Perhaps it is given by the time of the year; the days are shortening, the snowflakes start to fall, Christmas decorations everywhere. It's a period, where slowly one begins to look back to the past year. Why? It does make one feel good perhaps. Perhaps it's in human's nature to do so.
Even politicians begin to draw conclusions. At least one would expect. The current coalition is technically at its end, and a new campaign culminating in parliament elections is ahead of us. But somehow I have the feeling, that instead of making a political inventory, the coalition is about to create smoke curtains instead. Suddenly, we have an Act on Nationality and national symbols in the media, where politicians argue, how good it is to sing national anthems in school, because we need to be proud to be Slovaks (author is exlcuded).
When leaders start using murky polemics, I get rashes. Why is it - especially now - suddenly an issue, to have a necessity to feel proud of being a Slovak? When does one feel pride for one own's background, heritage, culture? In my view, when a society ('nation') has achieved great things; when it excells in noble deeds, progress, cultural achievements.
True, Slovaks have a slight dent in their national pride awareness. But in all fairness - when one sees greedy politicians hording millions of Euros into their own pockets - not to forget also of those close to them, when you see indecent and inappropriate vulgar behaviour (to put it mildly) by coalition party-leaders, tenders which are meant to tunnel funds into companies of cronies, lies and so on, one cannot help but feeling a bit... well, .. embarrassed.
The current humbug about the nationality question is perhaps a mere naive attempt of politicians to appear doing good deeds for one's country. Instead, they increase the antipathy towards themselves and create further gaps between the population and themselves.
In a recent radio broadcast, there was a discussion in this matter. A parallel was drawn between the Italian public school crusifixes and state symbols. There is absolutely no limit to the shallowness of the politicians' rhetorics. A crucifix should be a symbol for 2000 years of European [christian] culture?! May I just remind, that not until the 10th or 11th century Europe was indeed christened to a certain extent. Before that Europe had other religions. simply put; a 2000 year christian European tradition simply does not exist, and neither the mentioned "fact", that the solstice celebration was "a Slavic tradition". It was a tradition that existed outside the Slavic boundaries as well, as was the case with the Celts, Germanic Tribes, and so on. These fanatic attempts of Slovak politicians to appeal to this, gives me a kind of déjà vu of the crooked ideology of the Third Reich, with their swastika's and believes in a pure arian heritage, or the fanaticism of Mao's Cultural Revolution, or Kim Il-Sung's North Korea. Let's not get carried away by propaganda, and keep historic facts within their correct contexts, facts and boundaries and not stealing attributes to your tiny group of followers. Europe has many influences, many of them even non-christian. There are people, like me, who do not wish to be forced watching crucifixes, as they are equally a symbol of the crusades, the inquisition, the senseless demonisation and persecution of the Jewish population of Europe and beyond. Those are our rights too. It's not that I mind others having their own symbols - please, have as many as you want. But since 1945, we have realised and understood what blind cultural and religious monopolies could lead to.
The attempts are clearly to cover up many things which the present government failed to manage - maybe even more controversies, which we are not aware of yet. But they are silly, shallow, sophist blabberings of a bad kind of regents without any scruples, who are using mere 19th century nationalism to poison people's minds. Such a pity that more than 40% still blindly believes them. And we thought we were in a Europe of the 21st century. Eagerly I am craving for some fresh air and a common sense to land here. L'histoire se répète. Maybe yes. Woe unto us!
MS
