I “love” talking about “Why is this life so shitty?” I even straightened my shoulders, I grow up a little, sympathetically bowing my little head and quietly, even politely, raise additional questions.
Here is my uncle Petro who often likes to talk about it. “Why is this life so shitty?” Uncle Petro is retired, and has several land plots, some gardens, he even changed the car this year, he sold the old and rusty almost a scrap-metal and bought a new and beautiful one. And I ask him: “So why?” And he tells me: “because only parasites are in power”. Uncle Petro from year to year votes in a very strange way, sometimes for the one, who will bring the biggest bag, then for the one, who is most disgraced, then according to the criterion: “Well, so what if he has stolen something, we also were not saints, we were stealing silos from the collective farm.”
“Uncle, who chooses those parasites?” The uncle looks into the distance, where the builders make him new electrically operated gates and says “some assholes choose”.
Whoever came to power in presidential and parliamentary elections, he was chosen by assholes anyway. Not you, and not me, and not the chief accountant Svitlana and not IT specialist Hrysha, but some assholes. And so it turns out a vicious circle, some assholes choose some parasites, parasites breed new groups of the electorate of assholes, and assholes require new parasites and choose even larger parasites. Yes, yes, this is not an intellectual conversation, where at some stage should sound, “wait, let’s look critically”…
Critically. They say even in developed countries, only a fifth of people can think critically, analyze, evaluate, predict. For the rest, simple promises of all good are enough.
The rest. When we talk about voters, immediately a set of images grows before our eyes. Grandma in a downy beret or in a headscarf, which will certainly vote for some moron, because his name was written on a bag of buckwheat, or on a calendar card. This grandmother is always offered to hide her passport and to blackmail in every possible way so that she does not go to vote at all. A student in tight pants, who always doesn’t care for everything, and who for another 20 years wouldn’t even know, who the president is at the moment, who is the prime minister, and what is happening in the country, at least if his favorite game or social network wouldn’t be blocked. A woman ‒ everyone owes her, all are bad and she would vote for some handsome man, or the one, who pays the most for a photo at the polling station. Well, and then there are usually different subspecies of “morons”, “idiots”, assholes and others not normal people that from year to year we for some reason choose, who knows who, and not the one that we need. And only we are, above such people, all beautiful, critically thinking, intelligent, intellectual, that already blows our mind from our superiority, awareness, and significance.
To analyze. Even speaking of critical thinking, on the eve of elections, it is worth mentioning that even among intellectuals, few will gather their strength and thoughts and sit down and carefully read, and study, and analyze. The rest of the intellectuals will not dare. And all discuss by the memes and echoes that reach from the public manipulative space of various media. But not every, even a healthy and developed brain, will stand reading and analyzing those programs.
Programs. Somehow at your leisure, try to search and read candidates’ election programs. I did it one day. I probably have a lot of free time, but my nerves are still very durable. I did not find the programs for everyone. Reading from the monitor is useless. They are written by some coder that you finish reading sentences, forget about what was said at the beginning. And in order to find the main thing there ‒ the essence, it is necessary to have the printed version, take a marker and underline subjects and predicates. From personal observations, it often turns out that the following thesis of the program may deny the previous one, and a few more may deny the laws of physics and even common sense.
Recently I had to talk a little bit, or rather listen to various political consultants, in particular, they talked about programs. And there turns out some kind of vicious circle ‒ people don’t read programs because they are written in confusing idiotic language, politicians write idiotic confused programs because nobody reads them and nobody reads them because programs are written in the confusing idiotic language. Politicians have never been interested in an electorate, who knows how to think and analyze, because such an electorate always doubts, raises a question, knows how to bear responsibility, and demands responsibility. Politicians are not interested in the enlightenment of the electorate since too smart people put too many questions. It is much easier to give the electorate its dream, therefore, the elections are not made for critics of analysts, but for the electorate of dreamers, who do not need a free market ‒ they need low wages. Who does not need effective bureaucracy ‒ they need the opportunity to “settle down everything”. No matter who is behind the candidate ‒ they need eternal youth, cheap sausage and a tram for half a hryvnia and no matter who should do all that. Politicians and their political consultants see it very well and hide the essence of verbiage, they are engaged in the substitution of concepts and sell dreams on billboards instead of real actions.
Of course, it’s great when you finish reading the fourth program, you have even stopped laughing your barrel of laughs because of the idiocy of the wording, you feel wise and lofty intellectual. All this is cool, but you alone so smart and intelligent will not change anything. You may not go to the polls at all, but those, who need to sell a vote for 50 UAH will go, to thank the candidate for a blanket or candy and just vote for the dream of eternal youth. Therefore, don’t be lazy, don’t arrogantly turn your nose up, but just try to teach at least your loved ones to always ask questions, doubt, seek truth and understand competencies ‒ what you can change, what the president changes, what are the competencies of the parliament, and what is exclusively the competence of the higher powers. It is difficult and painful for adults to teach critical thinking, but to put the question timely and persistently ‒ this cannot be taught.
None of the politicians will ever invest in the enlightenment of the electorate. Only you, if you want to live in your own country, can do your small business in a normal society. For a start, teach your mother to put timely, specific and important questions to herself, to agitators, to politicians. They say those big ways consist of small steps and for several years a qualitatively different voter will create a world of new requests and new demands in the sphere of politics, and politicians will have to speak honestly, in the language of facts and figures.
By Tatusya Bo