Germany today is the hope and support, the banner and symbol of world covidiotism in all versions of covid denial. Vaughn, an 11-year-old girl in Karlsruhe said at a rally that because of the lockdown she does not have a birthday this year (only two friends came), and therefore she feels like Anne Frank. Following her in Kassel at a rally, a 22-year-old girl cried out that she was forced to wear a mask, and therefore she felt like Sophie Scholl . Well, it’s not for you, intellectuals, to tell who she was (and most importantly – where and when she was) Anne Frank. And Sophie Scholl is a member of the White Rose anti-Nazi group. She was captured and executed in 1943.

However, it is a fact: in Germany there are almost no korods and villages where they would not angrily protest against the restrictions, claiming (this is where something unusual begins for a Russian) that this is an encroachment on democracy and freedom. I am not kidding. In German networks now and then there are statements that Merkel, taking advantage of the occasion, wants to install Diktatur 2.0. That is, to become Hitler. Well, she’s from East Germany, dictatorships are a habit to her … All this idiocy is possible due to three circumstances. 1) The ability to unite, unite and jointly defend their rights is one of the main German national traits. 2) Covid Germany in the first wave affected less than other European countries, except for the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, but: 3) there is a completely different population density, and in Germany there is simply more material for rallying. Actually, that’s all about this – my latest text on Rosbalt. If I am right in determining the reasons, then the covidiots will subside as soon as German health care drowns under the second wave, and this is where it goes. Look, I just read – in the clinics in Altötting and Mühldorf there is nowhere else to admit patients, and there is no way to take them to neighboring areas: the same is there. In my city, 16 people died from covid in the first wave , and 50 in the second, and this is as of yesterday. 

And my sensible, well-organized Germany, in which I never cease to feel like I got to paradise on a tram ticket, runs the risk of repeating the path of Italy, Spain, Great Britain, France, Belgium in the second wave. Thanks to covidiots – not least. ABOUT LIES ABOUT GERMANY, AND ALSO ABOUT IDIOTS, MINISTS AND COVID-DISSIDENTS Once again, I am covered, like a butterfly with a butterfly net, a message on Twitter that fascism has returned to Germany: in Berlin, the police are dispersing demonstrations against Covid- restrictions with water cannons and at home without the permission of the courts, if he suspects gatherings without masks. Then follows a letter from a friend: he asks if it is true that everything is closed in Germany, the economy has collapsed, and if I am observing the curfew. And finally, I read the text on LiveJournal that the Covid dissidents will soon arrange a revolution in Germany. I go to the window. There Bavaria, the city of Augsburg. There are very bad indicators for covid here : the epidemiological threshold was exceeded six times, and since the beginning of the second wave , twice as many people have died from coronavirus than in the first (in total – 51 people per 300 thousand inhabitants). Almost the entire medieval center is now the Maskenpflicht zone , and there on the streets everyone except cyclists is required to wear masks. Fitness clubs and brothels are closed. 

Restaurants – takeaway only (food priests were more fortunate than love priestesses). Since ten in the evening, they don’t even sell alcohol at gas stations, those night oases of burning souls (but I know a Turkish diner that pretends not to know about it). University on the ” remote “. The school where I learn German is also. But everything else works. Buildings, transport, shops, hairdressing salons, factories … Yes, and indoors, as well as in tram trains – all strictly in masks. I have never seen violators, but the newspapers write that the police (which, of course, does not break into any housing) periodically fine them. A fine from 250 to 5000 euros, by the way. But there is no curfew: why? And yet there are many people wearing masks even where it is allowed to be without them. I’m already used to the fact that 90% of information about Germany in Russia is either propaganda or just lies. However, lying is not interesting. Interesting – about covid- dissidents. Including German ones. They really are a noticeable and cohesive force in Germany, capable of putting themselves – spitting on masks, and on social distance, and on fines – under police water cannons, which, by the way, were last used seven years ago. For a long time I mistakenly thought that covid dissidence is a very Russian phenomenon. It seemed to me that it was clear why. Denying the obvious is after all a sign of both stupidity and self-will at once. 

And the nature of social willfulness is well studied. When you cannot do anything in your own country, when all your rights have been taken away from you, you have only one right: to riot in a glass of water. And all these demonstrative refusals to wear masks are, de facto, riots against yet another prohibition by the authorities, who endlessly lie: why should one believe him about a covid ? This is where these outbursts of anger of the anti-masks come from – up to the stabbing in the minibus. In addition, in recent years Russian people have not only become poorer, but also noticeably stupid. The circulation of popular science books in Russia is one hundred times less than the American ones. You yourself have read a lot this year, eh? And if once in the Russian-speaking social networks mostly clever people hung out, now there are picnics of fools. And the increase in the number of fools is also understandable. Fools are easier to manage: stupidity and lack of education are beneficial to the authorities. But then I saw demonstrations of covid dissidents, if not right under the window, then not far . And okay in Berlin, but in some alpine village of Murnau , known only for the local swamp and the memory of Kandinsky who lived here in the summer seasons, they were going to protest against masks of almost a thousand people, and it came to clashes with the police. In the quietest Murnau ?! And so – in dozens, if not hundreds of villages and towns. At the same time, the ranks of the Covid Protestants were joined by my German acquaintances: very intelligent people. 

And – an incredible thing, in some confusion noted by the German press – these demonstrations for the first time began to unite covid dissidents with stubborn conspiracy theorists , as well as with ultra-right marginals, such as the Reichsburgers , “citizens of the Reich”. In order not to go into political details: hitherto in Germany it was believed that rubbing shoulders with the Reichsburgs was like inviting Milonov to your own wedding as a guest . And I, too, was at a loss – well, the whole world could not be so stupid ?! – until it reached: could. Even if the number of fools has not increased in principle, they have become more noticeable. Something that was previously quiet and marginal has surfaced , and the pandemic has intensified this. Previously, it was somehow customary to hide the fact that some people from birth are simply cuckoo, deniers of reality, pushing across common sense. And it was not customary to ponder why evolution does not discard them, reproducing over and over again. Relatively speaking, 8-10% of people will invariably (they were born that way!) At different times and in different lands will believe in a flat Earth, in the virginity of Mary, in the blessedness of Witsliputsli , and also that “ covid is just a seasonal flu”. Whichever pin they have on their heads and whichever pillar of shame do not nail them – they are so arranged, and that’s it. Because, probably, for the development of humanity, people with brains on one side are still needed: all these creators of perpetual motion machines and deniers of axioms. 

Because it is the doubt about the obvious that ultimately makes humanity evolve. Yes, 99.99% of fools ‘attempts to refute clever people will remain fools’ attempts, but in one hundredth they work, and to the general benefit. I repeat: the voice of the fools was quiet for a very long time. It raised its volume and value for the first time in the era of electoral democracy, when the voice of an idiot voter caught up with the voice of a clever voter. Not all clever people put up with this (Akunin in “Happy Russia” has a serious argument about the need for electoral quotas), but, resigned, began to use it. I see this in Germany, where elections are reality, not fiction. Here people in all elective positions, from burgomasters to chancellor, endlessly publicly discuss what, how, why and why they are going to do, and journalists ask them the most damning questions. The meaning of this publicity is to reach every voter, to deprive him of the feeling that he was used for election, and then forgotten. And the second breakthrough of fools happened thanks to information democracy in the era of the Internet. When all the previous hierarchies collapsed, when public information ceased to pass multi-level verification, and every idiot got the right to publish online. We have not yet realized this, the former system of informational pre-moderation collapsed recently. Twenty years ago, gossip still knew its place: on the bench in front of the entrance as a marginal. 

And now she has equal rights with conscious and responsible reporting. Therefore, today any idiot goes online and croaks: “It’s just the flu, I won’t wear a muzzle!” Well, or even simpler: he goes to the page of the smart guy and writes nasty things, as he relieves himself. In addition, one more thing became clear. Networks turned out to be not so much new media as media of mass communication and organizations. Thanks to them, the idiots scattered in space began to stick to each other: previously only clever people could do this. And in Germany this process is the unification of reptilian believers with stubborn Reichsburgers , racists from the AfD party with 5G deniers, covid dissidents with spinal cord Christians, to go against the former elites shoulder to shoulder, without masks, breath in breath, against the police, give the Reichstag , we can repeat! – much more noticeable than in Russia. Indeed, in Germany, the authorities cannot prohibit a meeting or demonstration. And the ability to unite in a Bund, in a Ferain , in a society is one of the main in the German character. And these guys, I’m afraid, will give me a ring not only in the covid … Like many other smart people (well, do not refer to yourself as fools!), I am at a loss. After all, these, without muzzles, risk not only their lives, but mine, when they shout that they are opponents of the “mask dictatorship.” It is useless to argue with them. Arguments that during a forest fire it is forbidden to enter the forest, and there is no infringement of freedom in this, they do not accept. But such is our new reality, dear wise men, in which a fool pranks. And we need to think about how to deal with it.