If would be so nice if this lasted, thinks Aleksandar Vucic, I can’t think of anything more wonderful, this could go on for ever and ever, soldiers in the streets, curfew, sirens, fear, patrol lights, the magnificent beauty of democratic tyranny, and me able to say, without fake modesty: The fate of the people is in my hands!, or, even more accurate: You all have to listen to me! Amen!, I don’t even know who to thank for this, this incredible, perfect combination of a Higher Power with Base Impulses, the former is objective and the latter subjective in nature, the first is God’s and the second, certainly, my own contribution to the situation, because the logic of the battle against the deadly disease has completely altered the usual understanding and behavior of people in crisis, the most unusual inversions happened, solidarity, for example, is expressed by not taking each other’s hands, closeness with our beloved confirmed by keeping our distance, we close our ranks by standing far apart, we mobilize by becoming passive, this is how I got this opportunity to use this handy total inversion and present my authoritarian intentions as humanitarianism, my tyrannical methods as a fight for the salvation and dignity of people, which is what I normally do, let’s not kid ourselves, but now it all seems so normal, so beyond doubt, self-explanatory and accepted, a Higher Power has simply converted my wishes into my duty, I can’t think of anything more wonderful, and since the lucky encounter of Higher Power and Base Impulses has put me in the position to rule completely alone and undisturbed, I can, without any false modesty, look in the mirror and say “Ever since the disease took over, my reign is as healthy as can be!”, or in the words of Carl Schmidt, whom I have never read, but I’ve seen Seselj do it, The sovereign is the one with the power to declare the state of emergency – in that sense, I can verify today that I am a super-sovereign, a turbo-sovereign, that I have a four-wheel drive sovereignty, and what’s more, in the midst of parliamentary democracy, I didn’t take a chance by having Parliament grant me absolute power, I granted it to myself, which means that I was de facto already a sovereign before I confirmed my sovereignty by declaring the state of emergency, in the words of Walter Benjamin’s famous eight theses, which I not only didn’t read, but have never even heard of, The state of emergency is permanent!, now there’s a man who perfectly foresaw my past, present and future situation, which has recently been cemented by the deadly spread of a contagious disease, a pestilence which so suddenly fell into my lap out of nowhere, so, if anyone dares to ask, Why do we need to use the army to make people behave appropriately in the face of a real danger?, the true answer will be, We need the army because we don’t need it!, with one obligatory addition, Just because the army is not needed from the perspective of its formal purpose doesn’t mean that it’s not needed from the perspective of Aleksandar Vucic, if I may refer to myself in the third person, and I may, because that’s what you get when you have sovereign power and an alibi in the form of the intervention of a Higher Power, that is, when the Higher Power is acting publicly while Base Impulse acts in secret, the fact that one is free in this catastrophic situation to say that the ends justify the means, doesn’t negates the silent part, that the means are the end, and this is certainly worth repeating, The means are the end!, in other words, to be completely honest, the explanation that the army is in the streets to save lives is merely an excuse to keep the army in the streets, and if by some chance the army would actually save lives in the streets, that just means it is a truly excellent excuse, as I explained to my closest associates, to make them more efficient, so, publicly, we speak about restricting liberties in order to save human lives, while internally, we think about restricting liberties, period, since all medical arguments are on our side, I personally think that the integration of medicine and politics is an incredible thing, that it’s the formula of a successful reign, which is being confirmed these days, one of medicine’s strongest attributes is that it doesn’t put up with objections, you can’t question the authority and decisions of the doctors because you know nothing about their expertise, medicine is, in my opinion, synonymous with authoritarian decision making and, since politics nowadays is all about biomass, i.e. managing human lives, whether we’re talking about how many lives will be saved in Belgrade or Nis or how many will be taken in Srebrenica, since all politics eventually comes down to biopolitics, like Foucault and Agamben, whom I have also never read, claim, it seems perfectly logical that doctor and politician would combine to make one single ruling entity, and that entity is personified in me, of course, in the last 24 hours, I’ve learned so much about medicine that no doctor could compare, I feel more than competent to manage this medically-supported dictatorship, backed up with gun barrels and patrol lights, with this in mind I must confess that I’ve suddenly found myself in some sort of biopolitical heaven, where I’m able to rule Serbia undisturbed and all citizens of Serbia are quarantined, all but imprisoned in camps, allowing me to stand on my panopticon and proclaim the extent to which we must suspend life in order to preserve lives, I’m just so good at suspending, just like when I suspended the constitution and the laws to strengthen my rule in the middle of the anomie, to make sure that I’m the one who decides all the ways in which the suspended laws are broken, I’m just so experienced at this, if it was up to me I would be suspending things all day and night, and it is up to me, actually, while the proclaimed goal of that suspension, like I said, is less important, the means are the end, since the Higher Power was kind enough to serve as a façade for my Base Impulses, I’m pretty much walking in the philosophical footsteps of Clinton Rossiter, who I’ve also never heard of, but who I nevertheless think very highly of, when he advocated for preservation of American democracy even by the means of violence and said, quote, No sacrifice is too great for our democracy, least of all the temporary sacrifice of democracy!, this is my logic exactly, I’m obsessed with the health of the nation so much that I’m willing to defend it with tanks and aviation and to cry, We will execute people for not wanting to live!, OK, I’m exaggerating a bit here, but only a bit, you can always shoot a man in the leg, to wound him, which is exactly how we need him, often, after a long day at the office, I dream of myself leading a long column of wounded citizens of Serbia over the Neretva, just like Uncle Draza Mihailovic, full of love for the column as such, you understand, for the order, discipline, and faith in my leadership, for this, I am a bottomless reservoir of emotions, so full of love for every citizen of Serbia that I wish immediate death to any citizen of Serbia who doesn’t believe in this – and there are those who don’t believe, even in these hardest moments, they criticize me, spreading discontent and undermining the morale of the Serbian nation, those degenerates from Pescanik, for example, even publish my unauthorized, most intimate thoughts which I would never even say out loud, let alone publish, it is a matter of days before I wipe out and ban all of that, shut down the portals and the villainous social networks, I can do that because my hands had been untied by the state of emergency, which I could declare because my hands had already been untied, and with the Higher Power blowing wind into the sails of my Base Impulses, I really have no idea who to thank for this amazing opportunity, if it was God who arranged all this, He will definitely get an honorary SNS membership and maybe – just maybe, mind you – the vice-presidential position.
Translated by Marijana Simic
Peščanik.net, 30.03.2020.
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