BEFORE THINGS GET BETTER
RHEditorial September 2024
The ‘Brandmauer’, ‘Omas gegen Rechts’, warning words from the Federal President and cultural workers, EDEKA’s diversity campaign and all the propaganda from the public media: in the end, none of it helped. The sovereign in Saxony and Thuringia has passed his devastating verdict on the work of the federal government. The people of the state have already been asked to endure a lot with the combustion engine ban, the nuclear power plant shutdown, the heating, self-determination and democracy promotion law, the legalization of cannabis and the financing of Gaza, but uncontrolled mass immigration with all its accompanying effects has been the last straw.
When, in view of the housing shortage, old-age poverty and educational crisis in our own country, hundreds of billions of entrusted tax money are flowing into the care of migrants and development aid, the foreign seems to be more important than our own. If we add to this daily knife attacks by illegal refugees, Islamists commit murders and foreign gangs and family clans engage in shootings on our streets, citizens can only have the impression that an ideologically driven and incompetent leadership has denied reality, lost control and left its own country open to plunder. The deportation of just 28 (!) serious criminal Afghans with 1,000 euros each in a chartered Dreamliner may have fuelled the anger at those responsible.
However, the reactions of those punished by the elections do not indicate any insight or change of heart. With reference to an “undemocratic election result”, the moral and didactic tone of the so-called elite remains unchanged, the learning curve in the ivory tower is still flat. A few days ago, the Chancellor actually claimed at the citizens’ dialogue in the capital that the housing shortage had nothing to do with the immigration movement. Words from far away, as if from a parallel universe. The first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, Konrad Adenauer, would perhaps describe the situation today as follows: “We all live under the same sky, but we do not all have the same horizon.”
So let us not be under any illusions: this federal government does not want to and will not change anything about the major problems facing our country. And so the once proud and long-admired black, red and gold ship is sailing ever deeper into the fog, towards dangerous waters, amidst worldwide head shaking and ridicule. VW is planning to cut more than 100,000 jobs. This is what happens when CEOs in a company with state participation curry favor with the politically powerful, fantasize about car-free Sundays and dismantle the crown jewel of German industry with the combustion engine. They are sawing off the big branch on which they themselves are sitting.
So, as a member of the Bundestag recently said to me, does everything have to get worse before it gets better? The drift to the political fringes continues, where Putin fans and enemies of America are waiting for their chance to gain power, alongside a few smart people. In the middle there is now only one political force that is slowly returning to its conservative values after years of dismantling Merkel, while at the same time showing itself to be cosmopolitan and future-oriented. At the moment, this is probably the only beacon of reason that can give hope. There are elections in Brandenburg at the end of September and there is still a whole year until the next federal election. Let’s not give up on this country – at least until then.
The future is always made of courage, and we will all need enough of it.
With that in mind
Ernst-M. Ehrenkönig · CEO & Managing Partner
