By Olivia Murray
Reductio ad absurdum is a rhetorical technique in which a person takes a particular position to a hypothetical extreme to illustrate the absurdity behind said position.
For example, someone may argue that it is moral to never tell a lie, an unsound and inconsistent position easily refuted by reductio ad absurdum: Would it have been the moral choice for Germans hiding Jews during the Third Reich’s rule to tell the truth to government officials?
Well, reducing things to the absurd to prove how silly certain ideas are is no longer a matter of relying on hypotheticals—simply observe a leftist in action for the ultimate example of absurd ideas in practice:
As a number of people in the comments joked, “German engineering isn’t what it used to be.”
The man in the video attempting (and failing) to break the bottle of champagne is Robert Habeck, a progressive politician and a member of the German “Green” party, and he’s currently campaigning for the position of chancellor. Now, because progressives have deemed the old-fashioned way of christening ships by breaking a champagne bottle—either by hand or attached to the end of a rope—too dangerous, they’re now using the dysfunctional contraption seen in the video.
A stunning metaphor for the progressivism of Germany, and the European Union as a whole: overregulated, overcomplicated, and nothing works. Making life more difficult and inconvenient, one bureaucratic rule at a time!
As an online user reminded me: Under the EU’s trend to overregulate, government mandated the restriction of water flowing from a kitchen faucet…but the kettle or pot still required the same amount of water to fill it, whether that water came out quickly or slowly. Then they mandated that electric kettles have less wattage…but water still boils at 100° C, whether it takes five minutes or fifteen.
Here’s the comment that wins the day:
You don’t appreciate your government. That is the result of 3 years of committee studies, a team of … a hundred of our best engineers and fabricators all done with a paltry budget of 33 million Euros. Learn to appreciate your government or go to jail.