The Gravity of the Situation
In Bulgaria, where I come from, people are scared and angry.
People who understand the gravity of the situation see that things have only been getting worse and time doesn’t plan on changing its direction any time soon. More and more of our intelligent youth are leaving, with no intention of ever coming back, for countless reasons which all boil down to the promise of a brighter future. Any attempt to produce some sort of political change gets dissolved in mass confusion, political interests, lack of solid message, lack of free media and the brickwall tactics of the political group in power and the oligarchy behind them.
People who understand the gravity of the situation have no hope in the future, because they see that the gypsies aren’t going to change their criminal ways, but they aren’t going to be punished either, while your grandmother might have her apartment taken away, because she couldn’t pay the electric bill which amounted to four times her monthly retirement fund, for which she has worked all her life. In fact, the money she gets for all her hard work is less, sometimes twice less or more, than the minimum wage, which by itself is never enough to pay rent and bills, let alone food or any other expense.
People who understand the gravity of the situation see that we voted in a plainly stupid and corrupt mafia member to be our prime minister. The man obviously thinks he is Putin, although he actually looks and acts like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather”. After his term, we were unhappy with the others too, so we voted him in again. Why? Because all of the big media is owned by a certain clique of people who share the same interests and he had their support. There’s nothing better than watching your mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers being dragged around, made fun of, turned against each other and against you and your interests by the grey mass that is our TV networks. The same TV networks who are also angry and whose very respected reporters never once mentioned how the EU and the american ambassador criticized our lack of action against corruption and advised us to implement an anti-corruption branch in the government. The same TV networks that never tell you that in most countries you would know where your tax money goes. The same TV networks that never told you that the recently “hacked” website of the Ministry of Education would be said to have laughable security if it had any security at all, even though it probably cost a third of a million. Pay attention to the gypsies and the “drug addicts”!
I lied. Nobody really understands the gravity of the situation and I wouldn’t claim I do either. What I understand is that we’re easy to lie to, because we never took part. In the last thousand years of our history, we were under Byzantium rule, Turkish rule and then Communist rule. We are free people with the mindset of slaves. We believe what we are told, because there’s nothing else for us than being told. We don’t think — we subscribe. Consequently, we look up to the ruling class as if they are different to us, as if they have more rights, as if it is an us and them situation.
I want you to understand that we all have a say in how the country runs and if we don’t say anything — someone will do so instead of us. There is no ruling class, because there is no class. The “people above” are made from the same mud that we are and they don’t have any more rights, god given or otherwise, than the rest of us do. If we hope that someone will come and “fix” us — we’ll be constantly disappointed because whoever did so played the game according to his own interests.
I don’t claim to know what is right. I just want to say to all of you, not just the Bulgarians, that you should take hold of the present, because the future depends on the now. Don’t wait and don’t hope. Get up and do something! Change the world for the better! Maybe your better is someone else’s worse, but I’m sure that together we’ll find common ground. I don’t care if you protest against the TPP agreement, vote Trump or take part in a street drug decriminalization movement. The important thing is that you do it!