Apr 142025
Yes, I just said, never mind Trump. For he is only the tip of a ginormous iceberg.
Here are just a few of the other notable news items of the day…
- El Salvador’s president declared that he will not release a wrongly deported American resident. OK, this is indirectly related to Trump but also speaks volumes about places like El Salvador and its willingness to operate gulags on Trump’s behalf.
- Hungary (my country of birth!) passed a constitutional amendment banning LGBTQ+ public events. Lovely folks, these ever so tolerant, open-minded Hungarians.
- The New Yorker is publishing a story about how mentally challenged inmates in America’s (you know, the famous “land of the free”) privately run prison network routinely starve to death or die of dehydration or neglect.
- Putin continues to execute Ukrainian POWs, or bomb public events, most recently killing many civilians, among them a renowned Ukrainian organist.
There is more, some Trump-related, like Harvard’s decision to risk their federal funding and defy an unprecedented demand by the Administration to change their policies. But Trump is really just the tip of the iceberg. There is something seriously wrong with a world rapidly sliding into autocracy, an accelerating decline driven by disinformation, identity politics and grievance politics.
Frankly this world is beginning to disgust me so bad, I feel like vomiting, honest. I almost feel like World War 3 cannot come soon enough.
Perhaps 20 years ago in university lecture I heard history professor outlining a brief table of the growth of military conflicts number worldwide with centuries. Reading the news I remember him, year after year, again and again. So that’s true, this planet doesn’t always seem the sweetest place in the universe.
Though I’m not sure it is about Trump or Putin specifically. Besides curiously watching your unusual blog, I also observe social network page of some aged Bavarian (got marginally acquainted with him due to photography hobby). He is on the somewhat “different side” from yours, heavily re-posting gibberish from Russian propaganda sources which even I do not feel inclined to believe. But he also posts about Gaza – and, well, the grievous things which are usually easily corroborated by US news sites. Curiously, he also do not seem to like Trump.
So in my opinion the issue with the world is not even about military conflicts, but about all of us having a kind of “blind eye” to something, while passionately supporting or blaming something else. Neither Palestinian, nor Afghan or Syrian issue raised to its current height due to Trump. But definitely thanks to US involvement (even though Europe seemingly somewhat hesitate to back Israel or new Syrian government).
But I don’t mean to tell who is good and who is bad :) Just wanted to say the list should be longer.
Switching away from sad things – and returning to this Bavarian fellow – he recently casually posted something personal – he has part of ancestry from Austria-Hungary – and produces some family artifacts supporting his claim that his grandmother was illegitimate child of Miklos Horthy (I heard this name for the first time but I guess you know much more). Of course I’m not sure how much this claim is to be believed – on the other hand it is hard to invent motivation for the retired German to seek for family roots in Hungary. For now let this be just the example of how complicated is this world (even if not always pleasant).
As I said many times, even her in my blog, individual symptoms are one thing, but an increasingly polarized society and a stagnant middle class are universal throughout (at least) the Western world, leaving the door wide open for divisive ideology exploited by demagogues. My take is that “the only winning move is not to play”: Whatever I think of Trump, Orban and others, I do not let it make me turn against my neighbor whose political views might differ from mine.
As to your Bavarian acquaintance, I find the claim of being Horthy’s illegitimate descendant dubious but not completely implausible. Horthy, of course, was Hungary’s regent during the interwar years, having come to power in the wake of the failed 1919 communist revolution. He has been both deified and demonized by various parties. Reality is that in the 1920s, his regime started off as hard-line authoritarian, but as the communist threat subsided, the regime also consolidated its power; it implemented some surprisingly progressive solutions and certainly led the country — which lost two thirds of hits historical territory in the Treaty of Versailles — on a path to recovery; but the regime is also famous for one of the first modern antisemitic laws in 20th century Europe. In the 1930s, his irredentist policies steered the country towards a political dead end, an alliance with Hitler and Mussolini. His regime was a willing and eager participant in Hitler’s war against the USSR, at least until Stalingrad where, at the river Don, an entire Hungarian army was wiped out.Too little too late, Horthy tried to break the alliance in 1944, but eventually Hitler engineered a coup, the Hungarian Arrow Cross rose to power, and the Nazis managed to exterminate several hundred thousand Hungarian Jews before the war came to an end. Though tellingly, Horthy was never charged with war crimes by the Allies. More inept than evil, I guess. In any case, his shadow still looms over Hungary to the present day, and in many ways, Orban’s behavior mimics Horthy’s (and not in a good way.)