There were several exaltations and hysteria at the turning points in Polish history, but never before has an opposition with such fanaticism diverted attention from essential matters. And so in 2022 discussions about the coronavirus crisis, about the dramatic Russian invasion of our eastern neighbor are silenced, German proposals for modernization of the European Union are silenced, and instead half Poles are thrown to cheap, tacky media feed, completely substitute topics are invented, often completely sucked out of the finger, but especially in these media whole tubs of informative substitutes are poured. After all, the government could be criticized for its inappropriate handling of the crisis, it could be held accountable for specific steps in the face of the coronavirus, or it could be verified for its actions against the Russo-Ukrainian war. No – instead there’s “PiS’s mercury” in the Oder, a distorted quote from a history book and some great research around the tractor. To be clear – and such topics should be in the press, but look what the proportions are: in the face of the effects of an unprecedented pandemic and in the face of Russian bombs, the Tusk and Węglarczyk clubs are not turning history, but business of secondary importance. On Campus Trzaskowski, the most important political axes were also swept under the carpet.
Polish journalism has always been full of exaggerations and condemnations of honor and faith, slander and accusations of treason, but more or less revolved around Cases. However, when it was blowing from the East or the West, critics didn’t focus on Secretary Beck’s second wife, the National Education Commission’s historic upbringing, or natural disasters. The discourse surrounding the Round Table may have been extremely distorted, but nevertheless changed, criticized or mythologized on all occasions, but certainly not boycotted. It’s also hard to imagine that writing was written in the fall of 1918 about whether Piłsudski had a bucket in his Magdeburg cell or a hole in the floor, and if it was written anywhere, it didn’t obscure politics, and that which is written with a capital letter. It can be said that since there were groundbreaking processes such as today’s war, recovering from the coronavirus or centralization of the European Union, each of the authors wanted to demonstrate expertise in topics, in Polish journalism everyone wanted to pick up a pen and even express it oneself in graphomanic, condemning, praising, getting your foot wet in the mainstream of events.
Not today – the “awakening of Germany” (as “The Economist”) wrote, the new Nazism from Moscow, the pyramid of popandemic consequences, do not warm the authors of the Polish mainstream. They are illuminated by golden algae, mercury, a tractor, criticism of music groups in the textbook “History and present”.
In whose recipe are the Poles written to cope with such mash?
Of course the times of the internet are to blame, when the deputy minister’s tractor can be viewed by anyone on the phone, of course the media tabloidization prefers pictures of dead fish to economic charts, but that Gazeta Wyborcza should forgot to publish a photo report of President Duda’s wartime visit to Kiev, so that the subject of the Polish state’s unprecedented anti-Russian course did not inspire all those salon award winners to really rather float in the river and watch the wedding more than the coming geopolitical revolution?
The reasons are more in the condition and will of the commentators. Perhaps they are incapable of dealing with groundbreaking topics – the “totalitarian PiS” paradigm does not include government support for Ukraine, and the failure of the liberal world and western institutions in the fight against the Chinese virus, and finally , intellectuals on the Vistula River do not know what to write about the future of the European Union, as this discourse has not yet become clear in the West. If they have suddenly copied all their lives from across the Oder, they first have to wait for new patterns, now alive for replacement themes.
There’s another reason, though: cheap food makes you fatter, food packed with steroids, hormones and the dirty things of modernity that evoke quick emotions, superficial excitement and panicky ripping of clothes. One doesn’t have to make much effort to follow this mainstream news, there is less politics (history, history, national interests), but there are plenty of street operettas. So there will be more portions of cheap food this election year — maybe a hole in the MP’s pants, dead squirrels by the Vistula Spit ditch, flashy karaoke at a bachelorette party, a table with broken legs and a weird duck. Not Poland, not the Republic of Poland, not Europe, history and crisis, but pasha, play and mess.
Source: wPolityce