Personally, I blame the European Union. I understand why they did what they did and I know that their intention was to try and encourage “Little Brother” by inviting him into their club so that he could grow up and be as brave and strong as all the Big Boys and Girls at the table. I get that. But it was a very bad mistake nonetheless.
I appreciate it quite a lot when I see parks, streets and transportation lines upgraded, renovated and fixed with EU money. I appreciate more than you will ever know when I see my hard-working Romanian friends get grants from the EU to help them open their own businesses, or the chance to study at another university, or to get valuable experience volunteering with organizations operated by the EU. I’ve even had fun after midnight playing on the children’s playground equipment that the EU has so kindly provided.
But there’s one thing the EU forgot – and that’s teaching Romanians what democracy actually means. Actually, I don’t expect they know much about it. The British just spent 14 billion on their stupid Games while at the same time forking over hundreds of millions to upkeep an old bag with her sour lemon face living a life of luxury in her multiple palaces while doing nothing except providing “moral support” to a nation still illegally occupying one third of the island next door.
I don’t expect Romanians to learn from Italy, who have had over 60 different governments since the war, governments that actively collaborated with terrorists to bring death and destruction on their own people. I don’t expect Romanians to learn about democracy from Germany, not the Stalinist enclave of former East Germany nor the so-called “free” half of West Germany, literally run by a cadre of high-ranking former Nazis, including the Chancellor (Prime Minister) himself.
I don’t expect Romanians to learn democracy from the Norwegians, who now believe in their arrogance that their petroleum wealth will keep people from forgetting their fascist past, which occasionally still comes to the surface. I don’t expect Romanians to learn it from old King Juan Carlos of Spain, who gets his ass kissed at home as the defender of democracy after letting a bloodthirsty dictator die peacefully in his sleep after 40 years of terror.
Nor do I expect Romanians to learn democracy from Greece or Portugal, each run by a cadre of military generals, nor France, now on its fifth attempt at democracy. I don’t expect Romanians to learn democracy from the Americans either, who squashed their one true experiment in democracy (1776) with the odious form of government they enacted after the war (1789). No, quite frankly, I don’t blame Romanians for not understanding democracy.
After all, the original form (from the Greek meaning “rule of the people”) was a glorified lottery in which only a few rich men got rotating assignments. All the children, the poor, the women and all the slaves didn’t get shit. Only the rich property owners got to strut around and have their say, which isn’t a whole lot different than what we’ve got here in Romania, except that it’s a tiny bit less sexist these days.
Let me ask you, if you enrolled in a four-year university program of studies but never went to class, never once showed up to listen to the various professors, never engaged in classroom discussions, not just for the first semester or second semester but for years and years, and then finally, on the very last day of school in your very last year, you entered the building for the first time and took a single final exam, would that count as “attending university”?
If you somehow passed that final exam, perhaps because it was a single question on a single sheet of paper, saying something like, “Do you like Coca-Cola, yes or no?” with either answer counting as a passing grade, and the university awarded you a diploma for that, would you really consider yourself as having earned a degree? Would you consider yourself worthy of being deemed a scholar and that future employers should reward you for your efforts in improving your life?
Folks, showing up to vote once every four years does not make Romania a democracy. It doesn’t make you some kind of morally superior member of society. The next person who wants to crow about how their voting yesterday is some kind of ennobling act can shove their buletin de vot up their ass. If you went and voted yesterday, that’s your right to do so. But showing up one day every few years to do less work than a fucking movie critic does not make Romania a democracy nor you a contributor to the betterment of your country.
Democracy, quite frankly, is hard work. I look at these clodhoppers in Teleorman, Olt or Mehedinti, all of them showing up in record numbers to vote (presumably) thumbs down on Basescu when they couldn’t be bothered to show up just last month to vote for local elections, you know, the mayors, city councils and county prefects who actually affect their day-to-day lives, and I don’t call that much of a democracy.
Democracy means knowing who your mayor is, who your vice mayors (if any) are, and what they vote on. Do you know what rules or regulations your city council has passed this entire year? Do you have any idea how they voted or what they didn’t vote on?
Democracy means knowing who your member of parliament in Bucharest is, who your senator is, and paying attention to what they do. Showing up yesterday to vote on a referendum set into motion by a secret vote with balls in an urn is not fucking democracy.
Democracy is watching these bastards like a hawk, knowing when they’re busy sleeping through Senate votes, not cheering them on as they steal power just because a certain former sea captain made you feel stupid like the illiterate pig farmer that you are. Democracy means knowing who your representative is in the European parliament in Brussels. And above all else, calling and writing these snakes and holding them accountable to you, the person they brag about representing. If you haven’t contacted them and expressed your opinion, guess what? They’re not representing you. And that’s no democracy at all.
So go ahead and pat yourself on the back that you’re still to this day being represented by a Prime Minister that the entire world knows is a thief and a fraud. Go ahead and pat yourself on the back for being allied with people who spit on and insult Ioana Basescu, who never held a political office in her life. Go ahead and give yourself a big thumbs up for having wasted a colossal 155 million lei for absolutely nothing, not one drop of medicine, not one ban going to your grandmother, not one single pencil in a single fucking school. Go ahead and toot your own horn and then meanwhile get back to the fields and start loading up your rusty shitwagons with watermelons because I’m hungry.
Democracy is hard work. We are beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish members of all parties. But they’re not going to change or do one single thing different until democracy is an every day thing, when it is up to you every single day to watch these vipers and every single thing that they do, when it is up to you to write them, call them, protest in the street, sign petitions and stand outside their palaces and let them know you mean business.
Showing up at the beach with your beer belly hanging over your shorts once every few years is not enough. Leaving a few angry comments on a blog is not enough. And crying in your tuica about what the mean old Hungarians are (or are not) doing is not enough.
Turn off the TV. Close down your torrent software. Wipe the sunflower seeds off your chin and get to work. Otherwise you’ll get nothing more than what they decide to give to you. And friends, let me tell you, it won’t be much at all.
All Things Romania 
I had to read it twice:
“I don’t expect Romanians to learn democracy from the Norwegians, who now believe in their arrogance that their petroleum wealth will keep people from forgetting their fascist past, which occasionally still comes to the surface. ”
It is a little odd to call a German Occupied country for a fascist state, in case you missed it, Norway never became a fascist state, they despised everything it stood for. And topping it all by linking to Anders Breivik, I mean, did you read the news at all?
If you can’t learn about democracy from the Scandinavian countries, Norway included, I think you didn’t understand the concept.
By the way. Constantly you hear from Romanians if you are a foreigner it is impossible to understand how it is in Romania. We don’t have to live through all the world history to learn from it.
I don’t have to saw my arm off to understand the pain. But you have to be Romanian to understand their mentality.
Norway’s arrogance don’t come from their Petroleum wealth. It comes from being the poorest country in Europe 100 years ago, to be at the level of France today, if you don’t include the petroleum wealth. Somebody worked hard to accomplish that, but they were also given good help from the Americans. Their Petroleum wealth is spend helping other countries like the Americans helped them. Including Romania.
And comments like, “We don’t need EU!” “We don’t want foreigners in our country” I mean! Get real! How many Romanians abroad?
I love Romania, and I love to be in Romania. Since I am a guest I accept your ways and standards. So not for me, but for your own sake, you should put your act together.
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Hey idiot,
Romania is a net contributor to the EU (we pay more taxes to them than money we get from them). So stop praising EU… we don’t give a fuck about them… and also we want stupid foreigners like you out of OUR country!
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I’m sorry Cristian but you cannot have an unbiased view about Romania if you’ve only lived, studied and worked here. Until you are able to see it from outside the box and compare it to other lands you’ve experienced first hand you’re the misinformed one.
And just to clear things up, what do you think Romania’s role in Europe is now? Or was ever historically? Guardian of christianity? :)) No, my friend, we have always been and forever shall remain a colony. At first for the otomans then for the russians and now for the western powers to exploit and abuse. That is our role in the European landscape today. And had you tried to open your eyes you would’ve probably seen it. But no, you’re just as blind and short memoried as the other romanians with low self esteem you bash.
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Vasile is right, Romania today is a colony on the outskirts of the EU. And, as pointed out recently by Ilie Şerbănescu here, the problem is entirely economic. Romania must remain a consumer. Romania must not have control over its own resources. Money in Romania – the amounts gathered in energy distribution and those moving through banks – must remain under foreign control, under control from the center! The program to give away national control over the little left in the hands of the Romanian state (ie the mining/electricity, the hydropower, the railways) must continue further and stay on schedule, as provided in the agreements with the IMF and the EC, until the final disappearance of the last remnants of Romanian economy in Romania.
And Romania as a country lost this war ever since its political class, regardless of color, placed the strategic resources and positions in the economy under almost full control of the Western European capital through its sales agents represented by the Soviet-type Brussels commissioners.
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Rocky’s dad, it’s as if you’re my brother :)
Exactly! All the local political drama is just smoke and mirrors, nobody in the west/EU actually gives a rat’s ass who’s in charge politically as long as the economy and capital is in western control and we are just a consumer market.
What was part of Ponta’s running platform? Renegotiate the deal with the IMF and EC? What did his goverment do when they gained power? Assume the entire deal? Aha. Very few things of what we decide in the country have any actual ‘useful’ power. All of the important things will get dictated by the west. And no matter who comes to ‘power’, we will keep on losing. And by ‘we’, I mean the bulk of the people. We will get more austerity measures, we will pay more for gas/electricity, we will work our asses off for crappy wages to make money for foreign entities and give them our resources. And once every last bit of resource has been taken, once every last person has been indebted and forced into servitude to pay it off for the next 5 generations, they will pack up their stuff and leave, leaving nothing behind but disaster and the wardens to make sure we keep on paying.
Slaves can have all the democracy they want in their little enclave of slaves. But when the master from above says jump, they all jump. :)
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Reading this American waste of oxygen’s posts makes me want to grab a syringe and meticulously inject sodium hydroxide right into my pupils. It’s rare in a man’s life when you see someone exhibiting such an appalling degree of ignorance, especially when it comes to matters he or she is completely clueless about. Oh, no, wait, it’s not rare anymore because laziness, stupidity and misinformation is grabbing a strong and steady hold on a large percentage of the general populace.
Listen, champ… It’s you I’m talking to, Sam, and your little band of followers. I suggest you keep writing about food, places you’ve visited and how great and fantastic Romania is and stay out of politics. It’s quite apparent to me, someone that’s lived in this country for 25 years as a native citizen, someone who’s studied and worked in this country all his life, someone who has taken a great interest in what the higher powers are doing for us at both an individual and at a national level, that you have no fucking idea what the hell you’re talking about. At all.
To me it looks like you’re coming here with a really warped view on what this country is and should be, with a lack of understanding of our history and role in Europe throughout the years and just spurting out inane and misinformed opinions like a 90 year old woman spits out chunks of food from her toothless piehole. Please, for the love of god and all that is holy, stop making people dumber than they already are. We have enough of those thanks to Basescu’s education policies.
Supporting Basescu in his crusade to shit all over the people proves a few things: Romanians lack standards at such a shocking level, it’s hard to understand how this country hasn’t crumbled yet; Romanians lack self respect to the degree that an STD-ridden toothless prostitute would score higher in a self-evaluation test; Romanians choose to ignore facts, audits, numbers and empirical evidence to support a person that does nothing but lie to them with the same enthusiasm a masochist beckons for another fist in his gaping asshole on top of the two already inserted. Oh and by the way, joke’s on you cause this isn’t even a majority anymore. Stop ignoring numbers you bleeding-heart ignorants. 7.4 million people want him out. The other 49% that didn’t vote aren’t on his side, trust me on that. Or maybe use your fucking brains for a change and you might reach a more reasonable conclusion, rather than lapping up every whiskey-infused drop of spittle that joke of a man manages to spurt out inbetween lies.
Peace out, feel free to downvote my comment into oblivion, your mom’s still gonna have $200 as pension until the day she drops dead if he comes back to power.
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Angela, you’re a disgrace.
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“…made you feel stupid like the illiterate pig farmer that you are” , “…get back to the fields and start loading up your rusty shitwagons with watermelons because I’m hungry.”
WOW you really hate (poor) Romanians, don’t you? Please forgive them, Your GreatAndWealthy American Highness, they didn’t know what they were doing. They thought it was their right to vote and hope for a better life (the few years they have left, most of them) and that’s why they neglected your watermelons.
And now we know.
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He sure doesn’t hate poor Romanians, if you’d read the non-political posts you would see that in fact he loves simple people from Romania. He just likes to give them a friendly spank every once in a while ;)
I find this reference to watermelon farmers quite funny as my family is in the business, and let me tell you it’s not a bad one. I have so many watermelons I just cut them in half and scoop the sweet part with a spoon.
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Sa vezi ce palma prieteneasca o sa-i dau eu daca-i vad carcasa aia penibila de pitic pe strada. O sa-l fac sa-mi simta toata prietenia pana in strafundul oaselor.
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Păi, judecând după numele pe care-l foloseşti, ştim deja cum o să decurgă întâlnirea ta cu Sam pe stradă: My name is Muerte. Ai numai grijă să ieşi mai puţin şifonat decât personajul interpretat de Stanley Tucci… :)
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Of course he doesn’t hate poor Romanians. What would he relate to, to make himself feel better about himself if there were no poor Romanian?! That’s why he “loves” them, because relating to them makes him look good in his own eyes. He’s just a loser who compares himself with the less fortunate for the sake of his own self esteem. Why else would he have left the “almighty” Uncle Sam… comparing himself to stronger people would have made him look like what he really is… an fucking asshole.
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