19 March 2024, Tuesday, 12:31
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Don’t Be Idiots

Don’t Be Idiots
Iryna Khalip

If you were not at the square in 2010 – you have no heart. If you take part in the “elections” in 2015 – you have no brains.

Oh no, I am not talking about the colleagues who are seriously – or just pretending to be serious –discussing something called “the programmes of the candidates for presidency”'.

They are eagerly telling in their articles, on the radio and on social networks that there are no elections, and more than that – no candidates; but at the same time for some reason they are discussing these programmes in detail. So, it’s not about the colleagues – you can try to understand them: the harvest is over, the sowing season has not started yet, but there should be something to write about and broadcast in between. “The Ukrainians are lucky--they have got news every day, but what should we do? So we will discuss the programmes.”


No-no, I don’t mean those who call themselves “candidates for presidency” for some reason, and whose "programmes" are seriously being discussed by my colleagues. Heaven forbid, there is no issue with either the one dressed in aiguillette, gallon and throat wrap; or the deceased Saddam Hussein's fat-bottomed friends, whose greasy shiny faces don’t give a chance to tell the father and the son apart; or to the lady, who reminds some tasteless fat-free cottage cheese, not being able to say a word without the curator's approval. You can only pity them all: it’s so hard to live speechless, and to utter a word, it would be someone else’s word, approved and imposed on you, knowing that you personally could have been a normal or even a decent person, not a dummy, a wrapping or a potato peel. But it didn’t work and there is no energy to fight against your own empty shell, because the rest has gone rotten like a sausage in an overwrap.

I’m not talking about those who have been sure for many years that to fight the dictatorship is just to go to the voting station and to vote for someone else, not Lukashenka, once every five years, and then keep asking yourself opening your eyes wide: why it has been this way? Why another 5 years of dictatorship, I haven’t voted for him! Will I have to suffer for 5 more years, though I’m against the dictator? They are unable to think in other categories than a 5-year industrial plans, and a chance for some changes in their consciousness appears only once in 5 years, and they slip into anabiosis until the 5 years are over. Then they go and vote again and go back to sleep again. Would you reproach them? No. That’s how they see their duty – just to go to the voting station every 5 years and vote without any turmoil. It’s safe and comfortable, and there’s no risk and one gets this feeling of some duty fulfilled. Their world is as narrow as the ballot-box stuffed with false voting papers, but since they find it easy to breathe in this dusty air, how can one blame them?

So I'm not talking about the fist, the second or the third mentioned above, it’s about the forth. It's about those who froth at the mouth and shout, with distorted faces: “Why are you campaigning for the boycott and don’t let those decent people in galloons carry out the election campaign? They weren’t in your way 5 years ago so you shouldn’t be in their way either. And if you are making a point that these ones in galloons and with cottage cheese work for Lukashenka and legitimatize him you should also admit that all those Nyakliayeu, Sannikov and Statkevich were doing the same in 2010. There’s no difference between then and now. And it was pretty clear then, no matter how the member of the electorate vote, the old lady Lidziya will complete the mission and will fake the result of 80 per cent. As well as she will now. So in what way are these people worse than those ones?”

My answer is – they are not worse, they are more disgusting. And all that fourth know it, but for some reason pass it over shamefaced in silence that the last campaign in the first place was not elections campaign, it was a kind of mobilization. People were not urged to come to voting station (“go and vote, and then return home to take rest for the next five years”), but to the Square. And all candidates used their hour on air to say for the whole country to hear: dear voters, your votes would be thrown into a dustbin anyway, and only by gathering on the Square together, we would be able to declare our protest and demand a normal vote count. Exactly that – just recall! – was heard in every televised speech and at every meeting with voters. There was no that monotonous mumbling this year: “please, come to voting stations, and cast your vote, as anyway you are not able to do anything else. And the main thing is that we are fit for nothing, we cannot do anything else, we are just fulfilling an order.”

But the lousiest thing is that many people who are writhing in hysterics now: “Boycott is no good, and voting is good,” were on the Square five years ago as well. And today they are justifying participation in the scenario of the KGB aimed at Lukashenka’s international recognition by the fact that rally on the Square on December 19 was a mistake, as nothing resulted from it except a crackdown, and it was futile, and had not brought reforms and changes, so all sacrifices were senseless. Expressing in other way the well-known aphorism about brains and Socialists, it could be said so: if you were not at the Square in 2010 – you have no heart. If you take part in the “elections” in 2015 and go to the polls – you have no brains. Stupidity is no vice certainly. But after gaining a critical mass, stupidity turns into meanness.

And now all those people seem to have stricken a pose “Be Prepared” to a pioneers’ bugle call, and are waiting for new orders. They are not able to act and think independently. They can only fulfill orders: “drop down and give me a number of push-ups”, no matter who had given an order: the main thing for the order to be given. The dictatorship rests on their Pioneer, juvenile eagerness. It is pointless to explain anything to them.

Pioneers, go to hell…

Iryna Khalip, exclusively for charter97.org

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