Liesel and I just got back from three rainy days in Kotor, at the bottom of the bay of the same name. At its best, when the sun is out, it's pretty spectacular.
NOT an image I could have taken, this week
This week, was ... not quite that.
It rained every day, limiting our ability to explore, hike, and venture. Still, we had a great time, getting whatever Kotor-related experience we could, while still eating home-made feasts each night (ajvar, beets, cheese, fresh vegetables, fresh bread, olives, roasted peppers, pistachios) and watching all four episodes of Adolescence. I also managed to go to the health club each day — one of the benefits offered by our airbnb host — which was satisfying.
A few stories, over the next few days, but ... let's start with the little adventure I had after my last trip to the the health club, yesterday evening.
The FitStop health club was upstairs, in the second floor, right over a gas station/convenience store. You literally walk into the gas station, walk by the counter, up some stairs, and there you are. It's not the most advanced health club ever, but they were friendly, and they had treadmills, so I could work out while looking out the window at people pulling up over the tanks. Fantastic.
It was especially handy as, after finishing my run on Friday evening, I needed to gas up the car for our drive back to Podgorica Saturday morning, and get some cash at the nearby ATM, So on my way out I stopped at the counter, told the guy I needed $10 worth of diesel, and headed out to get in my car, pull it around, and operate the pump. Once I finished with that I left the car there, then walked over to the ATM to get some money, then came back, got in the car, and headed home.
About 5 minutes into the 7 minute drive, on the main road around the Bay of Kotor, on rain-slicked streets, a small car zoomed around me, slammed on the brakes — all this on the main (though only two-lane) road —put on its hazard lights, and a big figure got out of the driver's side.
All I could think is, "ummmm." Was this one of those Balkan car-jackings/kidnappings fearful Westerners make movies about? On ... on a MAIN street at 7 pm? Should I get out to prepare for a fight? Should I slam the car into reverse and hope there were no cars behind me? What ... what's happening?
As the large man approached my car I recognized him as the friendly gas-station attendant. I opened the door as he got to me — not particularly agitated, either of us, but ... ready — and before he could say anything I said, "but ... but I paid you for $10 of gas, right?" He stared at me for a second, and then his body sagged, and he said, "I'm sorry -- of course you did." I said, "no, I'm sorry -— I thought you saw me gas up my car, but I should have waved or something." He apologized about three more times, each time sticking his hand in the car to shake my hand again and again, while I tried to apologize to him. He explained that they had had a lot of people take gas and run, and he had forgotten about me.
It was all fine. He apologized — stuck his hand in the window again to shake mine — and, with some embrrassment, got back in his car and drove off.
This is another of those stories that is, on the retelling, not particularly dramatic. Still, you can imagine, as a foreigner here, in a rented (manual-transmission) car, a rainy night, small road ... there was a minute of thinking, "well, something is happening. I wonder what it is?"
I went home and we watched the last two episodes of Adolescence over another Balkan feast. Good times.
More stories the next few days. Free pizza, super-friendly cats, expensive hikes up the mountain-side, and more! Now ... back to my new Podgorica home for some dinner and a cheery Netflix show. Liesel heads home tomorrow, and then I'll settle in for the next month here. I can't say I'm excited about it, but ... I'll at least be able to completely unpack and make myself at home.
Today's adventure. Liesel is flying down from Vienna to spend a couple days with me in Podgorica and Kotor Bay, so I needed to get to the airport to pick her up. Sure, I could take a taxi, but that's more expensive, and I have the time, and I like seeing new parts of the city, so I decided to take the train from the main station to the "Aerodrom" stop, eight whole minutes away.
There was some confusion at the train station — the man who sold me the ticket told me to ask the woman at the "Information" window about which platform it would be on, and she smiled indulgently and insisted that it would be on the "first platform" — even though they weren't numbered — and "we will make an announcement." When I asked if that announcement would include the word "airport" or "aerodrom," she smiled as if I was being silly and shook her head no, but indicated it would all become clear.
It didn't. At some point people got up and started moving onto the train closest to the station — which I assumed was No. 1 — so I headed towards it as well. A Russian woman asked me if this was the "первый" train (the first), and I was delighted to say, in Russian, "I don't know -- I really have no idea." We all got on, but three minutes later a conductor walked through insisting this wasn't the train to Bar — good to know, but was it the train to the airport? — and she sort of looked confused and shook her head and pointed at another train, on the third platform.
I leapt off and switched trains — as did the Russian woman, among others — and finally got settled on what I hoped was the right train. (It was).
About six minutes into the trip the conductor came by to check my ticket, and he confirmed I was only going to the "Aerodrop" stop, then said it was coming up. I had been tracking on my phone, so I was ready (I thought).
Indeed, a minute later we slowed to a stop, and I quickly got up and walked to the door. This stop is ... nothing. A hut on the side of some train tracks. I knew the stop would be ... brief, at best.
As I was exiting my compartment, another guy ahead of me opened the door to the train and exited (is that called "detraining"?) allowing the heavy iron door on the very old and graffiti-covered train to swing shut. With a mechanism I didn't understand, and my hands full of a Pepsi Max (that'll teach me!) and a phone. I tried to open it with one hand — no success. Now panicking, because I had the (correct) sense that this stop would be for far less than a minute, total, I tucked the Pepsi can in my pocked and tried awkwardly with two hands. Nothing.
At this point, one of the young men whose presence had earlier made me roll my eyes — loud, smoking, joking (all the things young 17-year-old men will do in a group with their friends — saw me and moved quickly to the door. As he opened it easily, the train had already started to move, and was quickly picking up steam.
Amazing how many things can actually go through your mind in a micro-second. I thought about how I would tell Liesel, and what she would have to do. I wondered where the next stop on the train would be — five minutes away? three hours? I wondered whether I would get in trouble for not having purchased a ticket for that subsequent destination, and even if they believed my story, how embarrassed I would be to explain I couldn't figure out how to get the door open.
And, of course, I worried about whether I should jump or not, while recognizing that in the 1/4th of a second it took me to consider these things, the train had already picked up speed.
Recognizing that even another second of delay would make the entire process moot — I leapt onto the platform.
And made it!
Indeed, I offer to you a Chat-GPT rendering of my adventure (white hair, 57 years old, anglo, black jeans, blue sweatshirt, blue backpack, jumping from a rural and graffiti-covered train on the Eastern European country-side).
Pretty accurate
Now, a few things. First, we really were picking up speed. I made the leap, and was knocked sideways a step or two, but managed to stay relatively balanced. I'm proud of that 57-year old agility. I mean, just look at that image! Second, all that really did go through my mind quickly — to that young man I'm sure it looked like I leapt out in one instant, the second he opened the door!
And ... of course, third, I'm sure this happens all over the place, all the time, usually at much higher speed, and that that young man didn't even think about it, because it was all so obvious, safe, and mundane.
Well, not to this guy. I'm ready for the next Bourne movie if they need me!
From Google Images — doesn't actually capture the speed we were going!
Anyway, once off the train, slightly disappointed that nobody else had seen my studly move, I turned and walked along the highway to the airport, making it without any further adventure.
I think we'll probably take a taxi home.
(Written two hours later: Ok, ok, this is a hell of a long way to say, "I barely got off the train in time on my way to pick up Liesel at the airport." But somehow it seemed daredevil-ish and exciting to me, and worth a story. It really was moving!)
Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public, and political figure, folklorist and ethnographer. According to Wikipedia, "he wrote poetry in Ukrainian and prose in Russian ... making him one of many iconic figures which belong to several Slavic language cultures." In addition, Wikipedia reports, "his literary heritage, in particular the poetry collection Kobzar, is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian literature and to some degree, the modern Ukrainian language."
A self-portrait, from 1841
Shows the sort of pan-Slavic identity Montenegro celebrates.
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Jovan Tomašević (1892-1924)
Jovan was apparently a lawyer and organizer of the Communist Party in Montenegro. According to Wikipedia, "in the years after his death, communists in Montenegro gathered at his grave, [and] after World War II, his birthplace was converted into a memorial museum." In addition, it appears several schools in Montenegro are named after him, and one of the streets near this monument is named after him.
How bizarre. To continue to honor a man who lived his life with the goal of making life better for his countrymen and eliminating inequality and oppression — a Communist!
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Ivan Milutinović (1901 – 1944)
Ivan was a Yugoslav Partisan general and military commander who in 1940 was elected as a member of Politburo and then became during WWII became commander of the Partisan forces in Montenegro.
He died on October 23, 1944, when a small boat which was transporting him to Belgrade hit a naval mine in the Danube. He was decorated with the Order of the People's Hero, and his remains were buried in the Tomb of People's Heroes in Belgrade.
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Nikola I Petrović-Njegoš (1841–1921)
Nikola — who shared my birthday! — was the last monarch of Montenegro, reigning as prince from 1860 to 1910 and as the country's first and only king from 1910 to 1918. His grandsons included kings Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Umberto II of Italy, and Sergei Georgievich.
Interesting, it seems to me, that we have monarchical statues in such close proximity to those of various Communist leaders. Prominence is prominence, I guess!
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Let's finish strong.
Josip Broz (Tito) (1892-1980)
I mean, if you don't know who Tito was, you're either very young, or not much interested in global politics (or history). Here's Wikipedia's introduction:
Josip Broz, commonly known as Tito, was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980. During World War II, he led the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. Following Yugoslavia's liberation in 1945, he served as its prime minister from 1945 to 1963, and president from 1953 until his death in 1980.
It also turns out that Podgorica was known as Titograd from 1946 to 1992, which I should definitely remember, but ... don't. Turns out that's why Podgorica's international airport is still identified by the code TGD.
Tito in 1962, showing his whimsical side
It's not completely fair to blame Tito for the Balkan Wars that arose in the decades following his death, it seems to me. He was not responsible for tying the countries of Yugoslavia (Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) together in the first place, after all — the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was former in 1918 — and he was long gone by the time they started pulling apart, in the 1990s. But to the extent he was the one responsible for holding all these disparate entities together, the eventual dissolution of Yugoslavia following the fall of Communism was almost inevitable, and it's not likely he would have been much more generous or tolerant of that dissolution than those far-less-charismatic leaders who followed him were.
Still, the fact that his statue remains up suggests he continues to hold a place of some regard in at least this republic, if not others. I'll need to explore.
The host of my current Airbnb in the City Kvart part of Podgorica is the head coach of the volleyball team at the Buducnost sports club in Podgorica. The way sports work(s) in Europe is different from the U.S., but that means, essentially, he's the head coach of the Podgorica team.
Buducnost — which means "Future," by the way — played against the Jedinstvo team, from Bijelo Polje, in the semifinals of the Montenegrin Cup on Friday. So I went to watch.
Lest you think for a second that volleyball isn't a crazy big sport here, just consider this photo:
The arena was packed!
Ok, so it was not the most crowded sporting event I've ever been to. But there was some good action (and good coaching!), and the good guys won. I was satisfied. And, at the price, it was one of the best value-for-your-money sporting events I've ever been to.
My Airbnb host in gray
No, guys, hit it over the net!
Good guys win, 3-0
On to the finals, on the 30th against those bastards from Budva!
On the way out, I took a quick photo of kids warming up for their Tae-Kwon-Do class (or competition?) in an adjoining hall.
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On a related note, especially in my first airbnb here, in the general neighborhood of the Buducnost sports center, I came across lots of mysterious graffiti about someone or something named "Zvek."
I asked my first airbnb host and a lawyer-friend I have here about the name — neither of them big sports fans — and they were both more or less at a loss. The lawyer-friend suggested that the word "Zvek" means something like "someone or something that can't sit still, and is constantly moving or vibrating," but ... that wasn't much help.
I understood from context that it had something to do with the local football (soccer) team, which one of my sources confirmed — "Blue" is the both the color of the team, obviously, and a short-hand way of referring to them (a synecdoche, if you will)—but that's as far as I could get.
Zvekove or, indeed, the "Zvek Zone."
Zvek — Podgorica
"We love Blue -- will be Zvek"
My current airbnb host, however, had more details. He explained that the main supporter group of the Buducnost football team is the Varvari (Barbarians), which I have to admit, is a pretty cool name. According to him, "Zvek" is the name of the more ... passionate (maybe even rabid?) wing. Which is saying something, as, according to Wikipedia, the Varvari are already pretty intense:
"Since its foundation years, Varvari gained a reputation as a violent group, and in recent history they caused some of the biggest accidents that occurred at football matches. At a First League 2004-05 Budućnost – Partizan Belgrade match, flares, blocks, construction materials and similar objects were thrown from the North stand to the pitch and the match was abandoned for 15 minutes. The following year, a home game against Red Star Belgrade was suspended for two hours after home supporters (Varvari) sprayed tear gas on the pitch and, after that, attacked visitors' ultras."
(It may be worth remembering that there was a certain tension in the air, those years, between Serbia and other members of the former Yugoslavia).
I just now asked the barista at this Gloria Jeans coffee shop and her friends what Zvek means, and one of them said, as if this explained everything, that it means "like the word for Wow! Zvek means 'Chaos,' which means, like, 'Wow!'" She gave me a smile like she was humoring me, and I thanked her and retreated to my laptop.
So there you go. "Zvek" is the personification of "constant movement" or "chaos" (or "Wow!") that serves as the icon/mascot of the rabid wing of the Varvari group of Buducnost supporters.
Makes me think I should try to go to a game here! (And, if I do, that I should wear blue — fortunately, as you all know, that isn't particularly difficult for me).
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Final football thoughts. On my way to Independence Square yesterday I saw my first purely Buducnost (and not "Zvek") graffiti, wedged into the corner under an air conditioning unit.
Presumably the graffiti preceded the AC installation
In a sign that fans here — as in many countries in Europe — actually pay more attention to the almost-infinitely-richer football teams/leagues of the world (primarily the Premier League, the Bundesliga, and La Liga), upon turning around I immediately encountered a more respectably presented logo.
To be fair, Podgorica is only 2700 miles from Liverpool
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Ok, enough football. One last note. Some of you may recognize Gloria Jeans coffee -- a Starbucks/Costa Coffee competitor originating in Australia and more or less familiar around much of the world.
According to a world map on the wall here, though, it turns out this is the only location in the Balkans. Not Montenegro — this one store, here in the Oasis Building, on 1 Cetinjski Put, in Podgorica.
See that one little dot, behind Italy's heel? That's where I am right now!
I don't see how this makes any sense, given distribution concerns, but that's why I'm not a multi-millionaire (yet).
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Oh, what the hell, let's sign off with one more photo of a billboard near my apartment, presented without comment.
So far I've made "friends" with the Kosovar bakery family at "Pekara Montenegro" and the Turkish barbers and hairdressers at the MB Hair and Beauty Center, including Enis (sp?), who, today, helped me look more like Tintin than I ever thought possible.
He wishes he looked as good as me
The interesting thing, though, is that although Šahe (and her precocious 13-year-old sister Drilona) and Enis were both full of smiles, laughing, trying to communicate, and interested, so far the Montenegrins I've met at the local coffee shops, markets, and restaurants have been grim, uninterested, and monotone. It's weird. Both of my airbnb hosts have been friendly and helpful, I guess, but I never really see them. It's clearly a Balkan thing — and more a male thing than a female thing — but it certainly can be a little off-putting, and a little intimidating. I'll be interested to see how and when I get past it.
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So I mentioned to a friend yesterday that this is an interesting country (aren't they all?), with ongoing and abandoned construction sites right next to multi-story modern apartment complexes, enormous fully Westernized shopping malls, and gleaming-window office buildings. Sidewalks can be uneven and broken, and rebar and empty fields are all around ... but so are very attractively designed and furnished restaurants that wouldn't look out of place in San Francisco or New York.
Looking through my photos today, I realized I had one that illustrates this phenomenon somewhat.
You get the point
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When I first moved to Budapest in 2007 I was struck by how many statutes and "this famous person lived here" markers were dedicated to people I had never heard of. We Americans are just not as familiar with the personages of Central and Eastern Europe as we are of Austrians (Mozart lived here, Freud lived here), French (Degas lived here, Dumas lived here, Napoleon lived here), and English (too many to list). But the great majority of historical Hungarians famous to people in that country today are essentially unknown to us (István Széchenyi! Sándor Petöfi!).
It turns out ... that's essentially true here as well, so all of the individualized memorialized in statutes and other historical markers are completely unknown to me. Which makes googling kind of fun.
Interestingly, not Montenegrin
"France Prešeren (pronounced [fɾanˈtsɛ pɾɛˈʃeːɾn]) (3 December 1800 – 8 February 1849) was a 19th-century Romantic Slovene poet whose poems have been translated into many languages. He has been considered the greatest Slovene classical poet and has inspired later Slovene literature. He wrote the first Slovene ballad and the first Slovene epic. After his death, he became the leading name of the Slovene literary canon."
The Montenegrin "Sissi," apparently
"Jelena Savojska, penultimate Italian queen, daughter of the Montenegrin king Nikola I and Milena Petrović. She was educated at the Smolny Institute in Saint Petersburg . At a ball in Moscow on the occasion of the coronation of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II, she met her future husband, Victor Emmanuel III of Savoy, the Prince of Naples. They were married in October, 1896. In 1908, as the Queen of Italy, she was involved in humanitarian work after the catastrophic earthquake in Messina, Sicily, where a monument was erected in her honor. Jelena was reportedly the only queen at that time who could speak Croatian."
Um, I assumed I'd be able to read the name from the photo, but ... nope.
ditto
And again
I'll take better notes in the future, I promise. 😎
I arrived in Podgorica on Thursday evening and checking into my wonderful airbnb pretty quickly. Indeed, I was the first one off the plane, got through passport control at the charmingly low-rent small-town Balkan airport in seconds, and somehow found my bags already circling on the baggage claim. Something like ... four minutes after the plane landed. Remarkable.
Anyway, I spent the weekend trying to readjust to the time zone, taking a walk to a sports bar to watch a Premier League game on TV (I met Marko, the bartender, who unfortunately turned out to be a Real Madrid fan, but we were able to more or less get along anyway), getting a membership at a health club ("I'm committed," he said, knowing how useless it was, "this time to taking advantage of the opportunity to get in shape!"), and watching a lot of the Big Ten basketball tournament on my laptop.
Oh, and struggling to order at restaurants, having to overcome their eye-rolling at the customs they take for granted but I don't know.
Anyway, yesterday I moved to a new airbnb, where I'll spend the next ten days. And, again last night, watched the Big Ten tournament.
Worth it.
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Going forward, instead of long posts about Montenegro, in all its weirdness and wonder, I'll try to make several shorter ones, focusing on particular experiences and items of interest. This time ... some of the restaurants and shops in my new neighborhood, about a 15-20 minute walk from the center, but only about two minutes from the largest mall in Montenegro!
I'm actually living in a modernish housing development, with three or four 7- or 8-floor apartment buildings over shops, cafes, barber shops, markets, and restaurants. Lots of places to get what I consider fairly tasteless (but cheap!) cappuccino, and lots of places showing their international aspirations with English names. (Oh, and "Pica" means "drinks" — my Slavic-language-speaking friends will recognize how close it it is to their language).
Honesty in advertising, I guess.
Both an IP infringement and vaguely sexist, but funny!
Oooh, so close!
My favorite place here, though, is a bakery run by an entire family of Kosovars, including the charming 20-year-old woman behind the counter, who is so far the only person in the food-service industry I've met here who smiles and laughs, and with whom I quickly struck up a friendship. She — Šahe — works, I kid you not, 18 hours a day here, seven days a week, with her brothers and father working similar hours downstairs in the bakery itself. It's remarkable, and again reminds me what hard work actually is, and how unfamiliar so many Americans actually are with it. And she smiles! (I asked her how, and she says, "lots of coffee").
They even have wifi, and I'm writing here, 7:15 pm, with a can of Coke Zero on the table in front of me. Almost everyone who comes in speaks a pidgin English with her, as they've become familiar with the fact that she doesn't really speak Serbian yet (Albanian being the language in Kosovo), and everyone finds ways to convey "I would like a baguette" and "that will be one euro." It's all friendly. Sometimes her brothers or younger sister bring up — as the 12-year old sister is doing now — a new pizza, or new loaves of bread. I'm charmed.
My four-hour layover at O'Hare is close to over, and I have about 25 minutes before I board the flight to Brussels ... from whence to Istanbul ... from whence to Podgorica. I flew in from Kansas City this morning. This will be a long trip. But that's ok — I'm not stressed about it.
Overall, though, my feelings are profoundly mixed about going to Montenegro now. I had been anticipating it and was, I thought, psychologically prepared to learn my visa application had been denied and I would need to retreat to some none-EU and non-Schengen Zone jurisdiction for a while. (Either until my appeal of that denial is granted, or until I can qualify for a new Schengen Zone tourist visa in late May, whichever comes sooner). But it turns out ... not so much. I'm resigned to it, certainly, but far from excited about it, and there's obvious disappointment.
On the other hand, if you have to live in exile, you could do far worse than Montenegro, which I visited with my father in 2017 on his last-ever trip overseas, and really enjoy.
Good memories at the Bay of Kotor
On the third hand, I don't really know anybody there except for some of the lawyers I got to know through CEE Legal Matters, and while I'm hoping to connect with them, it should be a relatively solitary few months.
On the fourth hand, except for Liesel, who promises to come visit at least once, if not more, and ... who knows? Maybe I can even make some friends. 😎
We'll see. It's a lot of hands, certainly. For now, I'm about to board my overnight flight to Brussels, and we'll take it all as it comes.
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On a political note, I thought I'd share one of us libtards' favorite past-times for those of you who haven't yet participated in the fun: The What-Exactly-is-Trump's-Deal-and-How-Did-He-Get-Elected game! Here are the theories I've heard. What's your favorite?
1. Vacuum at the Top: Trump is a narcissististic child and psychopath whose only goal is popularity and who is therefore easily manipulated by his advisors into endorsing consistently hard-line conservative policies regardless of how popular they actually are (my favorite); but
2. Spinning Wheel: He is also a charismatic con-man who speaks in a stream-of-consciousness way that allows him to move on quickly from subjects that don't resonate with his followers (multi-flush toilets) to those subjects that do ("lock her up!"); and either way
3. Control Through Chaos: He and his team regularly flood the media with any number of silly ideas designed to overwhelm our ability to process and respond quickly to the serious ones which are therefore allowed to slip under the radar; plus
4. The Only Issue: His supporters know exactly who he is and don't care at all about his sillier ideas as long as he'll get them the Supreme Court and abolish abortion rights; because
5. The Fear Factor: His followers are easily manipulated into believing their lives/incomes/happiness/opportunities/liberties are being unjustly and deliberately limited by liberal elites either purposefully or ignorantly pursuing policies ("wokeness," open borders, lax policies on crime, etc.) guaranteed to drive the country into anarchy and ruin; because after all
6. Matrushka or Marionette: Down deep, the strings are being pulled by Russians and their devious bots, successfully pushing Trump into policies designed to sow chaos in the West while allowing (or facilitating) Russian expansion; and either way
7. Cruelty is the Point: Trump supporters believe that society/civilization depends on a comprehensive system of punishments for anti-social behavior, and only if the consequences for deviation are severe enough will people stay on the right path, allowing society to continue and avoiding complete social breakdown. So when it comes to putting immigrant children in cages, or forcing sexually active women to carry fetuses to term, or enforcing extreme mandatory minimum penalties for otherwise unimportant drug violations ... cruelty is the point. They don't care about the actual effects of immigration on the United States (though they'll come up with arguments if you force them), or about the circumstances by which a young woman becomes pregnant, or whether or not the drug that was used is actually worse than legal alternatives. They don't. They only worry that the consequences be severe, because in their minds, allowing people to get away with what they consider anti-social conduct (primarily breaking laws or social mores, regardless of their morality or wisdom) is an absolute invitation to chaos. Everything breaks down if society doesn't enforce its own rules -- and better to be too severe than not severe enough; though, of course
8. Liberty Means No: Trump and his administration are committed to "liberty" — to ensuring thatnobody has to pay for programs designed for other people. Taxes should only go to the military and maybe the police — if even that! — and while things like public education, medical care, environmental protection, Head Start programs, and anything else designed to help other people are nice, sure, and those people who want to pay for those things certainly can, people should not be forced to subsidize those programs (via taxes, of course) against their will.
Roll the dice and see what you get! Play with your friends! Fun for the whole family!
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Greetings from Brussels. Now off to my gate to prepare to board my flight to Istanbul. Been a long day!
Thoughts from 26,000 feet as I fly from Columbus to Chicago, then onward to Kansas City.
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First, the political.
I watched a WWII documentary recently where some historian described Hitler as the most successful political leader in history whose career was based almost entirely on “grievance.” And I thought to myself, “until Trump.”
But that’s not quite correct; Trump isn’t really about grievance, I think. He’s about resentment (or at least his message is). He’s fostered it (with the committed help of the idiots in the Conservative Media Landscape (CML), and he’s benefited from it.
I found myself driving a few days ago, on my way from Ann Arbor to Athens, Ohio, through entire communities that seem (based on their signage) to support Trump, and I discovered I could almost feel the resentment residents there felt towards more economically vibrant parts of the country, towards what they are told and believe are “elites” on the coast, at what they are told and believe are crazy “woke” liberals, and so on. Towards everybody, essentially. Just unfocused resentment, spreading out in all directions.
I even found myself sympathizing with them to an extent. They are bombarded by messages from Trump and the CML that things are terrible and that it’s someone else’s fault, and it’s not surprising that people whose lives do not match up to the lives they see of the rich and famous, or of the characters they see on TV, believe they are being exploited, taken for granted, and forgotten.
It occurs to me that politicians — to be effective, at least — need to employ an “us vs. them” strategy, and Trump (again with the assistance of the CML, of course) did this magnificently, effectively characterizing the Democrats as the “them.” The failure of the Democrats was their inability to counter that with any kind of effective messaging that redirected that resentment towards a more appropriate “them”: the tech bajillionaires that campaign strategically and effectively against any efforts to tax them appropriately, the foreign powers that prioritize authoritarianism, expansionism, and a restriction of human rights over democracy and basic decency, and the politicians who repeatedly roadblock efforts to make life better.
Instead, the Democrats seemed to campaign on a platform of “we’ll keep the same stuff, and isn’t this great” … and against the powerful “you’re miserable” message promoted by Trump and the CML, that wasn’t ever going to work.
I sure hope the Democrats (and like-minded political parties outside America) can find a candidate able to reawaken the confidence and humanity of the so-many people who seem to have forgotten those characteristics, and can provide a compelling message that reassures the fear that so many people have that the world is spinning out of control that, in fact, it’s not. I hope they can find someone who can do it. But I’m not confident. Especially against the CML … it’s hard to cut through the static.
Full of hot air, and unconcerned with the people supporting him
As for Trump himself … he’s just a child. That’s all he is. People who suggest he’s cynical, or that he’s purposefully creating political noise (Greenland, Canada, etc.) to distract us from the particularly pernicious policies he and his advisors truly want are mistaken. He’s a cruel and evil child, unable to understand complexity (and convinced that it shouldn’t exist), lashing out at anyone who opposes him, and he is only trying to impress the particular authorities which he admires (in this case, his MAGA supporters and various dictators around the world). Trying to analyze his motives or strategies is silly. He wants what he wants, full stop, and he’s mystified at the suggestion that anybody could want anything different than he does, so assumes they must simply be acting out of personal antipathy.
All that being said … and even though I’ve been trying my best to avoid reading the news about Trump, and I’ve stopped watching the nightly comedy shows to avoid their monologues, and I turn away from my NPR podcasts when they play clips of Trump’s voice to promote some new program of analysis … his recent actions regarding Ukraine — both his appalling treatment of Zelenskyy at the White House and his subsequent decisions both to cut off military aid to Ukraine and to deport Ukrainian refugees — have hit, and continue to hit me, right in the stomach, painfully.
It's funny. I grew up believing the same myths we all did, of course, about American exceptionalism and about us being the good guys, and I grew up believing we stood for something. "The last best hope of earth," Abraham Lincoln called us. And heaven help me, I believed it. I still believe it! So why are repeatedly electing people to represent us who so obviously don’t believe it?? It’s mystifying. I can see me being selfish and ignorant, but surely Presidents are supposed to be … better? Instead of consistently worse?
I don’t just think we should offer universal health care because almost every other country does, or support education because it makes us more “competitive,” or increase mental-health care, reduce mandatory-sentence minimums, and substantially reduce the incarceration rate because I’m “soft.” I want to do those things because I believe the United States can be the best! We have the resources to be the best! We were founded as the City on the Hill! What’s more, millions and millions of people around the world have looked at us that way too, from the very beginning!
And yet, for some reason, liberals and progressives — the very people who are trying to make us the best by living up to our ideals and fulfilling our potential — are repeatedly characterized as “hating America.” Meanwhile, so many "conservatives" (whatever that means) think either that “we’re the best” is simply a truism, and therefore that we can do whatever we want, or, even worse, believe we’re the best because we’re the strongest, God forbid.
I’m not suggesting just that those beliefs are offensive — though they certainly are — but that they’re nonsensical. Nobody would say that the Los Angeles Dodgers are the best baseball team even if they lost every game, or that they’re the best because, regardless of their skill at baseball, they can beat every other team up. To be considered as the best, treated as the best, you have to earn it. You have to show it.
Why are our politicians so afraid to ask that of us? Kennedy did, both with his "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"” speech, and his “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” speech. Since then … our leaders have been consistently unwilling to even ask us to work to make our world better. They've given up! We're turning to the worse angels of our nature now, seems to me.
Not in my lifetime, at least
And the suggestion that we could lead the world in education, health care, life expectancy, and standard of living, is dismissed as naïve. But … why? Only because we're too timid to try. Some country has to be those things. Why not us? Who better than us?
It's gut-wrenching. We could be everything everyone, both Republican and Democrat, want us to be … but instead we grab the wheel and drive ourselves off the road and into the dirt. I despair.
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As for me and my ongoing visa drama … well, it turns out I was mistaken about the relevant time frame for my application. I had unknowingly been looking at the time frame listed on the website of the Czech consulate in Hong Kong, rather than the one listed on the website of the Czech consulate I had applied to – that in Los Angeles – and although the two websites are fundamentally similar (so similar, obviously, that I was unaware of my mistake), the relevant deadlines are phrased differently, with the former telling business-visa applicants that a decision will be made and conveyed to them after 90 days — or after 120 in “particularly complicated” cases — and the latter simply saying the decision will be made and conveyed “between 90 and 120 days.”
This is, in my case, an important distinction, because I had been worried that my failure to hear after 90 days meant my application had fallen into the “particularly complicated” category, whereas in fact, it means nothing at all. I assume, the Czech Republic being a highly functioning bureaucracy, it’s much more common to hear closer to 120 days than 90 anyway, so the fact that I still haven’t heard on this, the 115th day, shouldn’t be too surprising.
I believe the 120th day will be on Wednesday, March 12th. My plan at the moment is, if the consulate tells me my application has been denied, to fly immediately to Montenegro or Albania, file an appeal of that decision, and ride out the weeks until I can get a new Schengen tourist visa, as they’re cheap, European, warm, interesting, and somewhat familiar. Of course, if I do get the visa, I will fly to Los Angeles, pick it up, and immediately fly back to Prague. Indeed, I checked various travel websites, and it may even be possible to to all of those three things on the same day.
I’m anxious about it all, of course, but several times a day I find myself starting to imagine getting the good news, and I’m immediately flooded with energy and joy. The idea of going to the airport, getting on the plane, and heading home to my bed, my friends, Catalina, and my new life, is tremendously exciting. Fingers crossed, you know?
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