A Nation In Fractures Heads To The Polls

If there’s one thing to note from history, it is that nothing unites a people quite like a common enemy. In post-war Poland, the enemy was the Soviet Union. Yes, there were those who collaborated with the Russians, some out of fear, others out of cold calculation. But for the most part, when a nation is under foreign control, its culture is pacified and its people are humiliated, the seeds of patriotism and nationalism are sown, resistance soon emerges and often prevails, even though the process can sometimes take decades if not centuries. This is very much a psychological mechanism, because no one likes bowing to authority, especially when that authority is foreign and doesn’t speak your language: A kid might resent his mother for controlling and punishing him, but that resentment is far stronger if the punishment comes from his step-father. So the kid conspires with his brother to get rid of the stepfather, much like the nation works together to overthrow a foreign invader.

But when that national, united resistance prevails in its fight against foreign control, when the nation is at last ‘free’, a new problem emerges, namely: What to do next? Suddenly, ideological differences, formerly masked by a shared focus and passion to be free of the enemy, reappear. In the household, the cruel stepfather is gone and life moves on but the kids begin to grow apart. In the country, rival factions emerge…