Chickens Running in All Directions (XI)

Let me begin this entry with Apollo, the Latvian internet site so frequently put down, because it best represents populist resentment of Latvia’s corrupt institutions. The site speaks for itself by shouting loudly, clearly, and sometimes in a foul language the opinions that infect the populists. By populists this writer means that segment of the population without which democracy is not possible.

Speaking of democracy in Latvia, were it to exist here, there would be no public displays of the Turrets’ syndrome that infect the responses at said site, but [to paraphrase Adrian Kuzminski http://www.mdrtalk.org/ (go to ‘Populism, The Third Way’)] there would be a political economy of the people with claims to private property as a correlate to its claims to public power. In short, if Latvia were to be a democracy, it would use the leverage of its small size to seize for itself the intellectual ground that is that of the former Republic of Vermont (see above link) than ape the neo-liberal system that is visibly sick unto death.

Be that as it may, how does a country arrive at democracy when most of its authorities dream of becoming oligarchs, are oligarchs, or are in some way compromised by oligarchs. By using the word ‘oligarchs’, I mean not so much to put onus on the individual, but the system, re liberal capitalism self-regulating itself in such a way that there is in effect no regulation. A good example of this invasive power is the current President of Latvia, one Andris Berzins, an oligarch (granted, even by Latvian standards a minor one), who as a former bank director for an affiliate of a Swedish bank is blatantly compromising the economic interests of most Latvians.

In a recent media blurb http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246875 , the President claims to know why the citizens of Latvia are unhappy with the Saeima, the legislative body of the Latvian government. The internet text is in Latvian, which may be as well, because were it in English, the reader would see through the clichés sooner than later and understand that the President’s ideas are simplistic and self contradictory. In this instance, a lie in Latvian obfuscates the lie more successfully than its presentation, say, in English, which due to its unfamiliarity to the public at large has less ‘white noise’ to interfere with the true interpretation of what he is saying.

In the media blurb, the President insists that he is a conservative to such a degree that he would not initiate measures without the full agreement of the Saeima (a body recently dismissed by voters as illegitimate). More over, President Berzins hopes that by presenting himself as such a conservative, he is not encouraging populism. (“…es kā prezidents atbalstīšu tikai tās iniciatīvas, kurām ir atbalsts koalīcijā. Ceru, ka tas nebūs pamats priekšvēlēšanu populismam”.) Apparently, the President is as confused about the meaning of populism as are most of Latvia’s political elites, which is to say, the President is just as interested in circumventing democracy as the dismissed Saeima. Not so incidentally, he is joined in his call for a special session of the old and discredited Saeima by the coalition of the Greens and Farmers (ZZS) http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/247227 , who are largely funded by an oligarch.

The other link that this blogger would like to mention appeared in Apollo. It is a summary of an interview in the newspaper Diena (13.8) with Valdis Birkavs.

Birkavs is a former Prime and Foreign Minister of Latvia. The text is in Latvian, and concerns itself with what Birkavs believes are the four stages of Latvia’s evolution as a state, re: 1) romanticism; 2) cynicism; 3) greed; 4) near hopeless confusion

http://www.apollo.lv/portal/news/articles/246776 In this instance, the Latvian text has no white noise.

Regarding the last and present stage of the government, Birkavs argues that after joining the EU and NATO, there began a period of indecision, aimlessness (for the last ten years), and standing in place. [“Līdz ar iestāšanos Eiropas Savienībā un NATO…. sākās periods… mētāšanās, bezmērķība [pēdējos desmit gados]… mīņāšanās uz vietas.”]

It is worth noting that Birkavs connects the deconstruction of Latvia’s sovereignty (see previous blogs) with Latvia enmeshing itself with EU and NATO. Joining the EU has cost Latvia its bright standard (spožo karogu) and surrendered it to Europe’s feckless http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/feckless politicians. This phenomenon has also been noticed by Philip Zelikow in a Commentary piece in the Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e806c60a-c769-11e0-9cac-00144feabdc0.html .

Rounding off the neglect, both, of foreign and domestic policies in Latvia, George Friedman of Stratfor has much to say that hits the nail on the head, even though he writes of the state of the governments of the world and does not mention Latvia. Friedman is concerned over who are they who are presuming to be running the world? Are they not all lightweights? “The issue is: who are these people who are running things, what gives them the right to do so, and if that right does not somehow flow from competence, what does it flow from?”
Read more: Agenda: With George Friedman on a Crisis of Political Economy | STRATFOR

Which questions brings us to the question of who is a heavyweight?

I will attempt to make some suggestions in the next blog of “Chickens Running in All Directions”.



Kāpēc Latvijā ir nepieciešama populisma atplauksme

Why Latvia Needs a Revival of Populism

Eso Antons Benjamiņš aka Jaņdžs

Populists on the rise

The Latvian President’s speech last evening calling for the dismissal of the Latvian Saeima,  http://www.delfi.lv/news/national/politics/zatlers-nolemj-rosinat-saeimas-atlaisanu.d?id=38755691 , a constitutionally sanctioned conclave of elected officials (deputies) who for twenty years have denied democracy a populist base, is a major step in an attempt to rescue Latvia from business interests turning the state into their private fiefdom.

At this time (judging from the public’s overall response on a number of internet forums) the President’s move has met with undisguised and enthusiastic approval. It remains to be seen how this approval translates itself in the coming weeks and months in public debate and actions.

As this blogger has often pointed out, the cause of the crisis in Latvian government—past and current—has a number of sources. It has roots, both, in the distant and near past.

Populist activist for President

A major cause that has been inherited from the distant past and disgruntles the “inner” citizen in us is the loss of the spiritual inheritance (call it religion), traceable to the dissolution of proto-Latvian arch-Christian roots in the 11^th to 13^th centuries. The Crusade by neo-Christians (so-called Catholics at the time) against the kingdom of Jersika in 1209 serves as an early nodal point for Latvians as a people of whose rooms we still have the smell in our noses.

Coinciding with the crusade against the Cathars in Languedoc (France), the crusade against Jersika repressed the proto-Latvian branch of a nigh universal religious orientation. Its basis was all forms of sacrifice designed to create and hold a community. Self-sacrifice played a major role in our societies’ creation, because it is an essential to it.

Unfortunately, while both arch- and neo-Christianity share in a message of love and non-violence, neo-Christianity used and continues to use the support of secular princes. These then used overwhelming violence against the Children of Johns and their leadership (Johns) in order to replace the people who constituted the proto-Latvians or Children of Johns activism with people who accepted their entombment (for all that an embodiment) among the so-called pa-gans.

While modern scholarship has a number of theories whence the name ‘pagan’, it most likely derives from the time when Latvia (and other parts of Europe) was deforested, and the forest dwellers were turned into pa-yans, re, lesser Johns, in due course to become ‘pagans’.

The demoralization of the Johns, their repression, and therewith transformation into payans (peasants), gradually reduced the Children of Johns (Jāņubērni) to serfdom and de facto slavery.

First ever photograph of a Populist Presidential candidate on a caroussel over Riga

The ‘religion’ of Johns and their children, embedded in the endearing word of the Latvian language, has by today been reduced to a version of pseudo Latvian. The latter is the language of government, media, all ‘public’ life turned against the ‘privateness’ of Latvians living as an intimate and more or less homogeneous community. This separation of public and private has caused great havoc in the Latvian community by creating a perpetual ‘them’ as government and ‘us’, the invisible, the private, the ‘legally’ disemboweled people. “They” make all the laws, including such that serve them only, while “we” lose our former rights to use the word as lawmakers. Not surprisingly, “we” became apathetic.

As a result of President Zatler’s call for the dismissal of the Saeima, we—the ‘us’ of ‘them’—now are in the turbulent regions of what Freud called “the internal foreign territory”. The government (successive governments including) that has long violated the internal foreign territory of the “inner” Latvian, even to the extent of driving him-her unconscious of him-herself, is, suddenly, challenged by one as if of itself, the President.

Another Populist candidate cips into the picture

There is no guarantee that the President’s move to dismiss the Saeima will in and of itself awaken the populist in Latvians. However, it necessarily creates the opportunity for the awakening of not only outrage at the surface of the deeps, but reach levels of repressed memories where the homogeneous community dwells.

What will the homogeneous Latvian community of tomorrow look like?

We cannot discount the possibility that Latvia is the very soil where the lowly worm raises his head and becomes the King of Snakes by remaining a lowly worm. A major revolution in Latvian self-consciousness would do great wonders to revive a chicken plucked bare in Latvia and the world over. Here’s one for the feathered one.

(to be continued…)

 

When not in Riga, the Wormelings like it best when they are in a woodpile at a Latvian countryside estate. Here is one caught napping.

However, when not resting and playing, work is going ahead for the Great Latvian Presidential Campaign. Here are a number of Wormelings all spruced and painted up lining up for a group photo before a trip to Riga.

By the next set of photos, this group of Wormelings ought to be in Riga, and the Wormeling campaign for the Presidency of Riga pils, perhaps even the Latvian Presidency ought to be in full populist swing.

As we see from these placards, this Presidential campaign in Latvia is a fullblown populist affair. The campaign calls itself "ES LABS PRESIDENTS", which means in English: " I make an excellent Presidential candidate".

While in Latvia it is the Saeima, a democratic institution in the narrow sense of the term (it consists of only 100 people), which elects the Latvian President, the populist president is made real by the mere fact of his or her "being" about. In other words, the Wormeling (Vurmītis in Latvian) President comes about because he-she IS and not because the Latvian Saeima elects him or her.