America And Lost Causes

With the inevitable explosion of anti-Americanism sentiment that has rocked our nation in recent weeks, our young and most fragile public was again ripped into two irreconcilable hemispheres. On one side, defenders of honor and traditional local values, or at best, Europeans (Russians included), currently in opposition. On the other side stands pro-American “bass players,” “informers,” “servants,” “sellers of the country” or, at best, “inexperienced” politicians. For the latter, a verse from Tennyson: “I know the Table Round, my friends of old …”

Because it is the time for diplomatic disclosures, I heard not long ago in a conversation at an embassy (no, not the American one) where a venerable woman showed unusual preferences towards the liberal National Liberal Party — to Ponta and Voiculescu — using an argument that curiously weaves Romanian fatalism with a pragmatism of — alas — American origin: In the last 20 years, the number of Romanians that rudely adhere to modern Western values (individual liberties, private property, procedural justice, democracy) have constantly remained in a desperate minority, gravitating in the two to three percent range, and in 1990 the vote went to the traditional parties. The overwhelming majority was formed from an inert mass of nostalgia for communism (56 percent), cynically manipulated by members of the former ruling class (Communists and security forces) which became members of the current dominant class. That’s the way it is, said the venerable woman. Moral bankruptcy is total and democratic engagement is fragile.

What do you do, however, if you want to right the wrong done and lead the country towards the modernity dreamed of — if you want to assume the burden of taking things further? Clearly you cannot rely on this hard core “Taliban,” the “fundamentalists” of the West in decline. Firstly because there are so few and because you cannot rely on them, with their too-encroached-upon tight clothes of principles, as they are too radical, inflexible, unwilling to compromise and too rudimentary in their unjustified intransigence which they hypocritically call “moral clarity.”

The only handy option if you want to build the future is to become brothers with security forces and Communists until you pass the bridge of modernity, is to perfect the art of compromise and the infinite nuances of gray until “good” and “bad” become trivial nonsense. Only in this way, by getting your hands and conscience dirty can you do something in this country. Torn between the mission of national progress and moral imperative, the true statesman knows that only a single thing can be done — to sell your soul.

A country in which the above is true would be a sad country and without hope. Romania is a sad country. The state is dysfunctional, politicians “easy to buy” for the local Communist-security force oligarchy, and justice is powerless. Competence is subordinate to the interests of the group, and merit, caste membership and integrity are subject to adherence to the party. We are not capable of ruling ourselves and making Romania a place in which we would feel good and want to live. If we are left to our own devices, we emerge dumb. The greatest triumphs of Romania in the last 20 years — its entry to the EU and to NATO — were made under the pressure and guidance of others more attentive. But entry into NATO and the EU did not make Romania a country more worthy of love than it was 10 years ago. It is our job to make it so, and we have failed every time because we are resigned to believe that we cannot realize something if we do not sell our soul. Cross over to the other side of the mirror and you have access to the desires that were once forbidden. Stay on this side and you will only see your sad and twisted reflection.

But the hope is to find the two to three percent who have refused all these years to make a pact with the devil, who have maintained their moral clarity in the face of the onslaught and in the face of the political police of Nastase and in the face of the siren songs of the oligarchy. There are a handful of people that have known all along what the path of Romania should be: to depart from the communist past, to leave the sphere of Russian influence and to claim their place in Western civilization, as a nation of free people, worthy and prosperous. And yes, all this while going down this road has meant going along with the American friends. Today, because of this guilt, they are called traitors and country-sellers. But this is not reason to despair because, as in the words of T.S. Eliot, “…there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”