Help Me Man I’m Sick

Ever feel a clammy unease and growing sense of disorientation when living in a particular German city while unsure about what it is you are actually experiencing except that nervous, slippery hold on reality during what is in effect a captivity drama much too subtly disquieting to be called a life?

Yup. Then you’ve got Berlin Syndrome, too. Take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Or, better yet, don’t call me. Like, at all. I’m being held captive and can’t come to the phone.

Der beklemmende Hype.

We Apologize For Being Russia Apologists

But we’ve already gotten over it and we’re sure that you will soon, too.

Survey

Be they people who simply romanticize Russia, those with a penchant for realpolitik, those nostalgic for the Soviet Union or just armchair leftists, there are so many people seemingly sympathetic to the annexation that many are scratching their heads and asking if Germany is a country of Russia apologists.

No need to wonder about it, people. You are.

In the states that were part of East Germany, one encounters a bond with the former occupying power that at times borders on Stockholm syndrome.

PS: Between rounds of apologies for Putin, 100 German academics have found the time to get together and write an open letter in opposition to the planned honorary professorship of Henry Kissinger at the University of Bonn. They accuse the Nobel Peace Prize winner of being a war criminal, a criminal against humanity a Chilean putschist dude and an overall Emperor of Evil. I’m going to go out on the limb here, but something tells me that these professors were students back in 1968.