On being a normal country

I think that most of Macedonia’s citizens – regardless of ethnicity, class, or any other marker of identity – simply desire to see – and experience – Macedonia as a normal country.  And what is “normal” in today’s hot mess of a world?  An American president – Warren Harding (elected in 1920), campaigned in part on a return to “normalcy” as he called it, as the country was coming out of World War I.  And he defined normalcy as “a regular steady order of things.”

By that definition – and it’s a good one – Macedonia has not had “normalcy,” or, put another way, Macedonia has not been a normal country, since, oh, about 2017.  It certainly feels, to many Macedonians, that Macedonia has gone (and is still going through) a war, a war on them and their lives.

Moving on to another American president, Ronald Reagan, and lightly paraphrasing him before he become president of the United States, the majority of Macedonians, these days, are simply trying to assert their rights as Macedonians against the tyranny of fashionable left-wing revolutionaries, some economic illiterates who happen to hold elective office, social engineers in the NGO sector who dominate and set the format in political and social affairs, and too-powerful foreign actors who disdain Macedonians and think they are peasants. To that paraphrased quote I would add that Macedonians are simply trying to assert their rights as Macedonians in the face of criminal operators in the current government, as well as the usual run-of-the-mill criminals in society, who are often linked to and with the government.

That’s quite a lot of rotten people that Macedonians are facing.  And those rotten people happen to hold quite a bit of power at various levels which explains why Macedonia is not a normal country.

If we look at current polling, 62.3 percent of Macedonians believe that Macedonia is going in the wrong direction and 24 percent believe Macedonia is simply stuck in one place. Again, if normal is “a regular steady order of things,” and I think that’s a good definition, then the past five years have not provided a regular steady order of things.  You can make your own list but mine includes:

-the massive upheaval of a forced name and identity change against the will of the majority of Macedonians by one country, aided and abetted by the US State Department and the EU;

-the massive upheaval of a different neighboring country demanding that Macedonia changes its constitution again as well as change its schoolbooks, and more, again aided and abetted by the US State Department and the EU;

-growing levels of corruption within the government of SDSM and DUI (who can forget the chief special prosecutor, to begin our list of corrupted officials?);

-major no-bid infrastructure contracts handed out like candy to foreign companies closely aligned with foreign governments;

-growing levels of crime, both ordinary and extraordinary (brazen mafia killings in the middle of Skopje);

-nepotism on a grand and growing scale, especially within the ruling DUI;

-constant changes in the make-up of the government – put another way, very little stability;

-a crashing economy, inflation, high prices for ordinary goods, and more;

-very little job creation, and certainly no wealth creation;

-an educational system that doesn’t even have books and the books it does have are subject to revision by another country;

-a declining health system;

-an avoidance of blame by the government for major human disasters including burning hospitals, burning busses, and general loss of life;

-a continuing brain drain among Macedonia’s youth, Macedonia’s best and brightest;

-a general loss of hope, among all people.

The social media personality who parades around as the prime minister of Macedonia, Dimitar Kovachevski, has his PR team produce and pump out on TV and social media endless and very slick promotional videos, but Macedonians aren’t fooled.  They know that when you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.

Again, you can make your own list pointing to the fact that Macedonia is not a normal country.  But it’s not enough to state the obvious.  The next question is, rightly, “how do Macedonians get Macedonia to a place where it is at least a more normal country?” 

I’d like to give you a list of three to four things that Macedonians might do to make Macedonia a more normal country.  But there is no list of things.  There is only one thing: it is going to take a change in government.

The current government – useful idiots and fools that they are to the US State Department and European Union – must be thrown out.  The criminals in that government and those on the outside who benefit from that government must be held to account: the shorthand version of this is thrown out of office as soon as possible. Will Macedonians do this, in spite of all of the advantages that incumbents hold?  I’ve been around long enough to have seen it done before and believe it can happen again.

This current government cannot reform themselves, they cannot compromise, and they cannot shake their dependency on the US State Department and EU.  And in the case of the SDSM, they cannot shake themselves of their utter and absolute dependency on DUI.  SDSM is subservient to DUI or, put another way, SDSM is to DUI, as Prince Harry is to Megan Merkel.  And that relationship will not change unless they are all thrown out.

Now, go and throw the scoundrels out.