Like an empty van in a storm

I can still feel it today in my ankles—and in my gut. You don’t forget something like that!

It happened when I rented a minibus, a van, as one does when you need to transport a larger quantity of things from one place to another.

Once that task was properly done, I drove the now-empty van back—on the good German autobahn, on a Sunday afternoon.

There weren’t no cars on the road, but it wasn’t crowded either. A few trucks, mostly Sunday drivers.

I was in good spirits, just driving along in my empty van.

And then the gusts of wind began.

The first gust pushed me a good bit into the left lane.

Higher powers prevented a catastrophe. At that exact moment, there just happened to be no one beside me.

I must have remembered something useful from driving school—or maybe my instincts were simply right at the critical moment—because I didn’t jerk the steering wheel in panic. I guided the empty, swaying vehicle back into the proper lane.

Soon the next gust hit my empty vehicle. I could be as prepared as I wanted—what could I do if the wind moved the entire van?

Well, from the fact that I’m able to write these lines to you, you can pragmatically conclude that I at least survived that drive. As far as I can recall, I stayed within my right-hand lane, so that even with a leftward gust, I remained within my lane.

Perhaps the idea that one should keep to the right so that a gust from the left doesn’t push you off track contains a political metaphor. But that one’s too easy to reverse. And it depends, after all, on which direction the gusts are coming from. I’m aiming at a different metaphor.

The empty van was tossed back and forth by the wind simply because it lacked ballast. No payload kept the vehicle firmly on the road.

But even without weight, the van still offered plenty of surface area to attack.

Allow me to phrase it dramatically: because the van had lost its purpose and meaning, because it had been relieved of its payload, it now lacked weight—and the wind pushed it to and fro.

Germany’s present reminded me that day of that dramatic drive through the gusts.

What, then, is Germany’s payload? What is its meaning and purpose? What is this van driving for?

That Germany is blowing up its power plants, strangling its economy to death, driving away its high achievers, while reshaping society after the model of Middle Eastern Islamist hotspots—all this could be read as NGO-induced gusts of wind.

A “normal” country would easily withstand all those insane, potentially deadly ideas. But a “normal” and “mentally healthy” country knows that its first purpose is to promote the welfare of its people and protect them from harm. A normal country is aware of its entire history, not only the unpleasant parts.

Germany has abandoned its meaning and purpose, betrayed its natural mission, and thus finally lost its weight. We are being tossed back and forth like an empty van in a storm on the autobahn.

“A country must be more than a catalog of duties,” I wrote in 2017, and it still holds true.

A van without payload, purpose, or meaning—and therefore without weight—of course such a meaningless vehicle will be tossed around by gusts of wind.

It’s easier to stay in your lane, and you have far less to fear from gusts, when a payload gives you weight—when you know the purpose of your journey. That’s true for freight transport, for countries, and no less for your own life.