by Peter Löcke //
April Fool's Day! Once a year, politicians are allowed to poke fun at their voters and the media at their readership. The punctual joke on April 1st can look back on a long tradition, and not just in the private sphere. There is an increasing tendency for the humorous one-day wonder to become a year-round event. A competition to outdo political madness. This is probably what Friedrich Nachwahl-Merz thought in March when he shouted "April April" a billion times to astonished CDU voters. What Merz can do, others can do too. The following is a TOP 5 of great follies from the past week. Unsurprisingly, the favorite Annalena Baerbock came out on top as the winner and undisputed number one in the buck-shooting discipline.
We live in a time of nefariousness [1]. Germany's outgoing Foreign Minister stated this at the "Europe 2025" conference, only to go on to demonstrate her speechlessness and total UN prowess. Diplomacy? At the UN, it is "important to erode in the background". Unfortunately, the word "backroom" has a "negative connotation" in Germany. Annalena said during the chat on the podium. I realize that diplomatic eroding has a negative connotation for me. Perhaps her new best friend Armin could have helped Annalena on the podium. After all, they know each other from parties together and visits to Syria. But Armin seems to be suffering from paranoia at the moment.
He felt persecuted. That was Laschet's excuse for driving almost twice as fast [2] as the speed limit instead of the permitted 50 km/h. I see this as positive for several reasons. The carnival prince always shows humor, whether in Aachen or in the Ahr valley. As a fierce opponent of the speed limit, Laschet still proves his driving ability in his old age by driving quickly and looking back. Speaking of looking back? The whole story dates back to July 2024 and has only just been made public. So sponge over it! The same goes for looking back on the coronavirus years.
The health ministers from Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, Clemens Hoch (SPD) and Manfred Lucha (Greens), were invited to the SWR program "Zur Sache". The issue at stake was corona. Reappraisal? Anything but that. Brazen misrepresentation of history is more accurate. Hoch claims never to have told anyone "You have to get vaccinated, otherwise we'll exclude you!" He actually formulated it differently. "One thing is very clear: from April, the first people may no longer be allowed to come to work." These and similar sentences are verifiably from Clemens Hoch. "Unvaccinated people should not celebrate at all!" Clemens Hoch didn't say that either, only his boss Malu Dreyer did. The memory of his ministerial colleague Manfred Lucha is even more astonishing. What did Lucha remember? The schools were not closed for that long in total, corona was worse than the Spanish flu and, in view of the images from Bergamo, the corona policy was "not such a bad success". Cheekiness wins. That's what Bavaria's Green Party leader Katharina Schulze thought.
In fourth place in this ranking, "Katha" Schulze landed in first place in the sub-category of Orwellian language by proposing compulsory voluntary service in the 18 to 67 age group [4]. Or was it compulsory voluntary service? Now Katha is primarily known for awkward TikTok dances and speeches that marginalize people in parliament, but certainly not for freedom. And the Greens are certainly not known for patriotism, which, according to the intellectual head of the party, they have always found disgusting. Katha Schulze's proposal must have been a premature April Fool's joke. It must have been.
In fifth and last place in the March jokes is the FDP and thus indirectly also yours truly, because I voted for this party a month ago. Why? I don't know either. Probably because I'm a swing voter who was able to completely ignore Thunder-Strack-Zimmermann, because I also thought that the FDP, as the one-eyed party in the blind traffic light, would prevent even worse, combined with the hope that it would remember Westerwelle's values when in opposition. Fiddlesticks, if you look at the Young Liberals in Lower Saxony [5]. They are now consistently focusing on quotas for women and people with a migration background, on diversity and social issues, on differentiating themselves from conservative parties and on an ambitious climate policy that is greener than that of the Greens. Hallelujah! You have to be that stupid. This applies to a party that wants to transform itself from three percent into the per mille range. But it also applies to the naivety of voters like me.
Maybe that's the solution. Instead of slipping into the per mille range in the face of all the absurdities and constant April Fool's jokes, simply laugh at yourself and your own stupidity. And don't always take yourself so seriously in times of year-round April Fool's jokes.
Articles identified by name do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher.
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One Response
It is not entirely clear to me whether these facts are so special and whether every caper should be taken so seriously. If you go to southern Italy on your own, you won't see any more misery among the population than in this country. There is probably also no less corruption and waste of taxpayers' money. If we want to get closer to southern Italy, why not? We should not invest any energy in these processes and we should not believe in a collapse, which has not happened in less well-governed countries in Europe for decades, with a few exceptions. My observation for fifty years has been that the church stays in the village, even in turbulent times. The Russians have not come, there has never been a really bad global economic crisis, no currency reform, the hole in the ozone layer is closing again, the forests are alive and the sky has not yet fallen on our heads. For me, the challenges we face as a society are more cultural than material. My positive view of humanity leads me to believe that this can be overcome. I tell myself that I can contribute to success, just like everyone else.