Chic@s – a warning!
This blog is going to be a little political in its nature, so if that doesn’t float your boat, look away now.
I’ve had about enough of being hoodwinked, lied to and manipulated by so-called democratic governments.
You may – or you may not – recognise the title of this blog as a Bukowski quote, and I’m going to begin with another:
“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.”
Now this is going to sound a little controversial, but those of you who know me well enough to have had a conversation about politics (which I rarely do) will know that I am not a fan of democracy.
Yes, read that again. I. Think. Democracy. Stinks.
Well, WTF do we do then, you may be asking?
First, let me tell you why I don’t like democracy.
Democracy only works if the right people get elected.
Look at what’s happening in Poland.
Look at what’s happening in Belarus.
Look at what’s happening in Hungary.
Heck, look at what’s happening in the UK, or the US?
And then look at the sweeping wave of totalitarianism that’s engulfing us, using the spurious guise of the Chinese flu as an excuse for unlawful extension of control, subjugation, and the curtailment of civil liberties.
“… you can’t tell a madman from a sane one … and suddenly we find our lives in the hands of the idiots … eeney, meeney, miney, mo …”
Frankly, the people of the aforementioned Eastern European countries would be better off if the USSR remained had intact.
I’m going to use Poland (because – if you don’t know – I live there much of the time) to evidence my case for the utter pointlessness, bigotry and corruption aided and abetted by democracy.
Poland recently had an election. The PiS – an ultra right-wing party –retained power, mainly because the old and the poor, who access all their “news” and political “facts” from government owned television, voted for them. This is, in effect, Neo-Nazi styled propaganda and they don’t even bother to try to brush it under the carpet.
The de-escalation of the Chinese flu restrictions in Poland was solely brought about so that the people could go out and vote. According to the government, the war against COVID had been won. Hallelujah. But there are now reportedly over eight hundred new COVID-19 cases per day in Poland. A joke doing the rounds is that once the daily number of cases equates to one hundred, the government will close the parks and forests again.
And to demonstrate how Polish democracy works, here are five measures that the new Polish government has already pushed through, or is in the process of passing legislation for:
No1:
I quote form a recent article in the New Your Times: “Poland’s right-wing governing party is pressing ahead with sweeping new legislation to tighten controls over judges, despite concerns from European Union officials that it would undermine the independence of the judiciary and the country’s democracy.” This has caused civil unrest and chants such as: “1956: Stalinism ended. 1989: Communism ended. 2020: Why are you bringing them back?”
No2:
Polish MPs have voted to give themselves a 60% pay rise, as well as to grant even bigger increases to the president, prime minister and other members of the cabinet.
According to the Notes From Poland website: “In a rare display of cross-party unity in an often bitterly divided parliament, almost 90% of MPs voted in favour of the bill, including those of the ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, the main centrist opposition, Civic Platform (PO), and the Left (Lewica).” Not only that, the president’s wife will receive a salary of 18,000PLN per month for doing absolutely nothing. This equates to approximately €4,000; the average wage in Poland is 2,600PLN (€588). And not a single responsibility is attached to this stipend.
No3:
On July 18, the Polish parliament removed requirement for MPs to declare earnings for outside work. Again to quote from Notes From Poland: “Opposition MPs have expressed concerns over the new rules, especially the fact that they are backdated. They say that the system is open to abuse and conflicts of interests.” No shit Sherlock.
Stanisław Karczewski, a former speaker of the Senate, continued to earn money working as a doctor while on unpaid leave, though he denies any wrongdoing. Furthermore, less publicised amendments to legislation now stipulate that if a doctor is upheld to have made a clinical error, she now faces a lengthy jail sentence. So I don’t think I’ll be removing that gallbladder, after all.
No4:
The repression of LGBTQ+. I quote from the AP News website: “Demonstrators turned out in Warsaw and other Polish cities Saturday to protest against anti-LGBT attitudes promoted by the government as well as the detention of pro-LGBT protesters. To read more about it, click here.
No5:
Poland is in the process of withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention. The Istanbul Convention – I quote from The Guardian July 26, is “… is the world’s first binding instrument to prevent and tackle violence against women, from marital rape to female genital mutilation.” However, the Polish government considers it [according to The Guardian article] to be “an invention, a feminist creation aimed at justifying gay ideology”. I’ll leave you to make your own mind up about that one.
And there’s other less publicised stuff. For example, officers policing public demonstrations and marches remove or conceal their identification numbers. A New York Times journalist who witnessed several incidents of police brutality during a recent peaceful protest in Warsaw was told that there was no requirement for the officers involved to reveal their identity. Let’s just call them Brownshirts or Braunhemden and have done with it.
And finally – would you believe it – there’s even a move to ban Halloween? And the reason for this is that it’s considered to be anti-Christian, and the Polish government relies heavily (and vice versa) on the support of the Catholic Church. I wish they’d ban Christmas instead, but of course they won’t.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
Polish democracy stinks.
All so-called democracies – with a few exceptions – stink.
And don’t even get me started on the UK.
Okay … go on then – because this has been, by my standards, a pretty heavy blog – do get me started on the UK.
What a mess.
Besides the almost Brian Rixlike farce that is the billowing curtain of quarantine regulations … the restrictions over who you can or who you cannot invite into your house or garden, there is now an even greater piece of lunacy afoot.
The war against obesity. The UK government recently announced (shortly after the rollout of its ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme) that those who are obese are highly vulnerable to morbidity or death from the Chinese flu. So what did they advise them to do? Stay home … stay indoors fatty … self-isolate. That makes sense doesn’t it? So now obese people are even discouraged from taking the moderate, gentle exercise they had hitherto endured, wandering down to Greggs to queue for their sausage bean and cheese melts.
Okay. That’s about all I have to say about democracy and I know you’re still waiting for me to tell you what I think should replace it.
Maybe some highly developed form of tribalism? Hmmm … perhaps even a benevolent autocracy would be better?
To finish with another Bukowski quote: “… you can’t tell a madman from a sane one … and suddenly we find our lives in the hands of the idiots … eeney, meeney, miney, mo …”.
Hasta pronto, Amig@s – the next blog will be about my recent trip to Gibraltar. No more politics, I promise.