國外交官把這稱為他畢生的使命。他說，“每天夜里，在我入睡之前，我對自己說：我又完成了一天。為這個邁向滅亡的世界違背自然的壽命延長了一天。如果我永遠不放松，永遠不抬起雙眼，我們可能繼續存續100年。”
Germans understand the sentiment. They experienced complete collapse in 1945, and then again under Merkel’s eyes in East Germany in 1989. She once said she possessed “competence in the early detection of collapsing systems”. When it looked as if the euro would collapse she told Bulgaria’s prime minister Boyko Borisov that the “Maya and other civilisations” had disappeared. In other words, today’s Europe could too. Her heroic task: keep politics boring.
德國人理解這樣的情感。他們在1945年經歷了徹底崩潰，在1989年的東德又經歷了一次，后一次是默克爾本人親眼所見。她曾說，她擁有“在早期發現系統崩潰的勝任能力”。在歐元區看起來即將解體的時候，她曾告訴保加利亞總理博伊科•鮑里索夫(Boyko Borisov)，“瑪雅和其他文明”消失了。換句話說，今天的歐洲也可能重蹈覆轍。她的英雄使命：讓政治繼續乏味下去。
