{"id":13989,"date":"2026-04-12T16:18:57","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=13989"},"modified":"2026-04-12T16:18:57","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T20:18:57","slug":"cautious-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=13989","title":{"rendered":"Cautious optimism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hungarians have spoken. They voted against Orban’s “illiberal democracy”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It would be a lie if I said that I am not delighted by this result. I am. My optimism remains tempered, however. Does this result mean true change? A return to liberal democratic principles? Or did the country just replace one set of illiberal oligarchs with another?<\/p>\n

We shall see. I remain hopeful but… guarded. The fundamental reasons that allowed Orban to rule as he did for the past 16 years have not changed. Nationalism, a misguided sense of history, the traction of grievance politics remain. How Peter Magyar will govern is still a mystery. The next several months will be telling.<\/p>\n

But for now, this is good news. Fingers firmly crossed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the fact that all major news organizations treat this result as top-tier breaking news is telling. After all, none other than J. D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, visited Hungary just a few days ago, effectively campaigning for Orban. Trump also expressed his support. I already saw breaking news e-mails from the Associated Press and The Globe and Mail. The result is also top-page breaking news on CNN’s Web site.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hungarians have spoken. They voted against Orban’s “illiberal democracy”. It would be a lie if I said that I am not delighted by this result. I am. My optimism remains tempered, however. Does this result mean true change? A return to liberal democratic principles? Or did the country just replace one set of illiberal oligarchs […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hungary","category-politics","category-21-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13992,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13989\/revisions\/13992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}