I was at this show last night, having a pretty good time, when suddenly the lead singer started ranting about idiot nationalists in the country and how they're so sorry their songs predicted the moronic reality we're living now.
I wasn't personally insulted, but it took some reasoning on my part. In case you don't know (because there's so much else wreaking havoc in our world), Romania's backslid recently from a somewhat competent halfway-house democracy to a hybrid regime (alongside Bhutan, Malawi and other notable hits in the category), after the presidential candidate chosen by the people was annulled (back in December), arrested, then rejected trying to run in the rescheduled elections. It was a betrayal of Constitution so crass and appalling that even his primary opponent in the December race condemned it as such.
Unfortunately, it also sparked heavy protests in the capital, which got derailed, resulting into brawling, fires, toppled cars and other such. Telly-fodder for the masses, feeding into the mainstream media hysteria about these crazy extremist nationalist groups.
Might've been accurate if the people in the streets were protesting about, say, leaving the EU, or participating in the Ukraine war. All they were saying was how come in a so-called democracy you get to turn down my candidate of choice, in breach of the Constitutional structure we all freaking agreed on?
Seemed to me like a very hard one to argue against, and even the people I spoke with who were horrified at the loonies setting cars on fire (obvious agents provocateurs, but you'd have to have a half-assed basic understanding of protests to know that first), even those agreed when pressed that well, yes, what happened with Calin Georgescu was unconstitutional and horrifying.
The provocations served (of course) to discredit the very substantiated outrage at what is happening in our country, with many low-IQ individuals (including, apparently, the singer from last night) taking that Covid-famous stance of:
"It's fine if they take away your choice since I didn't share it."
It's a depressing state of affairs, because just like then, you look around and realize that most people are perfectly happy with seeing everyone's fundamental rights trampled as long as it wasn't something they agreed with.
They should take away your rights to X, because I don't or wouldn't.
Except it's not really about whether you would or wouldn't, is it? No one's saying you ought to vote Georgescu or be a nationalist. No one's saying you have to get jabbed, eat meat, smoke, have an abortion, or any other highly-debated topic of our modern world. But as long as we don't manage to transcend that infinitely narrow view of self and think of individuals as parts of a larger organism, I'm afraid we're not going to get very far.
Arguably, in a democracy, individuals should be free to rule ('demos' -people, 'kratos' - rule, aka people rule). Search carefully the original Greek and you will not find addendums and footnotes saying things like "as long as they agree with me" or "make a choice that's not too far off my limited understanding".
For you, as a member of said state, not to be angry and mournful when democracy is smothered, simply marks you out as someone with low IQ. See, the ball always swings back around and will maul down everyone left standing.
Then why do so many people so willingly toot their own horn, marking themselves out as part of these groups of useful idiots? It's a way of signaling affiliation, after all. "We're not like those idiot nationalists, we're better". Okay. Fine. Maybe your choice is right. But you're proclaiming affiliation at the cost of your own reputation, as well as picking this flimsy state of belonging over our common future welfare.
The opposite of democracy is not nationalism, but totalitarianism, which you are hereby openly celebrating.
Seems like backwards thinking to me, one that makes me curious on a psychological level. Are we so starved of other, more meaningful affiliations in our lives that any will do, even when they imply idiocy and dictatorship? Are we just too lazy to think past what is placed right in front of us? It's difficult to discard, and it's clearly not malevolence, since most of these people are otherwise good, kind-hearted, don't-kick-strays people. So how do good people do atrocious things?
Is it a lack of ownership? You are, after all, responsible for the mark you leave on this world, so it's best you understand early just how dangerous your good intentions are, in the absence of continuous self-education and betterment.
They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but that feels reductionist to me. I'd say the road to Hell is paved by mediocrity, laziness, and the cheap self-betraying willingness to belong to any group that'll have you, irrespective of how rotten or harebrained it be.
