“If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.” – Lucy Larcom Watching the parade of negative-charisma European elites cascade toward their inevitable political demise would be entertaining, were it not certain that their equally incompetent replacements would spawn into place from a seemingly endless line of empty suits, like so many Pez popping out of identical plastic dispensers. Consider soon-to-be-ousted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Anybody who labored through his bizarre speech to the Bundestag on Wednesday would hurriedly bet the under on his longevity in the post. Already the least popular German chancellor of the modern era—his roughly 15% approval rating bests his predecessor, the hapless Olaf Scholz, for that dubious title—Merz’s response to an electoral rout suffered by his party in last Sunday’s regional election in Saxony-Anhalt was a classic five-stages-of-grief display stuck on “anger.” The unruly session barely avoided devolving into fisticuffs. Keir
