Small earthquake

Or, this tyranny will pass, God willing.

When a religious official and a high-ranking "party soldier" (as they like to present themselves lately) who loudly advocates for nurturing the tradition of Muslim cultural heritage and adhering to the path of one of the founders of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, and also a high-ranking official of the religious Community, a Muslim, a democrat, and a decades-long representative of national and all other interests, with a clear conscience, publicly states that the uncovering of vote buying, blackmailing with the existential minimum, jobs, rigging elections (even internal party and cantonal ones) and invoking God, the Almighty... in other words, a complete loss of ethical and moral compass, embezzlement and betrayal of all entrusted and tarnishing of honor is only a "small earthquake" for his party, I dare not even think what a big one is for him... then it is completely normal for a young Christian and independent social democrat to take the liberty of declaring the party president and a member of the Presidency of the state, one of those who in every way prevent any normal life in this country, but despite everything we know and assume, an anonymous "chief of staff" (also a Muslim) who "has not tired of shooting" (by the way, it is not said "shot" but "cracked"), as his "dear mother"... to give a religious education class in the BiH Parliament and declare one man a god and - as far as I understand religion and politics - establish a new religious community or at least a cult!

If this is possible (and it is!) and normal (obviously it is!), then it should not be surprising that in a country where such people are representatives of their respective peoples, authorized interpreters of religious, examples of religious, and prominent advocates of political truths, representatives of the national interests of their respective peoples who believe that 365 KM pension is quite enough for the vast majority of their subjects... it is quite normal for half of the population to live on the edge of existence, for about 128,000 children to go to bed hungry in the evening and wake up hungry in the morning, for about 40,000 of their parents to not even have the minimum means for life (not even the 15 to 45 KM child benefit, for over 30,000 children under the age of seven not to remember when they last ate... (in a country) where every public job is paid at least twice the market price and God knows how many times more than its real value, (in which) 8 billion (eight thousand million) collected from us for road tolls and fuel excise taxes (not to mention those on tobacco) disappear without a trace, (in a country) with 3400 parafiscal levies... for three prime ministers to agree that they will only think about the global problem, a pandemic of a virus for which there is no cure, from the day after tomorrow!

Of course, all of the above is the cheapest and darkest populism... Of course, any mention of any social justice, a more meaningful, higher quality, or at least safer life, cheaper healthcare or free education, anything that sounds like a better life is preemptively criminalized, as is everything that could indicate that there is something better and different than this and a greater interest than the ethno-national one, and therefore, dealing with these topics alongside so many serious (ones), I won't list them, but descriptively, the competition between two people to pee the furthest, mostly across the inter-entity line, while the third tries to use the crowd and mark his entity... is equally futile or at least, approximately as meaningless as in the era of space tourism to deal with the genetic modification of watermelons to grow without seeds, explaining to Bosniaks that Elvis is not a Muslim name, or preventing a pandemic caused by a virus that can be protected against by washing hands and wearing a mask "against whitewashing"!

The "quantities" and scale of serious individual and collective madness and even more serious audacity and insolence of politicians have long ceased to surprise anyone except the completely uninformed, hopelessly optimistic, and representatives of the international community who convince us that the problems in this country can only be solved by agreement among internal political actors, failing to understand or not wanting to understand that the essence of the problems this country has is precisely these internal political actors and that all of this is actually the result of their agreement. This is normal and expected, considering on the one hand that they – representatives of the international community – achieve their purpose and existential minimum in countries like this and with "politicians" like ours. And on the other hand, they are the same people... with the same background, the same "behind the forehead", the same internal meaninglessness, uselessness, and unnecessity as ours, only the scales are different.

Regardless, these "ours" have the heart not to know about children and people dying of hunger, disease, and poverty (and everything is so simply solvable)... just as for "theirs", the pandemic is not 815 million hungry and 600 million thirsty, a daily death rate of 20,000, of which about 8,000 are children, mostly between one and five years old, millions who die from the simplest curable diseases, and God knows how many disenfranchised and oppressed... It doesn't concern them because it doesn't affect them in any way. And these are neither global problems nor a pandemic because they are far away, the situation can be controlled, as it is being controlled, and so on...

However, when tens and hundreds of thousands of these same hungry, thirsty, and oppressed knock on their doors, or rather, when a monster that they cannot control, which cannot be controlled, nor treated, and no one knows where it comes from and where it "goes" slips under the door, then the situation changes drastically... Then it is a pandemic, and a global problem, and a catastrophe of biblical proportions... I am not malicious and I do not want to be cynical, but all of this reminds me of that ancient joke where a religious official who often performed funeral rites was asked: "Is the people dying?" "Well, you know... they're dying a little," he would reply. And when death approached his wife one day, he ran out of the house in a panic, shouting: "For God's sake, brothers... help... the whole world is dying!"

I don't know for sure, but somehow it seems to me that according to the same pattern, a "small earthquake" is becoming a big one.