Night with breakfast

In some strange countries, elections are held on, say, Thursdays, and what can you expect from a country where elections are held on Thursdays? On Sundays, they probably go on trips, to matches (that's no shame there) and to the cinema! And between Thursday and Sunday, they try to find their way in the new political reality, with which they entered the weekend.

Photo: Milovan Milenković

For example, the British went to the polls that Thursday and replaced the previous government. It's strange to me, it's normal for them, and it wasn't too exotic for us either. We love democracy and remember it fondly. It is unusual - or not - that the tenant of the prime minister's house lost the election on Thursday night, and already on Friday morning he was evicted from that address, while the new tenants were impatiently rummaging around surrounded by suitcases. What strictness, God bless you! It's a good thing that Sunak was allowed to spend that "middle of the night" in 10 Downing Street, as an intern for a private person, so to speak; and maybe the state charged him for bed and breakfast?
Well, that's how it is in harsh capitalism where time = money, and most people lack both. But since it has become quite rich in the meantime, it could even be said that for the average swimming citizen or the middle class, the deficit of free time causes more problems than the deficit of money not spent in advance. That's why speed and efficiency are so valued, often overrated.

Fortunately, time flows quite differently here - if it flows at all. Sometimes it barely oozes or drips, it seems to you that it will stop at any moment. The Orientalist commonplace says that it is so in the Orient: people of all races and classes are simply kad holders. It's not the rabbit's job to run away! And if you're hunting a real rabbit, a long-eared one, let it run until it flies into your lap.

Now, that's all nice, but isn't the government here a real example of active opposition to that whole quasi-Oriental philosophy of having-when? Wasn't the Supreme Laborer dull for several years with his Wikipedia interpretations and interpolations of Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism? Isn't it a fact that they bombard us 24 hours a day with shouts and jokes that they don't sleep or eat or anything else, but only work for our enormous and quick welfare?

Yes, that's one side of the story - the one that suits them. On the other hand, these same people know how to stretch time as thin as pie crusts, to divide it into units, the shortest of which is a month, so that time drips uniformly over our heads like in a bad theater performance (someday it will be proven that most people think about suicide precisely during such a hostage crisis), to plunge us into the grainy mud of time so that only our tufts stick out and our legs struggle in vain to rest on the bottom. And then they also ("subliminally") tell us: let's see who will last longer, who has more patience...

"Okay, Pančić, but let's see how they do it specifically? I don't have time because I'm running to 'Sokola', and I'm running to 'Sokola' because I don't have time!”

Here is an example.

Who still remembers that elections were recently held throughout Serbia, including in Niš? Who still remembers that the opposition got them? Why then, even to this day, the opposition has not constituted the government? Because, to put it simply, it was prevented from doing so, because the government claims that it, the government, actually won the elections. However, the government has not formed a government either and it is not known when and if it will. Or will they simply mud this mud of useless, worthless time until that heart surgeon Dr. Milić forgets that he ever took part in elections. But that's because the English are in a hurry to go somewhere, while we - and actually they - are fine here where we are. It is similar in Čačak, where it takes months to determine what is determined in Britain, for example, between two high-speed train departures for Manchester.

Wasn't it similar in Belgrade's Old Town, where at first it was clear that the opposition won the elections, but then someone asked a fundamental philosophical question: what is the opposition? Then that Bastać took the books in his hands to figure it out, but bg, it seems that he liked Max Weber the most.

You could add as many examples as you want, and by no means only in connection with the elections. Isn't it the same with Kosovo? The era of this regime is passing in the numbing of people and events, although real jobs are being done in the meantime and how they are being done. And no amount of rampage over Mirdita can cover up the traces. Or so many great promises about a great life and a golden age in a year or two: the calendar is very imaginatively split and re-cut so that it seems that we are in a permanent Pre-Golden Age.

This time next year, we're gonna be millionaires! - says (every year) a little English muffled. But he is a character from a satirical TV series. It's a big difference, like Thursday and Friday.