Pá 11 listopadu 2016

I am just reading an interesting blog post by my Melinda Selmys reflecting on her reaction to the Mr. Trump’s victory in the US elections.

I am Czech, so I have a little experience with the similar situation, which I would like to share. Since 2013, Mr. Miloš Zeman has been the president of Czechia. The election, which he won were in many aspects similar to the US elections 2016. The second round was between him and Mr. Karel Schwarzenberg. Two personalities couldn’t be more different. Mr. Zeman was the chairman of the Social Democratic Party (major left part in Czechia), but his separation from the party was under circumstances far from friendly, and he in meantime found (quite unsuccessful) party of his own (which was for some time called “Party of friends of Miloš Zeman” ;)). He is ambiguously leftish and populist, now supporting quite xenophobic. His campaign was to large extent indirectly paid by the Russian company Lukoil, and Mr. President did not bother to disclose his accounts, where he seemingly actually did break the law.

Mr. Schwarzenberg is just an opposite. He is actually a prince from the old noble family (and yes, it sounds as weird in this plebeian society as it would sound in USA, and of course all titles of nobility are void under the Czech law), which used to own half of the Southern Bohemia until the Communist took it from them by the special act tailored just on them. Of course, he is super-educated, and during and after the Communist times he was for many years a diplomat in all levels of diplomacy (for couple of years he was absolutely awesome minister of foreign affairs of Czechia).

Campaign was also absolutely awful and Mr. Zeman won partially based on lies throwing the worst suspicions of the past of Mr. Schwarzenberg’s suggesting his German relatives were Nazis (which actually was just the opposite of truth, the head of the family gave a huge contribution for building of the system of the Czechoslovak fortifications before the Second World War).

OK, so this is just a long introduction, which is not that important, but hopefully helps to explain I have at least some knowledge what I am talking about and there is reason I think I know what is the most important task for everybody who were hoping somebody else is the 45th US president than Mr. Trump.

I meet here in Czechia plenty of people who are still furious with Mr. Zeman and quite obviously did not get over the fact their candidate lost. They are quite easy to recognize. Usually they are absolutely indifferent to the reality and just automatically hate any word or deed is done by anybody who is not sufficiently on their side. They are not willing to even consider that anything THEM do or say would deserve any consideration.

Of course, it is absolutely perfect to criticize deeds or words of our Mr. President, he deserves it richly (and his spokesman achieves levels so far known only from the Iraqi Information Minister), but it is absolutely devastating for anybody criticizing undemocratic practices of our president, when they obviously didn’t get over the fact that good citizens of Czechia voted in other way they thought they should.

Not only it looks bad, but what is even worse, crazy bigotry makes bigots blind to anything else than perceived proofs of them being right.

Category: faith Tagged: politics blogComment UnitedStates cultureWar