{"id":31307,"date":"2018-02-03T08:17:26","date_gmt":"2018-02-03T16:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=31307"},"modified":"2018-02-03T08:23:29","modified_gmt":"2018-02-03T16:23:29","slug":"7-german-words-that-perfectly-capture-the-feeling-of-living-in-trumps-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/02\/03\/7-german-words-that-perfectly-capture-the-feeling-of-living-in-trumps-america\/","title":{"rendered":"7 German Words That Perfectly Capture the Feeling of Living in Trump’s America"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article from AlterNet<\/a><\/span> is by Liz Posner.\u00a0\u00a0She is a managing editor at AlterNet. Her work has appeared on Forbes.com, Bust, Bustle, Refinery29, and elsewhere. You can follow her on Twitter at\u00a0@elizpos<\/span>.<\/a>\u00a0 Although I did go through the motions of reprinting it, I don’t seem to have picked up all the credits, so I am making sure to put them in manually.\u00a0 As TC says so well, “It is not our intent to violate anyone’s proprietary rights.”<\/span><\/p>\n

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When I set out to research the German words that capture what it feels like to be an American living during the era of the Trump administration, I didn\u2019t expect there to be so damn many.<\/p>\n

Like many of my fellow citizens who have flocked to therapists’ offices over the past year, eager to sort through\u00a0their trauma<\/a>\u00a0at being governed by a narcissistic megalomaniac, I was already aware that the current political era was doing something strange to my psyche. But it can be hard to pin down exactly what these emotions are, if words for them even exist.<\/p>\n

It was one particular moment of\u00a0schadenfreude<\/em>\u00a0(as I laughed at\u00a0Steve Mnuchin\u2019s wife revealing her true self<\/a>\u00a0on social media) that got me wondering: what other gems of the\u00a0beautiful German language<\/a>\u00a0could help me diagnose the rollercoaster of emotions one feels during a typical day in Trump\u2019s America? There\u2019s so much relief in having a name for these feelings of fear, paranoia and anger, after all. Here are a few, for starters.<\/p>\n

1. Fernweh\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fernweh, or “distance pain,” is like the opposite of homesickness. It\u2019s the feeling of wanting to be elsewhere, anywhere but where you are at this moment. The Fernweh many Americans feel today is a bit like wanderlust, minus the glamour and with the added fear that you may be harshly judged as an American traveling abroad in the time of Trump.<\/p>\n

2. Weltschmerz<\/strong><\/p>\n

Weltschmerz translates literally to \u201cworld pain,\u201d and boy oh boy, does that say it all. It\u2019s the state of weariness one feels at the state of the world. Some of us may have felt a constant state of Weltschmerz since Nov. 9, 2016.<\/p>\n

3. Kummerspeck<\/strong><\/p>\n

If your state of Weltschmerz has been really getting to you, it\u2019s possible you\u2019ve put on a few extra pounds of Kummerspeck, or literally, \u201cgrief bacon.\u201d Know that you\u2019re at least in good company: last year, Barbra Streisand, Judd Apatow and others complained\u00a0they\u2019d gained a \u201cTrump 10<\/a>”\u00a0in the months following the election. Eat your feelings, indeed.<\/p>\n

4. Kuddelmuddel<\/strong><\/p>\n

This wonderful heap of syllables evokes chaos or a hopelessly messy, unstructured state. Sounds like the White House\u00a0as told by Michael Flynn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5. Fuchsteufelswild<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a state of unfiltered, primal rage. You may have felt it over the past year while listening to any White House press conference, hearing Trump describe Haiti, El Salvador and many African nations as “shithole countries,” seeing the president troll Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on social media…or really, any time at all.<\/p>\n

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6. Fremdschaemen<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ever felt ashamed on behalf of a member of the Trump White House? Like the time Kellyanne Conway told Fox viewers to \u201cgo buy Ivanka\u2019s stuff<\/a>\u201d? Or when Trump claimed his inauguration speech\u00a0literally made the clouds part<\/a>\u00a0and the sun come out? That\u2019s Fremdschaemen.<\/p>\n

7. Backpfeifengesicht<\/strong><\/p>\n

In German, this means \u201ca face that deserves to be punched.\u201d Insert your own joke here.<\/p>\n

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There seems to be something about this – Resident – that makes people feel that their own language is just not big enough to describe his awfulness.\u00a0 While Liz is turning to German to expand her vocabulary, Germany seems to be turning to American English to do the same.\u00a0 A couple of examples:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"So I invite everyone, especially Alecto<\/strong>, Megaera<\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/strong>, to have some fun expanding out vocabularies this week.\u00a0 Sometime one simply needs to have a little fun.\u00a0 (But, Furies, if you get bored, you can always go check out those fitness trackers.<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Cross posted to Care2<\/span> HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article from AlterNet is by Liz Posner.\u00a0\u00a0She is a managing editor at AlterNet. Her work has appeared on Forbes.com, Bust, Bustle, Refinery29, and elsewhere. You can follow her on Twitter at\u00a0@elizpos.\u00a0 Although I did go through the motions of reprinting it, I don’t seem to have picked up all the credits, so I am […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":31317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}