A few days before the first election that he will win, Trump says: "I could kill a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue right now, and I would still win." "We" are appalled, but we are somewhat comforted by his naivety. He wins
Of course, if I were an American I would vote yes Kamal Harris. Of course, I hoped for her victory, at least for a while. As election day approached, that hope waned, until it almost evaporated. Less because of the change in mood in the polls, more because it was becoming increasingly clear to me that Kamala's victory, at this stage of decay and obfuscation, would America and holy was - unnatural. And unnatural things rarely happen in politics.
When Trump first won, I was surprised because I thought it was not only bad, harmful, shameful, etc. but also - unnatural. Maybe I didn't recognize the strength of the trend in time, or maybe everything just happened in an awkward evolutionary moment of the snake's skin, exactly when the previously unnatural becomes the new natural. After all, don't forget: Hillary got three million more votes than the orange creature from the green lagoon. The USA is the only country in the world (not counting those in which elections are stolen en gro, because they are not states, they are more modern armed tribes with chiefs prone to cannibalism) in which elections can be lost in this way. Now, Trump won Kamala by an even more convincing margin, winning many places where for generations it was believed that someone who did not vote for the Democrats would have his hand withered, his wheat would never grow white again, and his only son would become a mobster, a lawyer or a copywriter.
So what happened in the meantime? "Elite" and "deep state" became the most hated words, and by God, so did "meritocracy", although it was not yet clear what exactly that meant, but it is clear that something was designed to destroy the strings of the "little man". Fortunately, there are characters like Trump to defend him... A visitor from Neptune would think that the orange man must have been a bum picked up from a bench on the banks of the Hudson or a laid-off steel worker in Pittsburgh, not a neglected parasite of the caste of the big caste ("The Family Tarana") of the nouveau riche who went through life without learning anything, because he didn't even need any knowledge to make a living from it. I couldn't even swear that he had learned to operate an elevator, since I can easily imagine that he had never been alone in an elevator in his life.
Okay, but knowledge is not everything in life - even Einstein was not the president of the world - so what about other virtues? Honesty, modesty, truthfulness... Even Trump's voters will not tell you that they have ever detected traces of something like that in him.
"We" may not have understood what was happening, but Trump did; predator instinct. A few days before the first election that he will win, Trump says: "I could kill a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue right now, and I would still win." "We" are appalled, but we are somewhat comforted by his naivety. He wins. Granted, he didn't shoot anyone, but we realize that he really could have, and we try to see where this new world we've woken up leads us. Our heads are like a GPS that resets the settings after the driver did not turn onto the highway as it should have been only logical, but on a wild field path.
What's boiling somewhere underneath it all? Processes of long duration, as always. Let's go back to the time before GPS. It is infinitely useful to watch movies, read books, listen to music and read newspapers and magazines from 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago. The war is already a relatively long time ago, the ruins and hunger have emerged, contempt for every "f" from fascism is almost universal, we live in consolidated democracies, freedoms of all kinds - political, trade union, artistic, sexual - are growing and spreading. At least this is the life of Western Europe and North America - and others trot after them, no matter how far they go. The South is not among the worst... Of course, this is not the time for idealization, by no means: the Cold War with its risks and paranoia, America that is just starting to emerge from informal apartheid and plunges into Vietnam and similar shit, Germany that is "healing" its identity trauma, among other things and crazy left-wing terrorism, Italy which adds right-wing terrorism and two large and countless small mafias to it, France which does not know how to deal with Algeria neither as a colony nor as a an "independent country" which, with its neighbors, is slowly beginning the siege of Paris, but everyone pretends not to see it because the Gods of the Left will roast you for paying too much attention to mere facts and too little to class consciousness, which alone gives facts real meaning, Britain according to the IRA, but also which is dragged to one edge of ruin by the dilettante Labor government, and then pushed to the other edge of ruin by Thatcherism, which sometimes looks like a cytostatic to treat a cold...
BUT, in spite of everything, for the most part, people live well, freely, and even economically quite peacefully. The "Golden Decades" got that name for a reason.
Look at who then leads the states, who the majority votes for. Angels and geniuses? Just work. But, people with competencies at least in politics, and usually in something else, far above the "ordinary voter". Honest enough that they are not thieves (well, Italians don't count 🙂 ) and if they are, they will end up in prison and certainly out of politics. They would end their political career if they pushed a passer-by a little more roughly on Fifth Avenue or overtook a tractor in a full lane. They provide everyone with "freedom to bark", but not themselves. No one will arrest you if you say that "immigrants are eating our dogs and cats" in some murky bar, but the president of the state or government who would say that would first be sent to an insane asylum under rotation, and then to further proceedings.
Today, it's sexy for a voter to vote for someone who's much more unhinged than himself. Most of the voters of Trump, Orban, Putin, Vučić are much better and better people than them.
Why is there nothing else between the overcome regime and the changes? What does the regime mean when it says it is defending Serbia? Why is the Student Movement indomitable? Who has the knowledge and real experience, and who leads without a day of work experience outside of politics? And why students win
After almost two years of protests, hundreds of kilometers walked, arrests, persecution and unprecedented social mobilization, Serbia is holding elections that could mark the end of a political era. Sociologist Marija Babović tells "Vreme" that the hope for change has not been so great since October 5, 2000, but she also warns of the danger that, if changes are not made, the country will face an even tougher authoritarian regime.
Their only weapon now is the media they control: like, we don't have an agenda, which is not true; as, we will betray the national interest, which is not true. One of their arguments is that we are afraid to go to the debate with Vučić. They do not understand that it is their punishment. This is a punishment for Aleksandar Vučić, who for 14 years conducted exclusively a monologue. For fourteen years he did not allow anyone any kind of dialogue, and now he would like to be rewarded or pardoned with the opportunity to talk to us. Well, he won't be able to. What he sowed is now reaping
These elections are not elections about Serbia's membership in the European Union, Kosovo and Metohija, gay marriage, tax policy or any other single political issue. Although parties on the fringes of political power try to impose these themes, at the heart of the upcoming political election is a much simpler dilemma: change or preserve the existing order. For more than a year now, surveys have shown that this is the primary dilemma on the ballot
In the RS, 19.800 people registered for the elections in Serbia, who will be able to vote at 28 polling stations. It remains unknown how many of them will cross the Drina on October 25 and vote in Serbia. In any case, I do not believe that the voters from Republika Srpska are the ones who will decide the winner of the elections in Serbia. Realistically, the voters from Republika Srpska can influence a little, but it seems that they are symbolically very important to both Vučić and the opposition.
There is, literally, no difference between the one who claims it is day in the middle of the night, or the one who claims to be a giraffe, from the claims we read on billboards: that Vučić is working to unify Serbs and that Serbia is doing better and better day by day.
The pre-election arrests due to the alleged "overthrow of the state" testify to the regime's panic. The bad news for them is - they can't arrest the whole people who decided to defend themselves from progressive beatings and election theft
The ring that tightens around Ćaciland Student list is getting narrower. Because there are more and more spoiled people who see the false prophet for what he is: a street obscener who is fighting Serbia
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Trump is not an anomaly or a passing phenomenon, as it seemed when he left the White House at the end of his first term. He is the majority of America. Now that all the levers of power are in Trump's hands, the people of America are left to wonder what this choice says about themselves. If he is the best political leader, what a country it is
After the election failure in 2012, the Republicans launched an internal review process: what went wrong. All of this is summarized in a report colloquially called an autopsy of the Republican Party. With the 2016 election result in mind, it would seem that they made the right move at the right time, although it is difficult to determine whether the text of the autopsy was a guide to the election victory or, simply, Donald Trump happened. The Democrats have the same task in 2024, the only question is whether they are capable and willing to fulfill it
The policies of the new US president are a version of destructive and authoritarian national capitalism - even with elements of racism - that reaches out to those dissatisfied with the so-called liberal hegemony and the power structures that sustain it. Therefore, it is not difficult to determine where such political enthusiasm in Serbia comes from when it comes to Trump. Serbs like to think of themselves as a collective victim of the same system, or at least the government in Serbia tries to project such an image to the electorate.
Vucic invited Trump as a guest, as soon as possible, although we do not know if he promised to come. Everything will be in order - from bread and scones to Ivica who will sing and prepare a new set of photos from the last meeting, like back in New York
Donald Trump's return to the White House could significantly affect the US smartphone market. His plan to impose a 60 percent tariff on goods made in China includes Apple devices, which could drastically raise their prices and weaken the US tech giant's position
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?
