The Christians – not just the colonialists – are to blame for all the evils in this world. Therefore we must scourge ourselves. We have sinned. Collective. So let’s hope that at the G7 interior ministers’ meeting in Eberbach Abbey, there won’t be any crosses lying around in the area. Not that anyone is martyred there.
Esteemed readers inside and outside as well as in between, i.e. that zone between life and death, awakening and resignation, joy and frustration, light and dark, joy and madness, I have good and bad news for you. The good news first: we are alive. The bad news is: not for long. Because soon it will all be over. It is approaching, the climate catastrophe, with billions of refugees and/or deaths, unstoppable, even the traffic jam-forming adhesives cannot stop it. Even I can’t do it. That’s why I’m not stuck anywhere. It would be a pity for my Van Gogh. (Just kidding. I don’t own one.)
The truth and nothing but the truth is I have a sticky phobia. Even as a child, I gave up ice cream when nobody could guarantee that I could wash my hands immediately after eating the confectionery. That’s still the case today and fits in with my other psychosocial quirks. And if I were to stick myself, it would be to a conductor’s podium to draw attention to the cutbacks in culture. Or a deposit return machine to protest against the fact that many pensioners are collecting bottles because they are dependent on citizen income after a long working life. (Hartz IV is no longer allowed to be said.)
I’m not an activist, preferring to wait calmly at home for the end of the world, as befits my generation, who caused the whole mess on earth. Let the scientists warn you! I also refer to my physical ailments: my hip has a defect, the surface of a freeway is too hard for me, I can’t stand it. I also don’t have enough time to work as a gluer: I now only work six or seven days a week to make a living. This is not whining, but a statement of fact. Unfortunately, being from the East Zone, I didn’t inherit anything from my parents, no real estate, no money, not even a Van Gogh, only a cross from my mother with Jesus on it, which reminds me, an atheist, daily what people can put up with and endure – and that everything in the world is transient. Except for God.
“Here I stand. I can’t help it. Amen,” said Martin Luther in 1521 at the Diet of Worms. “I’m sitting here on the street because I can’t do anything else,” explains Antonia, a farmer who belongs to the very last generation and is currently not plowing fields but roads and occasionally harvesting the fruits of anger in return. Antonia and Martin are united in spirit and religious zeal to save the world from the apocalypse and other undesirable developments. CO2 certificates aren’t enough for Antonia, that’s just cheap indulgences.
You, dear readers of the educated middle class, to whom I address myself here every two weeks before it dies out, know that for several centuries Catholic sinners have had the opportunity to shorten their time in purgatory by participating in a crusade Participate and/or make a pilgrimage to Rome and then also squeeze coal. This practice caused certain collateral damage that is still having an impact today. Without the Crusades, which fortunately have gone out of fashion, jihad would probably not exist in the murderous form as we know it.
Yes, the Christians – not just the colonialists – are to blame for all the evils in this world. Therefore we must scourge ourselves. We have sinned. Collective. So I exclaim: Let’s first rename Mohrenstrasse to People-of-Color-Strasse and then Kreuzberg to Alle-Religionen-Berg. Then Claudia Roth, the fighter against the Christian “dominant culture” and Bible inscriptions on the domes of some ahistorical and meaningless city palace replicas, is finally satisfied. The main thing is that the long-dead emperor can no longer substantiate his “claim to power derived solely from God”. Resist the beginnings! In case anyone plans to restore the German Empire.
Are you still reading? Did you make it this far? Congratulation! Then back to the topic, where as we all know, everything is connected to everything else. Luther found it wrong that sins can be redeemed through indulgences: making coal harms humanity, coal harms the environment. As you can see, things have been going in circles for centuries. Progress, regression, progress, regression. Nevertheless, somehow things always went ahead, people managed to create a better world even or especially after the worst devastation, whereby “better” is relative.
It sounds cynical, but it corresponds to reality: the political order to this day – apart from the turnaround in 1989 with the exception of Romania – is the result of military conflicts, revolutions and wars. The Thirty Years’ War between 1618 and 1648 ruined large parts of Europe. But in the end there was an epochal agreement: the Treaty of Münster and Osnabrück regulated in particular the coexistence of Catholics and Protestants. The peace agreement holds to this day and is not in danger. It is unthinkable that a Catholic would smash the skull of a Protestant (or vice versa) for not converting.
Regardless of this, the Ministry of Saint Annalena, in anticipatory obedience, had a cross removed from the hall where the Peace of Westphalia was sealed, so that the G7 foreign ministers could meet there. Of course, that had nothing to do with what Ms. Roth and other Greens think, but was of a purely organizational nature. A spokesman for Saint Annalena said: “Of course, another table has to be in there, there has to be another lighting, there have to be other carpets.” Thinks: No one should stumble over the cross. Then we hope that at the G7 interior ministers’ meeting in the Eberbach monastery in Eltville, Hesse, there won’t be any crosses lying around in the area. Not that anyone dies a martyr’s death there.
This brings us back to the very last generation, a group of martyrs who do not suffer death but go to jail for their faith. “If the court thinks it’s justified to sentence me for wanting to give my daughter a future worth living in, I’ll accept that,” says brave Sonja. Teariness and taking on the role of victim are the brand core of the very last generation.
A fighter against the apocalypse recently tweeted about the occupation of the Porsche showroom in the Autostadt Wolfsburg: “Meanwhile, lights and heating have been switched off. Bowls for urgent needs were also not made available. Are you serious, VW?” Sticking yourself somewhere, damaging someone else’s property and then crying that the injured parties don’t heat the room and don’t bring buckets to pee – you have to be able to do that first! But we know: They sit there, they can’t do anything else. Amen.