Primitivism -- The second coming.

(From The Slovak Spectator)

ANYONE who drives at over 100 kilometres per hour in a 50-zone is making a statement, as clear as if he were driving along with his middle finger extended out the window: I don't care about your safety or that of your family or pets; I don't care about your neighbourhood or your right to enjoy your garden without cars roaring by; I don't care about the laws of this country or the people who enforce them.

Anyone who denounces a female police officer in the filthiest language possible is saying pretty much the same thing: I don't care about women, either in themselves or as other people's daughters, mothers or wives; I don't care about the police or the difficult job they do; I don't care about courtesy, dignity or civility; and I sure as hell don't care about the welfare of my society or country.

It's bad enough if such statements are made by private citizens, although most of us have learned to deal with primitive, vulgar lowlifes without letting them spoil our day. But when they are coming from elected officials like Pal Csaky and Jan Slota, then it is difficult to keep one's dinner down.

I wasn't born and didn't grow up in Slovakia, so I may be lacking some important insight into why ordinary people tolerate such behaviour by their MPs. But having lived here for almost 15 years, I can say that with the exception of the 1990s Meciar era, the public sphere has never been more polluted by expressions of low character. Never have so many stolen so much with so little shame. Never have such amoral men been allowed to pour so much poison, dishonesty and malice into the public ear. Never has following politics produced in decent people such a desire to vomit, or to leave the country.

So leave, many might say. Go elsewhere if you don't like it here. And of course we foreigners can do just that. But what about the thousands of decent Slovaks who are dismayed by what they see in politics, and yet are unable or unwilling to desert ...