Corona & The Reign of Old People (or: Learning to Cough With Erkin Koray)
“It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles
September 2020: Corona and the endless rule & policy insanities connected it are still going strong in Germany and many other countries across the globe. In what seems to be a sharp paradigm change towards Huxley’s “Civilization is Sterilization”, many governments emptied this beautiful thing called life of all pleasures of social interaction & culture, and reduced it to breathing and consuming („Buy! Buy to beat this crisis!“). Public and social life has been paralyzed in order to ‘flatten the curve’ first, and then to eliminate and / or live with the virus, depending on the industry and public sector concerned.
Although on September 2nd Germany’s Federal Minister of Health admitted that the lockdown had been an unnecessary, ruinous measure that they wouldn’t impose again with the knowledge they have about the virus today, the reality in Germany shows itself like this: schools closed, stores and bordellos open (with bureaucratic guidelines as to which positions are allowed). Billion €€€ bailouts for banks, businesses and the industry, zero compensations for students who had job- or earning losses during the shutdown. Concerts and night clubs shut down, while f.e. public baths with 3000 persons gathering in two pools are open. For the first time since Uncle Adolf’s wrathful reign, culture and art are suspended and at the very bottom of the list of all things that are “system-relevant“ !
One can call the coronavirus policies contradictory and irrational, and get caught up in crazy conspiracies like it happens more intensely these days, when 50000 right-wing extremists and Yoga-esoterics team up as natural allies in Berlin to storm the Reichstag, hysterically waving Reichsflags in front of it. Or one can face the truth and distill the one common denominator behind these political, sociological, and economical decisions: we are ruled by old people, and that won’t change anytime soon. Welcome to the reign of ancient dinosaurs, where a thing called youth or future does not exist!
Most old people’s reactions to the massive lockdowns and measures is a positive and very supportive one in Germany, following the motto „Education, job, money, culture, parties, concerts- I’ve had all of that and don’t need it anymore.“ Some also seem to feel one last excitement and glow because they finally get some attention after most were deported to inhumane nursery homes by their kids, or will be in the near future. And some of them simply have fallen back into the good old, warm lap of the authoritarian and fascist rule. Isn’t it nice to exercise in indignation and punish a bit? To order around and play police for a bit? Especially Germans are flooded by a warm, nostalgic feeling and good vibrations when thinking about it.
Fascinating observations can be made these days- calls and actions for alcohol bans in public spaces are not coming from Muslim or communist countries, but from the so-called “free democracies“ like Germany. Because around 80% of all elderly people here demand it, and the parliamentarians making politics for these elderly class implement it. Our senior citizens complain about hedonistic young people gathering in public spaces for open air drinks after they suffered through months of still-stand and an ongoing night-life lockdown. They identify their “hedonism” as the main problem in the entire pandemic. At the same time, most of these outraged old people are in Summer holidays right now, traveling across Germany and Europe. Because apparently, torturing kids and young people by shutting down schools and culture for half a year in order to save lives is okay and reasonable, but don’t you dare to take away the bourgeois German’s well-deserved holidays, not even for one Summer!
My parents told me to respect the elderly, and while in terms of their vulnerability I strongly agree with this, respect for me is nothing you deserve, but something that you earn. A Nazi that was 25 years old at the end of WW2 in 1945, was 6o years old in 1980, 70 years old in 1990, and 80 years old in 2000- these were my childhood and youth years, and these were the older people I was expected to respect. They were full of shit and evil.
Not much has changed, really. Representatives of the ‘old = automatically ‘responsible’ generation’ are typically individuals that not once opposed an imperial war in their lifetimes- that’s why we had and continue to have so many of them. They usually never spoke out against capitalism’s system of global injustice and oppression, or bothered about core-issues such as the occupation of Palestine and the horrible ongoing lockdown and torture of the country’s people. Most of them are persons who reserve no more than 24 hours of their attention to nuclear-style explosions in Beirut or the global hunger crisis triggered by the corona policies, before moving back to balancing questions about the virus, health, and their entitlement to a long life of prosperity.
Our prospects look grim. Only Italy is aging more unhealthily than Germany, with women having less and less and children. In addition, some portions of the middle-aged and garden-gnomed class are born old so that we must count them into the old class, which makes the reactionary rule only more powerful. While they statistically have an average of 1,37 children in their families, their helicopter mentalities help them appreciate a new reality without dangers and risks. Many rearranged their lives comfortably in a new “Corona-Bourgeoise“, showing off about how well they handle the crisis economically and psychologically, making lemonade out of the lemon, babbling about spending more time in the garden and consciously cutting down on consumption- something you can only do if you actually have something.
I wonder if not all youth is wasted, and not all liberation and emancipation is actually for the garbage, if you are doomed to be surrounded by a majority of very old people from the cradle to the coffin. People who will vote for the concerns of old people, and for parties that make politics for old people. Fuck me: 16 years of Helmut Kohl and another 16 years of Angela Merkel just during my lifetime- I’m 40. How is it that nobody calls this out as an autocracy of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, our ruling party which excludes all but Christians from the democratic process with their name?
It seems like we have no chance.
My humble opinion is that a nice, juvenile „Fuck you!“ as an uprising of the new No-Future Generation of Corona in all of this would be great as a starting point. These days my heart opens up whenever I see young people gathering at night in the streets of Cologne, because they want to LIVE. Their laughter and vibrant glow is filling the streets again, inducing life to all things. They are being dragged away by the police every evening, and they go with little protest or resistance- but they come back the next evening.
Good.
I want to see a youth that denies responsibilities if not given any chances, a youth that insists on its right to take risks, a youth that doesn’t eternally turn the other cheek like good sheep. A youth that mocks, a youth that provokes. A youth that confronts and challenges, a youth that accuses and rejects when it has to be. A youth in the progressive spirit of punk and psychedelic. We need a minority rule of a juvenile spirit.
There are countless examples of young, loud and snotty people who forced their ideas into the stiff dinosaur oligarchies, and as a result changed discourse and culture against all odds. One of them is the Turkish psychedelic and arabesk guitar legend Erkin Koray, who played the first rock’n’roll concert in Turkey aged 15, and stubbornly penetrated the Turk’s ear and mind with the progressive new music, stubbornly changing the country’s cultural course. In 1983, Koray recorded an amazingly tripped-out and funky track called “Öksürük – The Cough“, where he turns health-panic and warning into detached boredom and makes his guitar cough like a neutered cat.
So, the next time when a hypocritical elderly citizen lectures on your hedonism and orders you to do away with your life and future in order to become a fascist health Puritan with no joy or education, then you have to remember Erkin Koray’s “Öksürük – The Cough”.
It is ideal for politely coughing aerosols into the required direction.
by Saliha Enzenauer
(whose 90-year old grandfather is currently sick with the coronavirus)
It is coming Smirkingly Like a two-faced buffoon It comes Wiggly Like a fake bimbo Without a warning Without a noise Like a ghost Like a bogey Mercilessly Without any remorse It comes again To rub off on me To hug my throat It comes again The cough comes Öhö öhö öhö öhö öhö Fucking cough cough Öhö öhö ...
Learning how to be an asshole.
“Politely coughing aerosols to the required direction.” I’m laughing so hard! 😂
Saliha,
You are spot on about the older generation (the Boomers) that are in positions of power continuing business as usual across the globe–plenty of money for corporations, the rich, and wealthy and for neverending imperialism and wars but barely any financial resources for affordable housing, education, and the needs of younger people.
Unfortunately, I think I might be just as cynical about my Millennial generation (I’m 35 so I’m near the beginning of this generation in 1984, same year as Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, a.k.a. social media zombification, and you at 40 are either at the beginning, some historians place the start of Millennials around 1980-1981, or you’re near the very end of Gen-X). The reason I’m just as cynical about Gen-X and the Millennials as I am about the Boomers is that we’ve also been brainwashed to consume. It’s unfortunately highly possible that as Gen-X and Millennials begin to occupy positions of power–they will, as always, already be in positions of economic privilege and they will pursue the interests of the few rather than the many.
Unfortunately, I must agree with you. I had that in the back of my mind when writing the article – that the Millennial Generation is not very promising, but scary at times. Social media & comparable technology complete their lack of potential. Maybe they will be even worse, there’s many indicators for that. but every once in a while there are glimpses of hope. I’m so fed up with the gently reactionary rule that benefits the old wealthy classes., it’s mind-numbing. I have no other chance than to put my hope in the young.
Saliha,
You are analyzing a problem that many people have ignored. Nowadays, I can perceive “superiority” in a very big sector of elder people. Contemporary youth is constantly being pointed out as “a lost cause”, “the worst generation in history”, “the ones that are offended by everything”.
Corona has strenghtened the debate between “boomers” and “millenials”.
Respect has to be earned, I’m totally with you on that point. We can’t give our respect to someone just because his/her age demands it, or because he/she is “the maximum figure” of the family.
I was quite surprised by the fact about Merkel’s ruling party!, these kind of things reinforce the marvelous quote that opens the article.
By the way, Erkin Soray’s track is awesome.
Feeling superior and patronizing. I wish I hadn’t seen what I have seen during Corona in terms of behavior like indignation and denunciation. Older people constantly on the phone because they finally could denunciate their neighbors again, just like in the Third Reich. Old people degrading kids as “these virus spreaders”. Sometimes you’d try to explain to them how bad closed schools are, for the children and their education and well-being, and the working parents. The answer was always the same “Spoiled parents just don’t wanna take care of their kids”. And everyone who was a baby or 1 year old in 1945 goes like :”We had so much hardship in war blablabla”
If you knew what kind of elderly people I am supposed to “respect” here. No thank you.
A bit cynical, but you’ve got a valid point here. The track is awesome!
I’m super depressed now. We’re all doomed.
Fascist Health Puritans!!! I love it. You absolutely nail one of the most important divides that our “independent”western media simply ignores. Age crosses all the political lines and parties. The virus has certainly exposed many cracks in our so called “western liberal democracy” and the markets that they put some much faith in. These are the fallacies that have been there for a long time. Erkin Koray is a great example. And the song is great! A (much needed) poke in the eye of our, so called, leaders. The leaders on the left and the right that distract us with their ridiculous behavior or issue of law and order while the redistribute wealth in an upward direction. A nice juvenile “fuck you” is much needed.
Think about it – it’s actually no surprise or wonder that we have esoterics/vegans/anti-vaxxers etc marching in the streets with Nazis here in Germany. There was always a militant and fascist element in these things, so call it fascist health puritans or fascist health Nazis. 50000 demonstrating in Berlin, and it is not clear against what. Germans like “These are not all Nazis, there are also families, doctors, workers, mothers”. Lol, as if theye groups were immune to being a Nazi, or as if Nazis had no job or families. Naive thought at best.
Americans should know that all these crazy people live Trump and see themselves in him. Before storming the Reichstag with Nazi flags, they screamed out that “Trump is in Berlin and rescuing us. He will give us a peace contract” For fucks sake.
But they see him as one of them , worldwide.
Donald John Trump: 74
Joseph Robinette Biden: 78
Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro Pelosi: 80
Robinette? 😂
She’s right.
Awesome, awesome read. I didn’t know about all these things going on in Germany. I didn’t know that Merkel and Khol each ruled for 16 years!! I’m imagining 16 years of Trump now, hell!! I didn’t know that Merkel’s party is called “Christian Union”. Sounds like an evangelical circle! And I didn’t know that Germany admitted that the lockdowns were exaggerated! Wow!!!
I guess that makes us a Christian fundamentalist country.
Thank you!!!!!!!!
MY WORDS!!