MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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The representatives of the Slovakian government expressed understanding for the working class demands, but also declared that the guilt for over-superlative should be addressed to the former government led by Mr. Meciar.
The working class responded that it acknowledged Mr. Meciar„s offense, but pointed out that the Trade Unions had supported not Mr. Meciar but the new government and therefore expected from the new government to now do something about that over-superlative shambles which is now the economy of this part of the former Czechoslovakia.
The Slovakian government representatives said that the government is doing what it can and that some results - in area of human rights, for example - are already visible.
The working class replied that working people are happy with human rights, particularly with the right to chew --- as in food. But, the workers insisted, for chewing to take place it is necessary to put something between your teeth --- as in food...
The government representatives promised that government would do its best to improve economic position of the working class.
The working class said: "OK, we will see" and it was the end of the protest.
It now seems that the government did something about its representatives' promise, because chewing gum hasn't become more expensive since the protest, in contrast to other things. "Let them chew gum."
The previous paragraphs show us that non-fiction lines - even 200 words - can be written about nothing.
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(Let me reconsider that last statement. In my poor former Yugoslavia, where leaders of recent regimes would pay any fee --- without haggling --- for a text which could persuade its readers that the past, present and future are just synonyms for their own names --- thus suggesting that they are precious leaders --- a fiction writer of such a text could become a very wealthy man.)
By the way, I have never trusted in syndicated organizations --- like Trade Unions --- and their activities.
When I was member of the Writers Union in the former Yugoslavia, I demanded from its leadership to do something which would protect membership from the unfair competition the fiction members faced from Life. I was positon was that is unexcusable that Life - who is not even a member of Union! - can create competing stories while writers have a problem making enough for their bread and butter and caviar.
Nothing happened, of course. See what I mean about unions? All the leadership did was order an investigation into whether I had indeed paid my membership fee.
In the meantime, the Life unfairly still creates its own stories. Bad ones, in the main.
On the other hand, we writers have to repress our professional intolerance and to admit that in the stories created by Life we can on occassion find some very good literary passages.
For example, I shall allow that it would be the very rare fiction writer who could successfully come up with a good element of "motivation" for his hero as the Life did for Mr. Jorg Haider in story Life's story about last week's parliamentary election in Austria.
Mr. Haider„s Free Party of Austria (FPO) - based on the best Nazi traditions - became the second strongest party in Austria. According to local newspapers, Mr. Haider is one of the richest Austrian politicians and the foundation of his family's Mammon was made during World War Two by robbing Jews.
It is pity that Life was not persistent in its method; from one side it provides the brilliant motivation for Mr. Haider's bigotry, from the other one Life fails - it provides nothing to explain the behavior of the Austrian electorate. Life does not succeed in this story, as it provides no reason why Austrians voted Mr. Haider and his party when they don't have THAT(profit and wealth) reason to hate Jews and the general Austrian electorate, to go on, don't have to fear anybody might come and ask them to return the stolen property to its legal owners! This is not good story construction on the part of Life, this is Smatterer„s work.
Speaking about Nazi traditions here around, we could note that Life has overdone in its efforts to be original. From a fiction writer's point of view, we could concede one or two fascists --- just to make scene in this part of Europe more colorful --- but we are not speaking about a few exemplars, but about millions in such a close neighborhood. To say nothing about the more distant neighborhoods in Belorus or the south of France.
Some apologist might say that Life had do its best in story building and that we can recognize that it was not tied to the old-fashioned models and that some refinements in Nazi theories were made.
This Critic must respect that Life has created fascism which doesn't deny right to live only to Jews or Gypsies as it did in Adolph's times, but to everybody who thinks different than Mr. Slota (read Mr. Meciar, Slovakia), Mr. Seselj (read Mr. Milosevic, Serbia), Mr. Paraga (read Mr. Tudjman, Croatia), Mr. Etc (read Mr. Etc, Etc).
Borislav Pekic (who spent the best of his years in exile in London waiting for the end of communism and than came back in Belgrade to die and recognize that terror does not necessarily have to be a Red one ) has written:
If Jews did not exist, anyother minority would serve as well for brow beating.
If no minority existed, any different opinionwould serve as victim, anything that cannot or does not want to be the part of the majority."
Non-fiction writers can't do anything with fascism in Eastern & Central & South Europe. Fiction writers could do something about it. They could create the story in which Mr. Haider (Mr. Slota, Mr. Seselj, Mr. Paraga, MR. Etc.) would awaken in United States of America, Australia or New Zealand. Blind as all of their kind, they would not recognize any other reality except their own and they would continue to cry out their mantra "Foreigners out!"
Next they would win elections (as America's Patrick Buchanan plans to with the same mantra) and their political program would become reality. Consequently, as their programs of xenophobia took hold, they themselves would be ejected, as foreigners, from USA, Australia or New Zealand. Then they would suddenly realize that they never learned to swim and that lot of hungry sharks are cruising around.
Unfortunately, the copyright for amending the European Nazi story is not held by fiction writers.
A few thousand members of working class were protesting twenty days ago in Bratislava, Slovakia. The demonstrations were organized by the Trade Unions. Members of the working class were unhappy with the economic situation --- which could be described if we made use of the word "bad" and then created the fourth declension of comparative adjectives which we would choose to call over-superlative.
A fiction writer with a minimum of self-respect wouldn't put his name under text in which the situation at the beginning of the story isn't any different from the situation at the end. Nobody would buy it.
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Sorry, fellows. Fiction came to that point before Life and its non-fiction footboys did.
"Anti-Semitism isn't animosity against Jews. Anti-Semitism is the inborn state of the barbarian spirit which only evinces itself by brow-beating Jews.
© 1999, GENERATOR 21.
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