The idiot without Dostoevsky

“Why do you politicians think that we are idiots?”

“Well, I guess it’s because you keep voting for us.”

No need to worry, this is not happening in Serbia, but in England, and it is not happening now, but in the lead-up to World War II. And not in real life, but in a movie.

Although… there is something to this dialogue. If I was competing for Miss Universe, and you voted for me, I would certainly think you were idiots.

How did politicians manage to eradicate our famous ingenuity and wit, which features so prominently in our stories, movies and jokes? Maybe we are not educated enough and rich enough, but could we really be that dumb?

Even when we try to be smart and raise some questions, they always come up with the same reply: the people will show their verdict in the elections. But what do we do during those three or four years in between? Not to mention the betrayed “will of the people” after the elections.

However, they do ask us how we feel once every ten years in a census, but only in terms of religious and national identity, because even then the government is not interested in whether we feel humiliated, scared or is it just that our backs are aching. Just as they do not care how many of us there are that don’t belong to either the governing or the dominant majority, who disagree with the majority model and who feel that they had become not just a subcultural, but even a countercultural social group… and who don’t tend to practice national chest-thumping in their free time and surfing the web during work hours.

And so if we vote for them, they treat us like idiots, and if we don’t vote for them, they treat us like idiots, and if we publicly say that we are going to spoil our ballot they treat us like complete idiots. One possible option under the possible banner of “You are good for nothing, I vote none of you” has enraged the politicians much more than any other political or social event or statement.

And they could have said they understand our disappointment and that they will do anything to regain and vindicate our trust, or whatever elementary decency and elementary respect of other people’s opinion would require. Instead, they violently attacked their voters. Each of them attacked his own. Which only goes to show how much they despise those who vote for them.

Peščanik.net, 07.03.2012.