Nearly his entire paternal line (for the past 250 years?) have been greasy-nosed politicians. My guess is that collective guilt has caught up with the family name.

"And -- keine ahnung warum -- dirt poor white Americans keep voting for Republican overlords and oligarchic overseers."

Gegen dummheidt kampfen gotter selbst vergebens.

Lol. Roughly, it means "Against stupidity even the gods struggle in vain."

One of my g-pop's favorite quotes. It's from Schiller, the guy who wrote the play for William Tell, my childhood hero (besides Ernest P. Worrell). G-pop grew up during the War and had stories of his parents helping all sorts of people who were on the run from those fucking Nazis. He liked to say, "Der tod ist die grenze des lebens, aber nicht die grenze der liebe." to my Mom (death is the termination of life, but not the termination of love). He was full of those corny things. When I would visit we would walk down to the store and buy a bag of Zwiefel's paprika potato chips and sit down somewhere and devour them (mostly him). He loved his junk food until the end, he-he.