The rhetoric of the desperate: this is how the tone of politicians has changed in the pandemic

What were these times of hope? There must be a shakeup in our country, a certain federal president, Simonetta Sommaruga, commanded us sometime in the spring, in the first wave of the corona pandemic. She had not invented the idiot herself, but copied it from former German President Roman Herzog. But that didn’t really matter because it was too long ago. It was taken from him, he showed strength. We shook ourselves and handled the first wave to a certain extent.

The second wave now brings us politicians who have reached the end of their rhetoric. At yesterday’s press conference, both Sommaruga and Berset successfully tried to achieve some neutrality in the newsroom. That had nothing to do with the slogans of perseverance as in the first wave. The tone has changed. Alain Berset admitted in an interview this week that he was crown tired. This is a noble admission, but it suggests how perplexed even he has become.

This rhetorical shift can be observed particularly well in Germany. There, the portly Chancellery Minister, getting out of his company armored vehicle, recommended that the Germans take their bikes to work rather than crush the subway. The mayor of Berlin, on the other hand, a Social Democrat with a fine thread, instructed his subjects in the face of a tough lockdown that they don’t necessarily have to go buy a new sweater before Christmas. And the last few months have not left the stoic Chancellor Merkel without a trace. Rarely has she been seen as excited at the lectern as Wednesday in the Bundestag: she begged, moralized, complained, commiserated and offered all her empathy. If Merkel comes out of her thick skin, how could the multitude of thin-skinned politicians be better and convey a message that does not burden us, the citizens, with all the burdens of the pandemic?

For politicians, peeling off your skin means capitulating. He who rules must control himself. Earlier this week, Federal President Sommaruga delivered the climax of desperate rhetoric: “The virus sets the pace and also gives us the way to deal with it,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday, as the Federal Council promised the Cantonese for the first time that “the magazine is in the news again. Hold the hand.” What does it mean when a head of state says something like that? Nothing more than: We no longer have it under control, we are driven into a bigger game , the outcome of which we cannot influence or only to a limited extent We are at the end of our Latin or, to paraphrase Health Minister Berset, simply tired.

The problem is: there is no alternative for these tired and desperate people. Basel health director Thomas Weber (SVP) was looking for another way. He, who is responsible for the very overwhelmed hospitals in a canton, which was the product of a small revolution in the 19th century and who, obviously, still writes this resistance on the flag today. Weber was upset by the Federal Council’s dictate to “take something in your hand” and asked the public to think outside the box. Yes, you read that right: for lateral thinking. Politicians who use this term here and now know exactly what it means. That is, a movement that consists of crown skeptics or crown deniers and is watched for constitutional protection due to its proximity to right-wing extremist and anti-democratic forces in Germany.

With Weber, and probably with parts of his party as well, the rhetoric of despair is moving all the way to the right. We have no choice but to continue listening to the words of the exhausted and hoping that at some point they will come up with a new story that will make us believe that they have the situation more or less under control.