This September my benefactor took me to the Monaco Boat Show. We landed at the Nice Airport and I was about to ask him how we were traveling to Monte Carlo, when I saw a Maybach waiting by the curb. Padraic looked over his shoulder and said like he could read my mind, “Our ride.”
The Maybach Guard is a sports car limo. 0-60 mph in 5 seconds. The company had built the Maybach T3 Assault Gun (Sturmgeschütz III) as well as the Maybach T3 during WWII. The car is now known for super-luxury and I enjoyed the ride to Monaco. The driver hit the pedal once and we were traveling at 120 mph for a second on the autoroute. My ass felt like a million dollars and a million dollars means something to someone in my position. We got out in front of the Hermitage Hotel and people stared at us and then the car. Padraic rode in them often. I doubted that I would ever again in my life, but luxury cars are having a hard time in Berlin.
Over 300 Porsches, Mercedes-Benzs, Audis et al have been burnt in Berlin in 2011. The arsonists have been targeting cars in previously poor neighborhoods altered by gentrification. Rising rents and prices have driven people from the center of the city in favor of the new rich.
The right-wing Bild-Zeitung has descried the attacks as class-warfare terrorism and citizens are wondering if houses are next on the menu. The German chancellor asked, “What sort of behavior is this?”
The answer is no one knows the answer. The police are clueless, although this week they arrested a man for over a hundred incidents of the pyromaniacal vandalism. The accused was unemployed and indebted to the credit card companies. His reason for these attacks seemed to be wealth envy according to the BBC, but they haven’t told the truth about anything since the Iraq War. The man did tell the police the following;
‘I’ve got debts, my life stinks and others with fancy cars are better off and they deserve this’.”
Cars burned last night in Berlin.
They will burn tonight.
Burn baby burn.
It’s only the beginning.
As long as I’m not in the Maybach. It’s a great ride.
No one is a bigger hypocrite than me.