Sunday, April 11, 2010
Hungarian rhapsody
My mother was born in Budapest, and her father was active in post-WWII politics there before being, er, persuaded to leave (the alternative being a long unpaid vacation in Siberia), so I keep an eye on developments in Hungary.
The AP headline today is: "Hungary's ruling Socialists suffer stinging defeat."
AP's lede cannot resist the temptation of creating an association in the reader's mind between the center-right Fidesz party and the racist Jobbik far-right party (which could be ridiculed simply because of the funny hats some of the members wear):
BUDAPEST, Hungary – Hungary's center-right party reclaimed the right to govern on Sunday, winning over 50 percent of the vote and handing the ruling Socialists a humiliating defeat. Extreme rightists backed by black clad paramilitary troops took more than 15 percent to come in third.Blaming problems on Jews and Gypsies is nothing new in Hungary, and that ugly phenomenon can be expected to increase in frequency during tougher economic times. I, for one, hope that Jobbik weakens quickly and withers away, and that Fidesz can harness the natural ingenuity of the Hungarian people (there's an old saying, "a Hungarian can go into a revolving door behind you and come out ahead of you") with a somewhat more restrained fiscal policy.
Whether Socialist parties in other European countries lose power is hard to say, and may depend on the party currently sitting in the majority -- clearly, there is a feeling in Europe, given the economic climate, that it is time to kick the bums out, whichever party the bums are in.
2 Comments:
By 
JPMcT, at
Sun Apr 11, 10:29:00 PM:
Not only Europe, but the middle east as well. The Jewish state is frankly the last hope of the United States in controlling the access of terrorist states to nuclear technology.
The Obama regime can't even scrape together enough testosterone to call these states "terrorist"
The fact that American Jews fail to support Isreal is baffling to me. I have a great number of Jewsih friends and colleages and they are, to a man, decisive, logical and suffer fools poorly.
It doesnt add up.
By Marv, at
Mon Apr 12, 07:34:00 AM:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana (1863-1952),Life of Reason, 'Reason in Common Sense,' ch. 12 (p. 1905)
