Pride at our Eddie marching through Warsaw to commemorate the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising on Sunday. Anger at the riot caused by attempts to move the cross placed outside the presidential palace after the Smolensk disaster. Firstly, why move the cross? Let the fools have their tartare sauce (to quote The Simpsons' Montgomery Burns.) Now, that faction of Polish society (who believe that Lech Kaczyński was murdered, the presidential elections were fixed, that premier Tusk and president-elect Komorowski are agents of Moscow) are seen to have won a moral victory.Who cares whether the cross is here or at St. Anne's Cathedral? Who cares whether the Warsaw Uprising Museum is named after Lech Kaczyński or not? What does matter is decent roads and railways, an efficient and transparent tax system, world-class universities, proper waste-water treatment, an effective healthcare service and an environment in which small business can flourish. The rest is detail. Don't waste time fighting the weirdos. Let them have their way on the symbols. Let the grown-ups get on instead with the substantive task at hand - turning Poland into a globally-competitive economy - for the good of all its citizens. Then the causes of weirdoism - poverty and ignorance - will naturally wane.
Today, Moni and I went to Kino Luna to see the new Coen Brothers' film, A Serious Man, a film we've both recently seen before, but were so taken by that we had to see again, this time in a cinema. Definitely, to us, their best yet (of 14). Waiting for the film to start, I was moved to take this picture (right) of the church on Plac Zbawiciela (Saviour's Place). The film opens with the words, in white, on black "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you". A good motto for our times.
What does matter is decent roads and railways, an efficient and transparent tax system, world-class universities, proper waste-water treatment, an effective healthcare service and an environment in which small business can flourish.
ReplyDeleteRings a bell, doesn't it? I also said Polish state should focus on real problems not IPN-like rows, etc. Currently I don't care but I hear more and more warnings that one day I might not be able to do my bit and carry on as if nothing was happening.
It's a failure of Polish state, which was intimidated by those cranky people. It's not even an issue if our state is secular or not, the cross is no longer a religious symbol. Priests are communist secret service agents, everyone who disagrees is a traitor. Those weirdos appropriated the cross which had been put up by someone else and not in their private place. This seems dangerous to me. Polish administration should not succumb to weirdos once because it will have to it next time. Today they demand they cross is not moved away, tomorrow they'll demand the ruski buc moves away from the presidential palace because his presence their is an inslut to the rememberance of holy president Kaczynski