Life in a foreign country
On the 26th of September 2021, Germans will go to the elections to elect Angela Merkel's successor. In this episode, I explore the different ways elections in Germany and my birth country Kenya differ.
Should a society tolerate everything in the name of freedom? There are people who argue that there should be no consequences for the hateful, the spiteful and the vindictive. A former German national football keeper Jens Lehmann, a former professional and national football player Denis Aogo and the current Greens party mayor of the city of Tübingen Boris Palmer and their supporters probably believe that they are victims of cancel culture. But are they really?
This week, German superstar actors like Heike Makatsch, Jan Joseph Liefers, Ulrike Folkerts and 50 of their colleagues published videos mocking the current Covid regulations passed by Angela Merkel’s government. The applause from the far-right party AFD and supporters of fascist hateful movements like Querdenker was prompt and boisterous.
At this time last year, most of us were oblivious to the horrors that 2020 was going to unleash on us. In this episode, my ten-year old and I look back on 2020. From Trump to Covid-19, it looked like nothing was ever going to beat 2020. But that was of course before 2021 arrived. With the insurrection in the US capital and the white supremacist terrorists, 2021 is already kicking 2020's ass.
2020 is finally coming to an end and I could not be more relieved. Yesterday, more than 1000 people lost their lives here in Germany because of Covid-19. To call 2020 exhausting would be a huge understatement. Despite this, 2020 has taught me a few things that will guide my life going forward.
At the beginning of the year, Germany was hailed as a model of how to contain the corona virus. Watching the current number of infections and deaths from corona virus in Germany, that glorious past seems like a bad joke.