From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr
In Cologne, Germany, the famous Rhineland Carnival opened today despite galloping corona numbers across the country – the highest since the outbreak of the pandemic. Onlookers have reportedly traveled from as far away as America not to miss the spectacle, to which officially only vaccinated or recovered people have access.
And there are always justifications for such silliness, even if reality is turned upside down in the process: On German TV, Cologne’s Mayor Henriette Reker (independent) expressed herself in the most enthusiastically joy about people finally have fun again, while the whole event, of course, is subject to the strictest security rules, such as social distance.
German order, someone like me would think. It doesn’t get better than that. But wait, stop – carnival with social distance?
While she was saying this, the observer thought he couldn’t believe his eyes. In the background there were colorful throngs of people, crowded together, without masks, dancing and jumping. For me, in a figurative sense, the woman tried to explain that the grass was red, although I could see with my own eyes how green it was.
The moral of the story: Everywhere in the world everything is subject to the insanity of arbitrary interpretation – even when the facts visibly speak a different language.
Indeed: the fools are loose.
The Wind of Change 