"The Wheat & The Chaff", part 3 of the new series "After The Pandemic. A Fictional Story"
“The Wheat & The Chaff”
Part 3 of the series "After The Pandemic. A Fictional Story"
by Karin Sawetz
“Can you remember what the Hofrat said: Now the wheat will be separated from the chaff. My god was this an ass!” Martin doesn’t wait to start his first anecdote with one of his personal highlights from the beginning of the revolt. “There were these guys who provoked the population. Very consciously - with quasi criminal intent to benefit from the misery of people. He is a very good example what happened at that time. The Hofrat...”
Sarah interrupts Martin’s story in the middle of the sentence: “What’s a ‘Hofrat’?”
“‘Hofrat’ was the title of a civil servant; everybody could become a Hofrat when the person was long enough in the position of a civil servant and had political contacts. And such a guy was the Hofrat; he and many others had delusions of grandeur. He tried to compromise your grandmother already before the outbreak of the pandemic. We all knew about him and were after him, very secretly but we never lost sight on him. And this was good, how it turned out later.”
Naomi stands up and goes to an old looking commode. She opens the vintage furniture with a gesture. The folding doors open automatically in a surprisingly winged manner accompanied by a light composition which dims from darker green to a soft blue light. Sarah sees for the first time the inside of the old looking piece. She is once again surprised about her grandmother’s style to mix vintage with playful design and technology. “Somewhere here I have preserved my notes about the incidents we observed. The Hofrat was a representative of a powerful group who thought that with the pandemic ‘the wheat will be separated from the chaff’. Or with other words that the ones who had almost no chances before the pandemic had lost with the pandemic finally all their rights. Ah yes, here it is,” Naomi holds a sheet of paper with the print of an article of an online daily news publication, “Do you remember this article, Ann.” Naomi goes to her guest who took place in one of the rattan seats and hands out the article.
“After so many years you still have it!” Ann is surprised and continues Naomi’s story with an explanation to her friend’s grandchild: “Sarah, you must know that many online publications were forced to erase articles with content practicing criticism. Less powerful publications weren’t even asked to erase anything. They were simply not available online - and not only single pages of a website were banned, whole domains were unavailable or were compromised due to accusation anonymously reported by officials. You couldn’t find the publications, even not with the best search robots; such banned domains were literally rooted up from the net. At that time people didn’t dare to even ‘know’ a publication that stood critical against the regime.”
Martin looks saddened at Ann thinking of what happened to her when she was a young journalist; he stands up and goes to his wife, “Ann, let me see. Which article is this?” Ann hands it over to Martin. “Today is the day I have to say ‘My God’. I remember this very well. To separate the wheat from the chaff wasn’t an officially proclaimed strategy but it was practiced. Money was invested very generously into big companies while children of poor families hadn’t even a computer at home so that they could join the education program of their schools. Over the years, lobbyists made successfully propaganda against digital learning or e-commerce. They hadn’t started to deliver the content of printed school books via tablets or provided web-shop support for small businesses. Online was rather an enemy than a friend. In the pandemic, it turned out that small companies, poor families were the chaff for guys like the Hofrat.”
Naomi holds up another sheet. “This one is interesting,” she says, “It’s about the infrastructure and where people had no or very limited access to the internet respectively no technological equipment. Many from the social housing buildings had poor connectivity. This was a big surprise. The Hofrat was by the way a representative of a party which promoted always very loudly how great they are in social activities.”
“We know how good he was in social activities!” says Martin laughing. This was the keyword for Sarah who was until yet not so interested in the anecdote concerning mainly poor technical equipment or companies’ struggles with digital commerce. “So the story has a sort of - politely expressed - ‘high point’?” The young woman smiles. “Yes Sarah, but this peak isn’t so important like the fact that people like the Hofrat always find their ‘satisfaction’. The Hofrat wasn’t only the bad guy because of his political will to realize the inhumane ‘wheat from chaff separation’ ideology.”
Naomi takes one of the apples from the basket and throws it to Sarah. “The apple of seduction.” Sarah catches it. “You mean the revolt was moved up because some couldn’t resist the seduction of playing a new power game?” “Hard times are high times for violence - whether physical or psychological violence such as setting people unnecessarily under pressure.”
