A boy from the village on the presidential election: Prague is not true, the village is not a lie 26/01/2023 | Bohumil Kartous
26 January 2023 / Bohumil Kartous
reading time 6 minutes
There is always a fool in whose bowels, as a result of an unhealthy lack of self-reflection, a feeling of superiority rises, which is then vented into the public space. And we all have to deal with it.
Whoever coined the slogan “Prague and love will conquer everything and hatred”, its presence in the social atmosphere before the second round of the presidential elections is annoying and naturally causes resentment and bad mood.
I myself come from a small town and a village where I moved with my parents when I was ten. As I recall in No Future, I am grateful for that. Although I have been living in Prague for decades, I am still a part of my nature as a village boy who used to go behind the shack to the pond to catch chubs, jump into a stack of straw and shoot cans with an air rifle. With friends who all went to an apprenticeship, because that’s how things used to be in the village, and they still are, when parents think – to the best of their knowledge and conscience – practically. And so I was lucky that I looked at the future differently, I studied at gymnasium and then at universities, my friends were “hooking” from the age of 17.
The world has changed more than ever before in history. And our life stories have become significantly different physically and in character during the last thirty years or so. Most of my friends from that time stayed in the place where they were born. My social mobility, based mainly on education, out of reach more to seek, use and take advantage of the opportunities that are offered to a person. Due to the fact that the Czechia is a relatively highly centralized country, and due to the nature of my interests, I became a “Pražak”. Today I am at home in Prague. But since I’m a boy from the village, going for a beer with a childhood friend is nice. He’s still a friend, we understand each other.
I never felt like I became a better person when I moved to a bigger city. And so far I have not found any evidence that the Prague genius loci alone can make a person superhuman. The only ones I’ve come across are a few morons who actually think that about themselves. Fortunately, there are only a few of them in my area, just like the people I know from other parts of the Czech Republic who believe that Prague is full of careless ignoramuses and frivolous people who know what life is all about.
I only know this fairy tale about good Prague and bad countryside (and vice versa) from hearsay. Actually, no one has ever told me directly. I most often met her in the form of the current head of state, Miloš Zeman. Miloš Zeman does not like “Prague”, because Prague, whatever Zeman means by that, does not like Miloš Zeman. Whether the first was the chicken or the egg is one at this point. The fact is that this hatred, especially on the part of the president, has escalated to almost absolute values. It couldn’t be worse. Zeman therefore vehemently tried to tell the citizens of the Czech Republic the story of an evil Prague cafe, such a Trautenberg, which is the result of the hard work of good and honest people. He put himself in the role of Krakonoš, who knows everything and has reached the right against this arrogant evil.
This myth has now been taken over by Andrej Babiš. Just like Zeman for many years, Pražák in every inch. He too became Krakonoš in the campaign, who rides the tram from Liberec to Jablonec to show the people how he can be with him. That wouldn’t be weird in itself, it’s a campaign. If, of course, he had not manipulated the voters before that in the sense that Petr Pavel is the candidate of Prague in the same sarcastic spirit, as he did essentially all of his political support for Zeman. And besides that, as in other themes of Babiš’s campaign, the disinformation scene is trying to confirm this manipulation, to convince, of course, citizens from smaller towns and the countryside that there is another Trautenberg who will prey on their honesty and goodwill.
As a boy from a village living in Prague, I want to say that this is just another of Babiš’s delusions. He and other populists are understandably comfortable with the current state of affairs. They are cheap political votes based on the idea of choosing against: against a perceived wrong, injustice, evil. A choice that does not perceive that the “Krakonoš” is supposed to be an oligarch living in Prague’s wealthy satellite. And that “Trautenberg” is a person living in a real village, an ordinary, civilian life.
However, as a boy from a village living in Prague, I can state that this fairy tale has clearly stopped working. I see it at home, with my parents. Although we, especially my father, had long had different views on politics, this time we agreed. And I’m grateful for that, as well as for the fact that I have the same agreement with my older son, a “pro-voter”. In this way, my long-awaited idea that ten purposefully deepened ditches between the “countryside” and Prague will be bridged will be fulfilled. We have real structural problems, we have excluded localities and regions with significantly higher levels of poverty. But the presidential hatred that Babiš adopted in the campaign will not fix them in any way. It is only possible to make amends if there is a higher understanding again. And only one of the second-round candidates will lead to this in the next five years. Peter Paul.
The hope that this will happen is indeed palpable. But in order for hope to become a reality, we must confirm it by voting on January 27 and 28, 2023. I believe that this time Czech civil society will leave nothing to chance. Regardless of whether in the village or in Prague.
It was also published on Seznam Medium.
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