[pessimizer]

I saw a great film that came out this year called Kapitalism: Our Improved Formula that paints an really dire picture of the current state of Romanian corruption, and if any country has had a public uprising against the state of their government, Romania qualifies.

[radu_floricica]

Yeap. The current state of affairs is no secret to anybody. The problem is a complete lack of realistic solutions.

We won't get out in the streets. We're not hungry enough, and we don't have a culture of protesting. We pretty much think the French are uncivilized when they burn cars in the street - civilized peoples solve their problems otherwise. But how?

It's be easier if the press was somehow keeping silent, but they're not. They're scathingly vocal, if somehow distracting. The future definitely looks a lot more like Brave New World then 1984...

[pessimizer]

The movie had an interview with a Jerry Springer style talk show host guy, and his take on it was that most of the people who took to the streets during the revolution left the country when they realised that in the new capitalism would be owned by the old ex-Securitate(sp?) types. The people who were left were the fearful keep-your-head-down types that watched everything on tv, the people from the countryside who wouldn't even have good enough roads to make it to a protest, and the people who weren't that dissatisfied with the way it was.

So basically, he said that the culture of protest got a train ticket and left.

[radu_floricica]

Neh, not so many people left. Plus it's been 20 years already, that's a full generation. I was 10 when it happened. Plenty of time to replace them.

It's just that protesting wouldn't do any good. Say the current government falls... what do you replace it with? We tried it. We actually had something which looked like a "turning the tide" a few years ago. We voted in a completely new regime (including a new president), much preferred by the younger people, including myself. It started great... In the first 3 weeks they lowered and standardized taxes, and put a minister of justice straight from the NGOs. Dream come true. About a year later, the opposition got together, broke off a piece from the current government, and together tried to (rather illegally ) impeach the president with no good reason.

(you think you guess the rest of the story? guess again). The president managed to force a referendum on the issue, and proved he had the overwhelming support of the population. The impeachment failed. The parliamentary majority belonged to the opposition now, but somehow the good guys managed to name their own Prime Minister, and so in effect hold most of the power.

Fast forward to present time. The NGO Justice Minister is long gone, taxes are at a record high, the president is unanimously vilified, and his party is doing the hiring in every public institution and a few private companies as well. Plus they turned out to be much more incompetent then the previous guys.

There are no heroes in politics here.