[1095] BERPTSD
└ posted on Thursday, 4 July 2019, by Novil
David Alaba’s thick Austrian accent always makes me laugh.
- Aid worker: You must know that many refugees hold deep resentments against members of other peoples in their homeland.
- Refugee: Prussian swines, all of them!
- Aid worker: Moreover, many of them are followers of natural religions virtually unknown in America and worship idols.
- Refugee: Arjen Robben, cut-inside god!
- Aid worker: But we must never forget that they experienced terrible things and need our help.
- Clerk: Former occupation?
- Refugee: For the last 13 years, I worked on the construction of the fire protection system of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
- Clerk: That’s the airport the Swedes razed to the ground five days after its opening, right?
![[1095] BERPTSD](/comics/2019-07-04-1095-berptsd.png "[1095] BERPTSD")
I now kind of wish that this will happen. Would be a fitting end for the whole fiasco.I do not think the Germans could even be mad at the Swedes, either. 😀
I totally don’t enjoy this arc at all. Probably because my knowledge about German stuff is almost nonexistent.
If any non-Germans need a primer on the modern disaster in planning that is the Berlin Brandenburg Airport this short and funny video is an excellent resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll58ZrIupKA
LOLOL “airport”! True story. Very sad. Better luck next time. You take credit card? Much good English, thanks you! 😁
@ PS2kid:
I, too, don’t know much about German football, so it’s a bit over my head in places.
HAHAHA…. Thank you for that wonderful background. made so much more sense knowing the CF that that’s been. @ Korakys:
I have to admit I have no idea what this story arc is about at all.
Korakys wrote:
That was an interesting listen, but… well, you know what they say about jokes that need to be explained.
Ok, no need to worry about any attacks then. That airport will never open
Okay, that was the first of that story arc that made me laugh. I admit it’s incomprehensible for anybody outside Germany, but when you imagine an airport that was supposed to be finished years ago and then never got to run because politicians somehow screwed the planning, and then you imagine our peaceful neighbors across the Baltic Sea destroying it a few days after it finally opens, then this is so bizarre that I had to laugh.
I wish all non-German readers that the comic gets back on track for them, though. Must be deadly boring to read if you don’t know the backgrounds.
@ Nobody:
The swedes are named because this arc references to 30 years war, where sweden were involved.
This war were fought in central europe and mainly the german countries 1618-1648 and destroyed countries and towns. After the war, europe was rebuild by the lords, at the same time where america was build by the people. This lead to a main difference in understanding of the country, where europeans still want a stronger state as americans.
@ PS2kid:
Don’t worry, I don’t enjoy the arc and I get all the references…
I thought Sandra and Woo was set in 21st century, but now I know it is set in 22nd.
As a Dutch citizen I wholeheartedly endorse the worshipping of Arjen Robben.
“Hey man, I just worked on the construction. I didn’t design it.!”
Korakys wrote:
Those designers should be fired.
Dude, prussia dissolved in 1918, that guy either read too much history books, or is way older than he looks.
@ Anonymous:
Prussia existed as a province of Germany de jure from 1871 to 1947 (though it was de facto dissolved in unconstitutional action in 1932).
There is still considerable conflict between northern (a large portion of whom have some sort of Prussian heritage) and southern (and especially Bavarian) Germans.
That is, of course, not the only source of conflict there is in Germany, we have all sorts of conflicts here.
I’m German and I get the references, but I’m not laughing at all. Europe as a whole and Germany as a country faced a rush of refugees during the last couple years, which caused a rise in nationalism and xenophobia. I hate Nazis, but making refugees out of Germans isn’t the kind of satire that comes to my mind concerning these times.
Fire Protection of BER?
So… you worked on nothing then?
Also,
Mike wrote:
Well, they might be writing what they know.
Fake! This Airport will never open.
Anonymous wrote:
No, it’s because you don’t get the German insider joke.
While Prussia doesn’t exist as a nation or a federal state anymore, the Bavarians inaccurately still refer to all Germans from central and northern Germany (the high German and nether German dialect regions) derogatively as “die Preissen” or “die Sau-Preissen” (the (damn) Prussians). Nowadays it is more of a well-meaning mocking rivalry based on cultural differences than a severe hatred that would result in violence.
From a European perspective, this is an very political arc with references to the large number of refugees from the Middle East admitted into Germany (and indeed into Sweden). And given that the nature of the “tribal and religious conflicts” among these refugees certainly is not about football, this is also a very controversial arc for many liberal Europeans. In particular since it is rather few CEO:s and engineers among the current refugees… The contrast with the actual issues in European situation is therefore a very elegant way of pointing out the challenges Europe is facing. I like like the arc very much indeed so far (despite the attack on His Majesty the King of Sweden 🙂 ).
He’s German,a nd you DON’T make a Hasslehoff being his god joke?
Mike wrote:
The whole point of a parable is to make you rethink your perspective with your internal biases removed. If seeing this makes you uneasy, it just shows this is working, and you’re the target audience.
It can go both ways, mind you. You could be disapproving of refugees, then see this, and suddenly grow more empathetic when the refugees are German. Or you can be empathetic to refugees, see this, and then wonder “Why did I give this much leeway to refugees? I wouldn’t forgive Germans for acting the same”. There’s also a third path where in a sudden epiphany you’d actually find the key difference between the two cases, being like “Germans wouldn’t do that, even as refugees”.
Any of those results is a parable working as designed. I honestly feel this arc is very well made, even if I need some of the jokes explained.
From what I’m getting, this arc is about bitching becasue something bad happened in German soccer for some reason?
Well, SUCK IT UP, YOU SISSIES!
Ass.: a Brazilian.
@ PS2kid:
I guess I’ll just skip this comic for a few weeks, until this arc (*whatever* it’s about) is over.
I don’t understand it….I don’t know whether it’s Satire, Political Comment, History, Revisionist history…or some mind-boggling combination.
It’s not funny, it’s not intellectually intriguing, an frankly, it’s not entertaining.
Perhaps i’m just a self-absorbed American…but I think, given the current situation in my country and the world, I can be forgiven for that.
Have fun with your intellectual self-abuse.
But, seriously, you people made “seven to one” become an common expression for failure here.
That defeat had a profound impact on our zeitgeist. I even wonder if that had something to do with the fact we elected a seminazi for president.
@ Fex:
Oh god
I don’t know what is worse: that you’d even suggest that or that I kinda believe you.
In Canada (and presumably many other nations) immigrants are encouraged to bring their culture, customs, beliefs, and language with them. Whatever it was that made them leave their home country — hatred, prejudice, fear — should be left behind. We don’t want it here.
I don’t see the point in the “Please stop this nonsense and get back to the stuff about a talking racoon” comments. I fully agree with SlugFiller, the more ackward it seem to you, the more you should stop and think about it.
There are thousands of places on the WWW with disturbing political material of all stripes. In fact there are only a few sites devoid of such drama. One fewer, now.
@ Marteri:
Finally, someone who understands the story arc. Novil has chosen an oblique way to comment on the modern day refugee crisis that is affecting both the US and Europe. As usual, he has an original take on it. It is funny on an intellectual level.
Oh, no! This comic with Arjen Robben gets posted and he immediately ends his career!
(https://www.tellerreport.com/sports/2019-07-04—arjen-robben-(35)-immediately-ends-football-career-.ryvEdcier.html)
Well reading these comments is making me simultaneously proud of my knowledge of history and somewhat worried that so few people are getting the Thirty Years’ War references….
For those complaining that they don’t get the sports references–no worries, I never get any sports references. Ever. Because I am nerd.
Now I know this has to be fantasy. Animals secretly being able to talk no problem. All the stuff about gods no problem. A world where the BER actually opened. Nah that destroys anyones suspension of disbelief right away.
@ Wim ten Brink:
Like this guy wasn’t traumatized enough.
@ David Blair:
Well, I have a father which I had to tell about it. Note however, that here in the Netherlands we had an 80 year war with the Spanish which ended around the same time. Said war was part of the collection called the 30 years war, I believe.
My point is that the Dutch see this war as it happened to them, namely as the conflict with the Spanish. So the numbers 80 and 30 are basically the same here, just from different perspectives. One Dutch, the other international.
I’m an American ( of Italian descent) and I get most of the jokes. I think it’s hysterical! Carry on, Novril.
Cosmacelf wrote:
Yes, and it is much more non-PC than the rather innocent transgender joke with Zoey from a few weeks back. 🙂
Did you know Robben was about to hang it up or something, Novil, because that is freaky.
@ SlugFiller:
I’m pretty sure I’m not the target audience, but I’m not fond of this “it inspires cognitive dissonance” argument people use to justify publishing literally anything, from internet comments, to comics, to newspaper articles, these days. Seeing it used in a context I could care less about, ironically, makes it all the more clear for me why that is.
For the first case: “You could be disapproving of refugees, then see this, and suddenly grow more empathetic when the refugees are German.”
This doesn’t actually inspire critical thought. It just inspires you to broaden an existing bias and include more people in it, like Americans accepting Italians as “white people” and therefore “worthy of respect” after exposure to a lie-filled story about Columbus insinuated Italians did something Americans should be grateful to their whole ethnicity for, when the whole system Americans used to determine who is deserving of respect in the first place was frankly idiotic and bigoted to begin with.
Second case: “Or you can be empathetic to refugees, see this, and then wonder “Why did I give this much leeway to refugees? I wouldn’t forgive Germans for acting the same”.”
This isn’t critical thought either. Again: the whole system of determining who deserves respect in use here is idiotic because it’s based on nationality in any way. I don’t think I even need to address the third case because it’s the same friggin’ deal as the first two.
The flaw in nationalism is thinking that the norms you’re locally accustomed to hold true everywhere within your nation’s borders, and seeing deviance from that as a problem, when it’s more likely your own norms are weird everywhere else.
This whole ideology is an excuse to avoid thinking critically, so if the aim is in any way to leave the ideology intact, then the attempt to create cognitive dissonance is a wasted effort.
On completely unrelated note…
Something for Larisa…
https://m.9gag.com/gag/ayBGN1X
TachyonCode wrote:
The basic idea is the social contract, the idea that people join together to form a common state, swear oaths to protect each other, to respect the laws and the constitution etc. If you let people decide with whom they want to form a common state, they will automatically favor their own family and friends and you will automatically arrive at a nation state.
And sorry, but that is just their decision. If the chinese or japanese just want to live amongst themselves, it’s their decision to form a nation state. If you entirely reject nation states, you necessarily have to take away the freedom that people themselves may decide who might enter or join a state, which states might fuse (European Union) or declare themselves independet (Brexit). And that is not very democratic.
In Dutch “branden” means “fires”.
David Blair wrote:
It’s a bit of a stretch, making an analogy to a war that happened on another continent four hundred years ago. Sandra probably would never have heard of the Thirty Years’ War, or much of anything prior to the American Revolution.
I’ve studied the Thirty Years War because it’s so tied into my family history, so I get a laugh out of that. But I was also statiioned in West Germany for a year during my days in the U.S. Army.
And yes they take their football VERY seriously. In fact, if an American serviceman falls asleep during a football match, he gets stuck in a trashcan and rolled down a flight of stairs! (So I understand, it happened to someone else, you can’t prove a thing.)
And yes I must admitm, Germans take their engineering VERY seriously. I never met a German technician who didn’t feel it was a desecration for some heathen to use His Baby for it’s intended purpose and risk damaging it again. But they did good work.
Asrial wrote:
From a cannon.
Arent wrote:
The idea that you can somehow force people to become multicultural and global is what causes recent rise of nationalism in first place.
Also, lot of those muslim refugees are not willing to become multicultural either. In fact, they are actively against OUR culture.
@ Arent:
If not for the fact that Nationalism isn’t the same thing as anything you just described, we’d have nothing to disagree about.
Unfortunately for everyone reading this comment section, Nationalism is an entirely different concept from the desire for Nationhood and Citizenship, which are the two ideas you actually described.
I won’t pretend to take responsibility for explaining this to you. These words are all in any dictionary you might care to consult. That’s your job.
@ HKMaly:
If I were espousing the idea of forced assimilation (also known as brainwashing), you might have something to argue with me about.
Unfortunately, multiculturalism (small “m” because it’s not one unified idea, but many smaller localized, individual manifestations of the big “M” version, each that must be willingly accepted by any respective, local participants in order to work as agreed upon or even as conceived) is yet another separate concept from both anything I discussed, and also separate from forced assimilation.
What you’re actually talking about, then, is a push for the latter. Which no one except perhaps nationalists and some number of uninformed, well-intentioned fools are endorsing – certainly not myself.
HKMaly wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uor9zgsMevo