My cure is silence. I did it, then in 2016, when with the elections? I did it. Did I argue with Oti about this? I had a fight. did i apologize Yes, but only last year, after that shameful ass on January 6. Did you accept my apology? Yes, he has a good heart. But from now on, evil is between us. Not because he made me an “outdated conservative”, and not because I made him a “stinking progressive” (such people are forgiven, left, looked at among friends); and because each of us is sick. Argue with a friend about a politician who doesn’t even know you exist! This is simply impossible to do.

Maybe it’s better to start with him. Oti (Attila) is a nice guy from Sequime, about six years younger than me; studying in Bucharest (Polytechnic), marrying a Galician from Regi, emergency emigration to America, difficult years of adaptation there, settling in Colorado, birth of children and life upper middle class, with lots of work, good money, fishing in the summer, skiing in the winter and vacations in Europe every three or four years (avoiding Romania, of course). We remained friends, good friends: the years at Regie (with football, with beer afterwards and with the seeds that galățănca grilled for us in their dorm room) mattered and matter, in a way, more than the following life paths ( profession, children, etc.). When Oti and I found each other on WhatsApp, we had a lot to talk about and stories to tell, and why he laughs over and over and over (“Do you remember when…”), why the wives wondered what the hell happened after all this time it was left to chop, but look, it was! Until 2016. Then we went crazy.

Now, I’m not justifying my Trumpist version from that time, nor am I going to explain the Hillaryist version of Oti. This is not my goal. I’m not even interested in the pros and cons (exhausted, fed up! No, thank you!). I am interested in FAIL, fundamental error: why? That is: why should an ordinary person invest his passion in politics? What, do politicians put passion in people? Where does this positioning error come from? How can we be so blind as to divide ourselves into tribes, Trumpists and anti-Trumpists, Bolsheviks and anti-Bolsonists, Orbanists and anti-Orbanists, bassists and anti-basists, Putinists and anti-Putinists, Berlusconists and anti-Berlusconists, etc. ., since nothing comes of it? Ah, those who have something to gain from access to power of a certain political faction – I understand them. Those who have something to lose from the “fall” of a certain public figure – and I understand them. But I don’t understand myself! And no Oti! Come on, he at least had the right to vote, what about me? What made me pick him up just because he had a different point of view? What made him think Trump in the White House meant the end of the world? I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Evolutionary biology seems to be the only consistent answer (we have remained gregarious monkeys with strict group hierarchies), but it’s an answer that doesn’t convince anyone and annoys everyone. That’s why I don’t give it away. But I give the first fruits of my deep and clear thinking like spring water:

My opinion is that my opinion doesn’t matter.

I haven’t finished! Another eagle’s egg hatched from Buzeya’s mind, which I will reveal now, but only after I tell how I reconciled with my Oti. I wrote to him on WhatsApp after a long ice age, he also answered me after about two days (kapo and Hungarian, kapo too), we explained in writing as much as possible, then I called and we talked. I told him from the very beginning that it was bad: “Go away, I was a jerk.” He thought for a while about what to answer, then uttered, “Leave it alone, Miheito, for the others have remained so.” He wanted to suggest, translate into beautiful words, an old idea (“Consistency is the prerogative of fools”), and, damn it, he was wrong! More precisely: our world is so full of information flying around, bombarding us from all sides (whether we like it or not), that it is impossible for anyone, no matter how sharp, to be right every time. Inevitably, in one judgment, two, three, or a thousand, the most intelligent person will still be wrong. And then he has a choice: either he clings to his mistake or accepts it. 99% of humanity chooses the first option, like the Marxists of the second millennium: I caught her by the fence, I tied her to the fence! Well, if Stalin had been trained, all communism remains a bright future for the human race! Okay, that’s an old example, but today is full of much hotter examples; I will not even mention Gaza and Abdesalem Lassued (I will give an example from my district), because our history is in full swing, not like in the socialist “refrigerator”. So, here is the second and final thought:

I have an opinion, but I don’t agree with it.

Everything I’ve written so far seems like a plea for this fashionable “relativism” that says no one is right and everyone is right. Not for long! In my opinion, moral relativism is worse than stupidity; this is a crime. This is an extremely effective weapon of brainwashers: if no one is right, then every fool is right and should be respected for that. Yes. Of course you should. I mean no disrespect to the fool, but only if he shuts up. And, being a fool myself, I started treatment, and you know it works for me: I haven’t had a fight with anyone but my wife in a long time. So that I don’t wash the dishes, so that I don’t take out the trash, please, sharp questions from her point of view, but without far-reaching consequences. As well as political disputes.

A long time ago, when I was a copywriter in Bucharest, our bible (of first-generation copywriters, because the job didn’t exist in the communist past) was a pamphlet published in 1981 by Al Rice and Jack Trout: “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.” I’ll be honest, I don’t remember a single ad I created between 2006 and 2012 when I was in the industry; not even one! It shows what a great copywriter I was, en passant saying… but I haven’t forgotten anything from the book of the two Americans. I’m oversimplifying her message: you can’t convince anyone these days because we all have access to the same information at the same time; what you can still do is position yourself somewhere in the mind of the person/client/buyer as clearly and unambiguously as possible. I will give an example from the book that I liked: “We are the second company on the market. Why should you work with us? We try harder.” You see When every company advertises itself as The Best, it’s impossible to tell them apart, let alone remember their names. And here is the name of the company, which says that it is a “friend”, whether you want to remember it or not: it is the only one. That’s “positioning”, as defined by the authors (died, poor people, God forgive them). But what is the “battle for your mind”? So what…exactly what they said can’t be done today (but look, it’s possible!): every political/social/religious/economic actor trying to convince you they’re right. And that if you listen to him and believe him, you will be on the side of Good. And the Future, obviously: he is right not only in what is, but also in what will be. He is a kind of Mother Caterpillar. Listen to this and everything will be fine. Don’t listen to him and go to hell.

I don’t want to waste your time; if you’ve read this far, here are the opinions of people we can really learn from, all of us, both smart and stupid. First, Grieg Davidowitz speaks bitterly about the current concrete situation. I quote:

“I think we were in a period […] absolute relativism. So, there is no more truth and lies, white can be black and vice versa, and everyone says what they want without any connection with the truth. Most importantly, be sure of what you say and say it with confidence. But at the end of the day, there really is truth and there are lies, and when someone attacks you, they either succeed or fail. It’s not relative anymore, it’s absolute.”

Second, Jerome C. Jerome explains* the eternal characteristic of man; in these complicated words, “a non-historical feature”. I quote:

“The work was hard and the pay was low, and we were supported by the belief that we were teaching people and making them better. Of all the games in the world, the most common and favorite is the school game. You gather six children and ask them to sit down, and you walk in front of them with a book. We play it when we are little, we play it when we are boys and girls, we play it when we grow up to be men and women, we play it when we crawl to the forest floor in our boots and slippers. The game never gets boring and we never get tired of it. Only one thing spoils it: every child pretends to be with a book and a cane. I am sure that the reason journalism is such a sought-after profession, despite its many shortcomings, is that every journalist feels like a boy with a book and a stick. Government, classes and masses, society, art and literature are other children. He teaches them and makes them better.” –

Read the entire article and comment on it at contributors.ro