Persona

Counting the versions which result from the possible decision of the Constitutional Court is, in my opinion, pointless, because we are in the midst of a full moral hazard, where we are constantly redefining not only the notions, but the rules as well, meaning that the probability of the validation or the invalidation or the Referendum can not be calculated, and if it gets invalidated it is not certain that Băsescu would return to the Cotroceni, because we would be forced to understand the new notion of "Cotroceni" and to define the new notion of "Băsescu", let alone the new definition of "return", which will be quickly established by the Romanian Academy and the Official Gazette, assuming that we will by then know what "Academy" and "Monitor" even means, which of course isn't guaranteed at all.

I will however, draw up a synopsis of these options, to make it easier to evaluate the event which will happen tomorrow, but I will not include it in the body of the article, because in here, I will deal with things which are a bit more important than the issues of Antonescu, Ponta and Băsescu, which aren't my concern and I don't believe they should be yours either.

What seems more important to me is what one of the comments posted on the BURSA website:

"14.5. untitled (in reply to the opinion no. 14.4 / message sent by anonymous poster, on August 15th, 08.2012, 18:12)

Can there be that kind of well intentioned scrupulousness which could generate beneficial results, so as to counter the obviously evil efforts of the ill-intentioned opponent?"

Our reader concisely formulated a problem which (more or less explicitly) is frequently encountered at these times; the majority wants for Băsescu to go away, but some have their doubts over the methods used.

Part of the "anti-Băsescu" citizens unhesitatingly admit that the elimination operation is accompanied by an aggressive propaganda, by the abuse of the rules of democracy and by rudimentary lies, but they say: "It's true, Antonescu and Ponta are two dimwits, but leave that aside for now!, first we need to take Băsescu down, after that we will take them down as well and we will bring in the right people - all in its time."

I understand that this clever strategy put the two dimwits, to be sacrificed in this process for the elimination of the undesired president, where they would discredit themselves through lies and shameful propaganda, and they would then be eliminated as well, and everything will return to normal, even more so.

Such cunning!

Still, I have three questions:

1) If you know who "the right people are", then us other morons, why don't we know them too? I am not asking why you didn't bring in "the right people" from the beginning, because you had your strategy, compromise the dimwits, not "the right people", I am asking why don't we know about them - aren't we the ones supposed to elect them?!;

2) By what process will the dimwits be eliminated, when their turn comes, since we don't know "the right people"? Using the same methods? Propaganda and lies? But will they allow themselves to be removed?, the poor souls, they don't know the saying "anything that that is provisional is definitive"?;

3) And in the end, let's say that this clever strategy succeeds and we get rid of Băsescu, we get rid of Antonescu, we get rid of Ponta and we replace them with "the right people"; do you think that we could still return to "normal"?

Besides, this latter question is also the answer to the question posted by our reader, which we quoted earlier: "well-meaning unscrupulousness which would generate beneficial results" is fiction.

Niccolo Machiavelli - "The end justifies the means" - only works when trying to be cunning with nature, or in the process of labor, when u use unscrupulously a law of nature and turn it on itself, you take away from nature and you get what you desired - the goal of labor, the beneficial result.

Yes, in the process of working on nature, "the end justifies the means" is a valid principle.

But, Machiavelli extrapolated the principle of working on nature, taking it into politics (a "labor on society"), a mistake which may not have been obvious in the Republic of Florence of 1513, but today, through the expansion of the borders of democratic regimes, through the cultural emancipation of the masses and the insistence to oppose manipulation, it has become obvious that the "raw materials" of politics are people and their lives, meaning that the dirty "means" alter society, and the beneficial "purpose" can not be reached, even though that was the initial intention.

When "laboring" on society, "The end justifies the means" is just like the Kraken or the mermaids.

It's fiction.

Perhaps the proletarian revolution was borne in the name of an ideal (to a certain extent a Christian ideal, in spite its atheism).

Violence, mind-numbing propaganda, coarse manipulation, (just like the theorizing of the "permanent revolution", which was intended to justify the permanentization of these methods) have led to the result which everyone knows, which was never expected by Tommaso Campanella, nor by Thomas Morus, from whom Marx took on the social ideal.

We must make the true, and undisputable, clarification, which can not be contested, that "lack of scruples (well meaning- why not?) which would generate beneficial results", is fully practiced, not just by the two dimwits Antonescu/Ponta, but by Traian Băsescu, at the current time, as well as during his two presidential terms, we can already see where that "instrumentalism" led, emphasized until it leads to pathology, since the beginning of "insurgency", this war between the thick web of lies of the USL and the perfidy of Băsescu, between aggressiveness and inconsistency:

- the collapse of the citizens' confidence in the authority of the institutions - Presidency, Government, Parliament, Prosecutors (Judges, Police, Gendarmes, Secret Services, the Constitutional Court, the Official Gazette, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mayoralties, Prefectures);

- the collapse of public confidence in social norms, in their necessity (lending credence to an idea that laws are made of putty and they can be bent at will, at any time, according to someone's momentary needs - perhaps depending on the interest of just one person);

- the collapse of confidence in the public personality, whether they are political or cultural, or in any other area - nowadays, regardless of what your career accomplishments, you compromise yourself regardless of the camp you have begun showing yourself in - you can only be "with Băsescu" or against him, attracting the others' opprobrium;

- the collapse of the confidence in the European Union and the United States of America, under the pressure of the messages of domestic policy (advising isolationism), which would deserve to be spent on more opportune occasions and for more valuable causes than for the mere replacement of a worse actor with another we are not sure would be better, in fact he even has some signs he isn't (by the way: after the USL gained majority in the Parliament, after it gained its own prime minister, and its own government, when it could get any law it wanted through, sweeping Băsescu to the side, keeping him on as mere decoration, what did it need its own president for?) ;

- the collapse of the confidence of the European Union and the United States of America in "the Romanian rule of the law" (the latest "Financial Times" writes: "Ponta is now a < white knight > of the so-called Romanian left, who are motivated to accumulate power and to make money");

- the collapse of confidence in ourselves, the collapse of trust in each other.

I don't think that our nation ever crossed a similar state of degradation.

I don't think that Băsescu, Antonescu and Ponta are worth such a price.

I don't think that anyone is.

Do you think we will ever return to "normal"?

Do you think it can be done?

I don't.

That's there are no experiments in sociology, because they leave a trail.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

"Persona", the word used as the title of this article, means "mask", in Latin, meaning that one and the same part can be played by several actors, meaning that they are anonymous and less important than the play itself.