Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"Politicians will organise the New Europe, pedagogy especially teach the ways of human coexistence, but writers are indispensable to the creation of the human bond."

"Orbán today is surrounding himself with people who are not causing governmental problems for home now but could, in a moment, cause many issues for him."

"...Western [politicians] believe in institutions, processes and the principles of good governance. ... Eastern [politicians] believe in personalities, the efficient strength of the individual and in the people." - which is why politically the West has continued to evolve.

"Mentally he was twice as strong as strong as the average man at the time, and now he's so strong it's as if he were not even human. Power makes him this way." - uncritical reporting of this sort marks the difference between biography and hagiography.

"Left-wing parties therefore had more than twice as many supporters from among those working in the media. This proportion didn't come close to mirroring public opinion." - more an argument for the ineffectuality of media bias, than otherwise.

"The process is very simple. Certain companies receive contracts from the local governments and in exchange buy advertising placements in media close to the governing party." - this is part of 'Hungary has a free press' argument :o

"Eight to ten big business leaders should have been found [to support the political right] those who would be Hungary's tycoons in the future, and they should have been supported...After that, leave the rest to market forces." - so much for Orbán's commitment to the market economy and the rule of law.

"The illegal press in Hungary hadn't developed anywhere near as much as in Poland and there weren't any qualified people suitable to fill new positions." - I've never taken claims of left wing media bias seriously, people aren't forced to watch a particular TV channel, or read a particular newspaper.

"...he could eliminate the post-communism that was present in nearly every Hungarian office, in nearly every paragraph of Hungarian law, in the nepotism and in the people's consciousness". - if only.

"[Orbán] said that the strengthening of the middle class and Hungarian businesses is what he considered to be his primary job, not the easing of the big, multinational companies' lives" - contradictory goals?

"...maybe rock and roll has to keep rebirthing itself by going back to Chuck Berry."

"For the modes of music are never disturbed without unsettling the most fundamental political and social conventions," - Plato anticipates Rock and Roll.

" But guardians of laws and of the city who are not what they pretend to be, but only seem, destroy utterly...the entire state" - and how does this reconcile with the noble lie?

"...yet they get no enjoyment out of it as ordinary men do by owning lands and building find houses and providing them with suitable furniture..." Humanity gets in a rut, 380BC.

"...for surely the end and consummation of culture is the love of the beautiful." All time top ten philosophical propositions?

"He himself will bring about the failure of the socialists". Interesting that this was said about Gyurcsány and not Torgyán. Why was the Torgyán story skipped over, I remember no sense of Gyurcsány being an accident waiting to happen, or of Orbán giving him enough rope.

"Me want all of you to fuck the ground good." - Fond memories of School House.

"If you don't live politics, politics will live you."

"Or have you not observed that imitations, if continued from youth far into life, settle down into habits and second nature in the body, the speech, and the thought?" - A politics based on educational psychology

"If it pleases you to call it mine, he said. At any rate we must not accept them." Is Socrates being modest about 'the noble lie' or modest?

"In 2004, Orbán turned to members of the civic circles and encouraged them to join Fidesz." - as if that wasn't the plan all along. The civic circles had more in common with Communist cells than NGOs.

"The ultimate limit [on the use of power] is nothing else but the fear of God." That might be OK for a Polish catholic, but for an English agnostic that is the most disturbing thing I've ever seen Orbán say.

"Anikó and he decided that their children would be baptised and learn about religion while participating in religious community life. Meanwhile, Orbán was also considering which parties could be possible allies for Fidesz." - presumably the parallels with 'The Godfather' at this point are entirely coincidental.

"...in contrast to Poland...[although] many priests were persecuted in various ways, there [were] also ... amongst them many informers, particularly amongst the upper echelons of the clergy." Shame the translation is falling to bits, the comparisons with Poland are the most interesting parts.

"We declare war on the interlockings, the corruption, the unprincipled connections between politics and the economy, to mafia politics of 'one hand washes another hand". - that war didn't last long.

"Blair can mainly thank [Alastair Campbell] for his successes as the head of government and the leader of the Labour party. The group of young Hungarians quickly learnt the art of modern communication." Mortifying that is all they seem to have learned from British democracy.

After a few good chapters over the break with Fodor, back to Hagiography.

"It is the government's obligation to protect the national economy, to maintain and create jobs, support exports and think about long-term developments. All this is the responsibility of government, not foreign investors."

"This conviction pushed aside the old principles and made it possible for the liberals to jointly form a government with the former communists. In Poland, the forming of a similar situation would have been unimaginable." Presumably, because Polish nationalists hadn't sided with the Nazi's during WW2.