For my non-German mutuals wondering wtf is happening in the Bundesrepublik of Beer and Bread, here is an overview over the clown show so far:
Nov 6 - chancellor Olaf Scholz fires minister of finances Christian Lindner (FDP) for being an incompetent little bitch and drags him on live TV, resulting in a government crisis as the three party coalition (named Ampel aka "Traffic Light"), which is ruling the country at the moment, falls apart.
Scholz also calls for a vote of confidence on January 15th which (if lost) will lead to the Bundestag being dissolved, triggering snap elections in March. This sends everyone into a panic because the ultra right-wing AfD (with Best Of hits such as "Russia is sexy.", "We should criminalize abortions and force every woman to have more babies instead of rights." and "Deport all immigrants and traitors." and the inofficial ones such as "Why don't we just kill everyone we don't like, let's start with the queers.") has been gaining support for a while (because MAGA has no monopoly on racism, sexism, hate and overall stupidity) and no one with an ounce of empathy or a triple digit IQ likes that very much and is thus worried they might actually make it into a new coalition.
Nov 7 - minister for justice Marco Buschmann is heartbroken over the Ampel-Aus and resigns.
Volker Wissing (FDP), minister for transport, commits the funniest anime betrayal and backstabs his party in order to keep his job, leaves the FDP but gets promoted to minister of justice as a little treat. The memes skyrocket.
Bettina Stark-Watzinger, minister of education and research, resigns along with Buschmann and gets replaced by Cem Özdemir (current minister for food and agriculture) because agriculture - education - at the end of the day where's the difference, right?
Federal President Steinmeier hands Christian Lindner his official participation certificate in an awkward ceremony at castle Bellevue. This is broadcast live on television so everyone can be sure that the little bitch is really leaving.
Friedrich Merz (CDU) threatens the nation with the promise that if he (Merz) becomes chancellor, he will let Lindner back into the government so they can keep fucking up the country's budget together. Bffs.
Nov 8 - after backstabbing the FDP Wissing's website gets hacked in retaliation to display FDP ads.
Meanwhile concerns are being voiced that snap elections in March might be way too early due to a lack of paper.
Robert Habeck (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), vice chancellor and minister for economic affairs and climate action, announces that he will be running for the position of chancellor with a social media post that shows him wearing a Swiftie bracelet which spells "Kanzler-Era" (chancellor-era). This sends Gundolf Siebeke from the super conservative CDU spiralling.
Nov 9 - Siebeke fires off a tweet stating that if Habeck becomes chancellor that would of course be totally the fault of women alone (who are all too emotional to make rational decisions) and Germany should "inofficially" consider revoking women's right to vote and officially implement "antiemotional" history lessons in school, earning him a massive shitstorm (completely deserved). Siebeke deletes the tweet.
Nov 10 - previous minister of justice Marco Buschmann processes his grief over the end of the traffic light coalition by composing and uploading a song to Soundcloud (feat. Gregorian chants) which is not exactly a banger but is admittedly still better than 99% of Germany's entries in the ESC these past few years.
Siebeke is still on his misogynistic bs and makes another incoherent and sexist tweet, this time yapping about queens and Christianity while trying to paint himself as the misunderstood victim.
There are sadly no more Volker Wissing memes.
Nov 12 - everyone has agreed to move the elections from March to the end of February because paper is no longer an issue, I guess? However, now everyone is unhappy because the date clashes with the carnival. No joke.
Siebeke changes the banner on his Twitter profile to read "Frauen. Wahl. Recht. Der 19. Januar 1919" / "Women. Right (to). Vote. January 19th 1919" in a pathetic attempt to show how much he actually (not) respects women while at the same time claiming in his Twitter bio that "only conservatism can secure democracy, freedom, rule of law, equality, climate and culture". No comment.
Nov 13 - 113 members of parliament have officially called for the Bundestag to open the long overdue investigation in order to finally ban the AfD.
It has been the longest week in the history of the Bundesrepublik. Everyone needs a fucking break.
To be continued
Nov 11 (recap) - Scholz confirms he will be re-running for chancellor. When asked by a reporter what makes him more qualified than the other candidates Scholz says he considers himself "to be a little bit cooler".
Nov 13 - Markus Söder, major whine baby of the CSU and walking human wet towel, finally comes up with the weakest retort imaginable to Scholz'es coolness claim: "I don't know anyone who's uncooler than you." That took him two days. These are the ppl in charge of this country.
Nov 14 - SPD and Greens (backed up by the Left) have proposed a law to legalize abortions up to the 3rd month of pregnancy
Nov 15 - Friedrich Merz heavily opposes the proposed new abortion law because a 69 yrs old conservative white male lobbyist whose grandfather was a member of the Nazi party NSDAP obviously should be the one deciding what is best for women.* No one is really surprised by this since this is coming from the CDU. This guy is also running for the position of chancellor btw.
Nov 15 (cont'd) - info has surfaced that the FDP has apparently been secretly orchestrating and instigating the Ampel breakup for months prompting outrage from the rest of the coalition. Lindner bashing round 2 has officially started.
Nov 16 - turns out the FDP had planned the Ampel break-up for when Scholz would be out of country to put the blame on him but someone smelled the fire and so Scholz fired Lindner before the FDP's plan could hatch like a gremlin that was fed after midnight. Talk about timing.
Additionally, info surfaced that the FDP had prepared the Ampel break-up with a PowerPoint presentation. Which would be hilarious if they hadn't called the designated date for the break-up "D-Day". Never a good idea.
SPD is still super furious and dragging Lindner's political corpse in every single press statement and interview. Something something about no need to shoot a dead horse, but we will gladly make an exception here.
Thomas Haldenwang, head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which has been "looking into the AfD" for quite some time due to concerns of the party being unconstitutional (yeah, no shit) since AfD members have been exposed to be part of militant underground groups hoarding illegal weapons and keeping assassination lists of "undesired individuals"), announces his candidature for the CDU. Yeah. The super conservative party with the dude who wants to block the new abortion law and is besties with the party who wants to revoke women's right to vote and who has been getting increasingly chummy with the AfD. The joke kinda writes itself.
SPD members have started calling for the party to endorse Federal Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius as chancellor instead of letting Scholz run again. Quite a few members are a huge fan of the idea. Pistorius isn't. Guy probably thought of how he'd have to deal with Donald Trump come the next year, and decided ha ha, I'd rather drink bleach.
Several US American accounts on Twitter have picked up on the drama in Germany and started tweeting about it, calling chancellor candidate Habeck from the Greens a "radical leftist". If you've never seen someone blasting their drink out of both nostrils with superhuman force but you'd really really like to, go and find a German with a drink and mention the ultra radical leftist Habeck while they're taking a sip. Wear a raincoat for protection, though.
That being said Habeck was just endorsed as chancellor candidate by 96.48 % of the Greens and celebrated the result by announcing that he'd get rid of the abortion ban if he becomes chancellor. Unfortunately no one has access to Gundolf Siebeke's blood pressure stats in real time but I think I heard the sound of the pressure cuff popping from the other side of the country. It has probably left the atmosphere by now and is heading towards Uranus at full speed.
Nov 19 - Marco Wanderwitz announces that he will retire from politics and lists the verbal and physical attacks of the AfD as one of the main reasons for his decision. If even high-ranking politicians don't feel safe around the AfD you can probably picture how much worse the political climate is for normal citizens. This is truly the worst timeline.
On a side note the BKA released the newest stats regarding crimes against women and girls. To keep this short (because it's depressing as fuck): all of them increased significantly, most of all crimes based on misogynistic ideas. Time to start calling it what it is: misogynistic terrorism. I will refrain from making jokes about fire, houses and Dick Fuentes here because that would be tasteless. Btw, that was not a typo.
Markus Söder (CSU) is trying to get the nuclear power plant Isar 2 up and running again which is exactly as stupid as it's funny because it was already confirmed, multiple times, by engineers and the fucking plant operator that it's impossible to reactivate the plant. Just shows that there will always be men who never learn when it's the right time to pull out. Of nuclear energy, of course. (I need Habeck to become chancellor even if it's just so that he can bite Söder like a rabid dog.)
To no one's surprise Jürgen Pohl (AfD) has promised to support Scholz during the vote of confidence which is exactly what no one wants, least of all Scholz since winning the vote of confidence would mean that there will be no snap elections and Germany will be stuck without a functioning government until the end of next year. To everyone's surprise Pohl defended his decision by saying that Scholz is the lesser evil because Merz would suck major ass as chancellor.
Lindner bashing has now been picked up by the Kommunen (local administrative units?) who are super mad that Lindner withheld money from, well, everyone just so he could boost his own ego and the FDP's popularity (which is obviously an oxymoron). Germany really looked at that idiom "Man sollte aufhören, wenn's am schönsten ist." (You should quit when it's best) and went "I suddenly can't read." Good. We can do this all day. Keep it up. (PS: even the CDU has now joined the hate train and is avoiding Lindner? The only way this man could still get a job in politics is if he moved to the US. Donald Trump would surely create a whole new department for him.)
The SPD is still arguing whether to endorse Pistorius or support Scholz re-running for the position of Bundeskanzler. Apparently the cat fights within the party have gotten so bad that grandpa retired chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) had to step in and tell everyone to shut the fuck up.
Also, Pistorius is starting to get really annoyed by reporters constantly asking him about the chancellor position. To the point where Pistorius snapped and said "Anything can happen in politics. The only thing I can say for sure will never happen is me becoming Pope." I'm just putting this here so that Future Me can have a really good laugh later.
There are sadly still no new updates on Volker Wissing. The meme withdrawal is real.
Nov 20 - the FDP claims that Volker Wissing was the one who snitched to Scholz about the D-Day PowerPoint presentation. Also, the day Lindner was fired Wissing supposedly called in sick to work and then ghosted Marco Buschmann (who later resigned as minister of justice, the position that then went to Wissing) which only makes all the Wissing memes 100 times funnier imho. Even if true the FDP, which has been deliberately obstrusing political decisions and limiting the government's sphere of action for YEARS and which was also actively planning to break up the government (knowing full well that this would leave the country practically ungoverned) seems to think that one guy telling the Bundeskanzler - aka the guy steering the ship - that there are rats on board and said rats have been gnawing through the hull of the ship for quite some time now, is somehow worse than, you know, the rats doing the actual gnawing?! No shade to rats btw. But fuck the FDP. For real.
Nov 20 (cont'd) - to battle the continuous right-shift of the Bundestag dyed-in-the-wool politicians Gregor Gysi, Dietmar Bartsch and Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke/The Left) have decided "Aw, fuck it." and have pretty much come out of retirement to run for office again. I am sure this is not what ppl meant when they were calling for a revival of the 90s but I can't say I am against it? The trio has taken on the nickname "Projekt Silberlocke" (Project silver curl) due to none of them being younger than 66 years (Gysi is 76).
