I BEG YOUR PARDON: How are we supposed to live now?
photo: Piotr Włodarczyk, flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 license

I BEG YOUR PARDON:
How are we supposed
to live now?

BY Anda Rottenberg

Fortunately, there are still courageous and responsible people in Poland, true patriots who boldly ask inconvenient questions in parliament and on the pages of the free press, uncorrupted by power

1 minute reading left

After all this mourning, we can’t just return to our normal everyday lives, can we? The Smolensk air crash has remodeled our consciousness, restored a forgotten hierarchy of values, revealed the Truth about the nature of heroism. So if we are to go on living – then how are we supposed to do it? The first days were enough to vividly expose the hypocrisy of certain milieus. The National Leader’s recent enemies, those who were secretly glad that his presidential term had ended prematurely, had the audacity to cry crocodile tears and cynically claim a space of mourning to which they had no right whatsoever. One mention of a Wawel funeral was enough for them to brutally question the Most Important Person’s right to a decent funeral, disregarding the grief and solemnity of the moment. They have thus revealed their true face. It’s clear now what the introduction of alien, European, standards means: it’s not the voice of the people that matters but the structures of power, which plunge the country into growing chaos. Of course, this is all taboo. The terrorised public, fed another Katyń lie, can only suspect that a secret deal between Tusk and Putin is behind the catastrophe. That’s why they embraced so shamelessly over the still smoldering wreck of the presidential aircraft. Now we can be sure that the public won’t be told what the black boxes contain until they seize all the power: they will have the prime minister, the president, the generals, the public media, the Institute for National Remembrance, and the National Bank of Poland. Everything! Can we allow that to happen? Someone could say that this is the same situation we had back in 2005, but don’t let appearances deceive you. That year, all the decisions were made according to the will of the people, not in collusion with foreign powers.

Fortunately, there are still courageous and responsible people in Poland, true patriots who boldly ask inconvenient questions in parliament and on the pages of the free press, uncorrupted by power. They are the ones who will never rest until they have pulled the country out of the dramatic chaos caused by a handful of usurpers. Let us be optimistic! Before our very eyes, an egalitarian grassroots movement has been reborn that is taking the initiative at all levels of public life. After all, it is only at the request of the thousands of ordinary citizens in the street that the Greatest Pole’s grief-stricken Brother has made the heroic decision to run for the orphaned post. It is necessary to finish the job, fulfil the legacy, put a stop to the doings of a usurper who has brutally pushed his way into the presidential palace and makes no secret of his plans to betray the noble testament. And who can do it better than the Great Man’s own brother?

The people’s collective wisdom wants, in inspired elation, for the plane wreck to be made a National Relic and donated to the Madonna of Jasna Góra, the Queen of Poland. It also wants to honor the Most Important Victims by naming streets, squares, plazas, parks, and public buildings after them. But even this task isn’t easy. Noble initiatives often encounter fierce opposition from decision-makers. For instance, plans for an important gallery at the National Museum in Warsaw to be appropriately named have misfired. So let us ask: why is it that the Zachęta has a gallery named after Poland’s first pre-war president, Gabriel Narutowicz, who also died tragically? What was the real rationale behind the National Museum’s refusal when we all remember the Former President’s penchant for museums? It was he who, as the president of Warsaw, supported or initiated the construction of no less than five new museums in the capital itself! It is thanks to his firm stance that we now have the Warsaw Uprising Museum and Copernicus Science Center, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Polish History. The civic movement faces a serious challenge: which of those museums is not worthy to bear his name? Any exclusion would be tantamount to stigmatization here! Can we afford that without distorting historical truth? Perhaps we should seriously consider naming all five new museums in Warsaw after their Founder. That would be the most appropriate thing to do.

But do we have any guarantee that this will happen if power remains in the hands of the liberal cosmopolitans? There is only one way to prevent this and many other misfortunes: let us wholeheartedly support the Brother’s candidacy and then all the dilemmas and uncertainties, all the chaos and corruption, will end, unanimity will return, law will be law again, and justice – justice!

translated by Marcin Wawrzyńczak


Tekst dostępny na licencji Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL.


Tekst dostępny na licencji Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL.