As far as Romanian elections go I will try to write a coherent piece tomorrow. Today I am just thinking about one good man. A man I trust. One that is flawed as the rest of us, one that has uncertainties, and hesitations, and moments of doubt. One that does make mistakes at odd times and pays the price. But also one that has dreams and inspires people to do more and not to be content. One that asks us as Kennedy once did what could we do for our country and not the other way around. One that had proposed to this nation of ours to team up, to get out of the gutter where history and terrible leadership dropped us.
Apparently we cannot yet escape this gutter. We are still idiotically pleased with cheep symbols of acceptance given by the bigger and richer nations, unaware or uninterested that we inspire nothing but contempt. We accept as inevitable the shambolic state of our economy and the eternal condemnation to poverty for a vast majority and total medieval misery for some in exchange for a free ticket to rob and plunder and subject by will of the polls. Democracy is nothing without a republic of citizens. Instead of citizens we have mobs and cliques. With one clique in particular using an invented populist “majority”. I am afraid so few of us are conscious or care for the pity mixed with avoidance we elicit abroad.
We have again embraced the nauseous and noxious path of personality cult. We chose en masse the ultimate populism. Elections may be fraudulent but that is the least of our problems. Democracy is robed and raped, devoid of any content and relevance in a system where the power rests again and again and again with the ubiquitous remnants of the most appalling underworld. Former securitate executives, former servants of the political police and other seedy nomenclature types related to this crowd or their relatives are choking this country. When somebody tries to change things it will be defied whether he or she comes from left or right.
If the result wouldn’t be enough on its own, I received today an e-mail showing the depth to which the communist style ass kissing and opportunistic positioning can go. A colleague of mine just sent out an e-mail promptly attaching a speech by the deposed and interim PM to show her most loyal allegiance. Pathetic and ultimately rather sad, as I am tonight for this entire nation, for those that I know are ashamed, and last but not least for one man that I know promised us something else. I believe him. I trust he does not give up.
Monday, December 07, 2009
For a good and courageous man
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
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