In the meantime, a whole political-economic ruling class was created and consolidated, which monopolized or completely neutralized all the already weak state institutions and social (self-)regulatory mechanisms, intended for the systemic prevention of the emergence of a new autocracy.
(continuation from the previous issue)
Authoritarian and populist orders are fundamentally worthless and stupid, and yet they can prove to be incredibly tough and survive everything that would cause more democratically based governments to collapse in a second, if you'll forgive this completely inappropriate moment - but it's just that illustrative and effective metaphor. And it's not just because they choose their means much less and are more prone to brutal force and brutal manipulation. Hamilton Nolan writes for "In These Times", and "Pesčanik" publishes in Serbian: "Stupid things have a certain power in this world." It is not the power of being unreceptive to criticism, but rather the power of such receptivity, such permeability, that every criticism passes through them without any effect, like invisible neutrinos passing through our bodies. Coping with the dawn of the Second Trump Era will require us to accept the uncomfortable truth that Nonsense and Important Matters will soon merge into a single, painful category of existence."
In the four years of his first reign, D. Trump was "drilled" both personally and politically to the extent that there was nothing left of him (admittedly, there was nothing left). It has been proven in every possible way that he is an epic ignoramus, a liar and a thug, prone to dictators and dictatorships, whom he would gladly seduce during his second term - which I guess few can really like. Oh, really? So, how did it become the American president again, and much more convincingly than the first time? Let's go back to Nolan's words quoted above, that is, his "neutrinos".
Is there an ideological, cultural, worldview "community" of Trump voters? In the beginning, they were also connected by something relatively easy to explain and connect (declassed whites of lower educational and financial status, mostly from the "Bible belt" and "rust belt"). In the meantime, his voting base has expanded quite a bit to include parts of the population that we expect would, precisely in self-defense, cut off their own hand rather than vote for someone with Trumpian ideas. If - and this is perhaps the key point - something even remotely coherent Trumpian ideas exist at all, if it is not a matter of bare, pre-opinionated resentment.
We will be touching on something important at this point. Recently, the British author Tony Parsons publicly berated himself in an interview for voting and campaigning for Brexit, the most stupid act of self-harm the British Empire has committed in its long, and basically sober, history. As the reason or reason for his stupid choice, Parsons cites some kind of class-cultural sentiment: he himself comes from the orphaned English white working class, which was the most receptive to Brexit propaganda. But even the richest and most "aristocratic" succumbed to it above average, and at the other end of the social hierarchy even the confusingly numerous heirs of mostly "colored" immigrants. Now everyone is collectively scratching their otherwise very different thinking heads...
With the help of the same mental mechanisms and the same apparently "anti-establishment" resentment, the so-called The Serbian Progressive Party came to power and has been quite comfortable in it all these years. Moreover, in the meantime, an entire political-economic ruling class was created and consolidated, which monopolized or completely neutralized all the already weak state institutions and social (self-)regulatory mechanisms, intended for the systemic prevention of the emergence of a new autocracy.
It was clear from the beginning - that is, it wasn't clear, but it was dwell it to be - that this is exactly the intention of the emerging SNS camarilla, but even large parts of the liberal elites ignored and even ridiculed this clear and present danger, while those who are otherwise more susceptible to it welcomed it as a relief and a return to social the "normal" pre-political focus on "backwardness as our comparative advantage". Over time, the number of people who realized that they had painted themselves into a corner from which it will be hellishly difficult to get out grew, but this superficial and probably not yet majority "smartening up" was as fruitless and late as Parsons' remorse, on the Island today otherwise. aptly named bregret.
The quasi-feudal possessor and personification of this order, Aleksandar Vučić, is no less qualitatively and deeply "drilled" than Donald Trump, that is, his entire "policy", in every possible aspect, has been argumentatively dismantled, i.e. shown as a fair illusion of the lowest quality (but, even those are only neutrinos!), while the lumpenvlastela that he gathered in the meantime as a living wall around his "goal" is perfectly accurately portrayed as an arbitrary collection of sleazy ignoramuses, who on the one hand are able to remove a healthy kidney from you alive and sell it, taking the money for themselves and convincing you to do all this for your good, and at the same time to spoil the hammer, an apparently so simple and primitive tool that it seems incorruptible.
Now, however, that "hammer" in the form of a canopy on an important public building has started to kill, and it doesn't seem like it will stop any other way than if those who systematically and systematically corrupted all our hammers are permanently stopped and removed from positions of power. . Namely, even they are no longer able to repair them and bring them back to their former state, even if they wanted to! All of this will be very difficult, but the process has most likely started and will not be able to be stopped. Where intelligence fails, people are eventually saved by instinct, the instinct of self-preservation.
What is happening in the country and the world, what is in the newspapers and how to pass the time?
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Imagine that you wrote 41 symphonies, 27 piano concertos, 22 operas, countless works of chamber and church music, concertos for violin, horn, clarinet, trumpet, flute, flute and harp, oboe, bassoon... And all this takes place in poverty, between tours, teaching, fights with censors and a stormy private life, of which marriage and parenthood are only one part. And it all happened in only thirty-five years
This year's selection showed that Europe is less and less unified and united in music or common politics and that global tunes seem to be composed in America, Russia and China
The parents of the minor KK, Miljana and Vladimir Kecmanović, are responsible for the damage their son caused to the teacher Tatjana Stevanović during the armed attack in the elementary school "Vladislav Ribnikar", the High Court in Belgrade decided and ordered them to pay 6,9 million dinars
The bear's corpse was found in the village of Zagulj in the municipality of Zubin Potok at the place where the electric wires fell. The animal was killed by electricity, and the village was left without electricity
As a special-purpose parastatal that uses metal bars to create "order and peace", Vučić is legalizing the hoodies. It is - approximately - something similar to Mussolini's "combat alliances" from 1919-1922.
Lucky that Serbia has the "Informer research team"! Dragan J. Vučićević discovered the infernal plan of "criminals" and "blockaders" at the last minute and thus saved the country again. That he is lying is less important
Keeping sociology professor Marija Vasić in prison on charges of terrorism is an anti-civilization crime. Or grotesque, whatever you want. Why don't judges, prosecutors, policemen, security guards rebel against it
The archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
The state fell apart, the system fell apart; could at least one of them survive, even at the expense of the other? Or were they bound by the same barbed wire?
In between
What is happening in the country and the world, what is in the newspapers and how to pass the time?
Every Wednesday at noon In between arrives by email. It's a pretty solid newsletter, so sign up!