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Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann at Markus Lanz: "First be happy"
Photo: Markus Hertrich / ZDF
Now have a laugh!
What is this long pandemic face?
Everything is going very well!
The Rhineland-Palatinate Prime Minister Malu Dreyer, for example, thinks “that we got through the pandemic well overall.” She said that to Anne Will, after which she adjusted her statement again: “In view of the pandemic, it is 'good' wrong vocabulary.
What I am trying to say is that we have a strong health system where people can be sure they are getting the medical treatment they need. ”But we now have a vaccine anyway!
So theoretically.
One that is very effective!
So probably.
Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow
Photo: Stefan Klüter
Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.
In 2016 her book “The 100 Most Important Things” (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.
In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the »party«, which at that time was not allowed to vote in the federal elections.
She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp Prize for media journalism for her media-critical column »Wochenschau« (uebermedien.de).
And as if the prime ministers had agreed in unanimous self-assurance and mutual affirmation, Winfried Kretschmann said on Tuesday at Markus Lanz by video switch: “By the way, we should be happy that we have this vaccine, after only one year, because the light is on At the end of the tunnel and about that, we have to be happy for now.
This is a gigantic achievement by science and companies, and the fact that there are now some mishaps is of course extremely regrettable, but I can't change it. "
Yes man!
Citizens from and outside of Baden-Württemberg, why don't you be a little more satisfied that everything is not going much worse.
It could also have been, for example, that Andreas Scheuer took care of making the vaccine available.
Gratitude imperative
I find it remarkable, with what a tortured optimistic gratitude imperative some political actors conduct a communicative and emotional derailing.
It is a particularly good-humored, scarecrow straw man that Armin Laschet had already put up at the beginning of January when he tweeted the following after criticizing the logistics of the vaccine procurement: “That a vaccine will be researched, developed, tested, approved in ten months, is delivered and deployed is a sensational scientific achievement.
Nonetheless, as always: retrospective know-it-all and party-political petty. "
It is downright sporty how the justified criticism of the
political
and
economic
decisions relating to the logistics and economy of vaccines is confused with ingratitude towards the pioneering work of scientists.
Nice try.
A nice pirouette to want to devalue this criticism as hostility to science.
If there aren't enough effective vaccines, then the problem is us - the ungrateful, grumpy voters.
This misjudges the dynamics of a constantly changing democracy: it is part of its design that it constantly has to question and criticize its systems itself.
Anything else would amount to an authoritarian standstill.
Democracy means that you can complain about what doesn't work - especially when it doesn't work.
And that should be taken seriously.
"You would be much worse in other countries"
Perhaps I am irritated by this demand from the ministerial president to "be happy first", also because I know it from other discourses: from those relating to poverty, integration or equality.
Here, too, it is often heard that one should finally be grateful for what is: "Now be happy how well you are as a woman" or "as a person with a migration background" in Germany;
often with the addition: "You would be much worse in other countries".
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel Plus Effectiveness in Seniors: The criticism of the AstraZeneca vaccine - and what is really behind it By Julia Merlot
Icon: Spiegel Plus Corona vaccinations: Why children make herd immunity difficultBy Katherine Rydlink
Icon: Spiegel Plus statistics on death rates: Are even more people dying of Covid-19 in Saxony than are officially known? By Sophia Baumann
If you tell a poor person that they should be a little more grateful in view of the welfare state, that is nothing more than a paraphrase of "have a little more humility" or, even worse, "be a little more modest".
In response to criticism of political errors or structural weaknesses, such a rhetorical exit is paternalistic, patronizing and intrusive.
It is political
tone policing
, an
argumentum ad hominem
that seeks to remove justified emotions and frustration through a jovial gesture - whataboutism of the smallest order.
"Now smile!"
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As the philosopher Claudia Card illustrated very subtly in her essay "Gratitude and Obligation" from 1988, the asymmetry of sovereignty shimmers wherever a grateful confirmation is expected for political self-assurance.
Because gratitude can only be admonished in a power imbalance, only demanded from a person or institution on whose grace one was or is apparently dependent.
What remains is the petty and unsolicited, "Now smile!" - upscaled to the socio-political level.
At a time when everything is not-so-bad, we should cultivate our democratically legitimized, constructive ingratitude.
At least as a theoretical concept of an inner attitude, because even during a pandemic, citizens owe their government no good-humored cheerfulness.
Instead of such annoying and annoying appeasements, rulers should better explain themselves when they fail.
Democratic representation is neither a service in which the choosing customers have to attract attention due to simplicity, nor is our social contract based on the concept of humble acceptance of political decisions.
As long as people die from Corona every day, I will definitely not "first be happy" that everything is not much worse.
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