Virtual development is going on in Georgia. We have already finished construction of the Second Dubai, Paris, and Nice and now we have started development of the mountainous-skiing resort. Soon, tourists will slide from the Caucasus Range directly down to Batumi seashore. Soon, as the President of Georgia has promised, we will build a motorway to Sokhumi and maybe even to Sochi.
A similar introduction would have been perfect for any fantastic tale. But we live in Georgia, and we know that these are unreal myths created by the extraordinary propaganda of state policy; they have no links to reality at all.
Generally, “Opium Policy” is very common for the regimes which tend to failure and authoritative governance both in their history and in the modern world. The demonstration of grand plans in conjunction with the support of an aggressive PR machine permanently plays with public dignity to convince them that their homeland has a particular mission on the planet. Of course the government of the country plays the key role in this mission. And without the government, the state will not progress; moreover it will stop its existence.
Georgia does not need information ministries like Sadam Hussein and Eduard “Pandarast” Kokoity – de-facto leader of South Ossetia) have; all governmental and non-governmental institutions and system work for this purpose together and very eagerly.
The abovementioned regimes, as a rule, “create” nuclear weapons and organize pompous military parades with emotional speeches from their commander-in-chiefs. Whether it’s in their imagination or reality, they build “the only” and “most unique” buildings in their country (it depends on their capability); they fight camouflaged enemies in every corner of the world and shadow like Tartarin Tarascon; they launch colossal projects and never finish them. Similar governments need “bouquet” to create the illusion of their invincibility.
The native and familiar situation for Georgia has become the usual and logical in our country.
Grey and unpleasant life beyond the “Potemkin Wall” (on the administrative border of Georgia and Abkhazia) is going on very slowly with its usual components: poor social conditions, “European” prices on the essential products, the break-away territories about what we already dream about, the raiding of “boeviks” with automatic guns in the Georgian border villages, and people who lie beyond the poverty level. In contrast to this, the construction of grand motorways, the setting up of world-important statues and announcements about putting gold sand on beaches sound very cynical.
A Georgian proverb says: “He is blinding the eyes of both enemy and friend.” It is known that a fish has a very short memory which lasts only several seconds. So, in the aquarium it forgets the route of its swimming and thinks it is traveling. Our Georgian reality is very similar to living in an aquarium: everybody – the government and population – forget what happened yesterday, and the next day they start the road surrounded by glass walls expecting something new or future adventures.
Propaganda of romantic and unreal militarism is one of the most prominent crimes of the current government. Before August 2008, the popularization of aggressive militarist ideas, and irrelevant boasting about resources and extreme self-confidence in its abilities created only problems for Georgia. Today, this field is relatively silent and they speak less about it. Former active members of the former Georgian “War Party” are now similar to veterans of the Vietnam War who soon after the war joined the pacifist movement in the USA. The leitmotiv of Saakashvili’s PR-government is unbalanced policy whose aim is merely ‘one-day effects’. Famous Soviet slogans suit the modern Georgian situation: we should build everything in a hurry in order to finish them before the anniversary of Rose Revolution, before the President’s birthday, before the birthday of a minister’s mother-in-law, or any other date so that the president is able to cut a red ribbon before TV-Cameras. We should do everything in a hurry! Consequently, the stones pop out from the pavement the next day; the painted facade looks unpainted in a week, the head of a failed army runs to Paris with misappropriated millions; the enterprise is bankrupt two months after it was opened; everything is glittering today but the next day they look like concentration camps.
In a similar situation, the disappointed society lives in stagnation: on the one side there is a huge grey crowd with their problems and disappointments, and on the other side – either supporters of the government or snob non-ideologist oppositionists for whom the biggest face is the former governmental official who became a liberal-oppositionist under force. Maybe Georgia is the only country where nowadays, rocker, punk, and the anti-Christ are compromisers and have no wish to actively protest the ongoing events in the country.
In parallel to it, financially stable Europe was overwhelmed by various young left-wing supporters; big European cities have become a polygon of anarchists, socialists and anti-globalists who protest every painful social reform by the government. In Georgia, there is no sign of similar social protests and rallies. The society has lost hope. Here, even the socialist leaders turned up the biggest capitalists. Everybody speaks about crimes in the third person; a person might think that the fight between different groups of the government, who in fact rules the opposition actions, is an ideological fight.
High-ranking officials and employees of ministries can be imprisoned in every month only in Georgia; however, the minister is always considered to be the most honest and true man in the country. Of course, petty officials destroy the country but “Kind King Mathiush I” “knows nothing” about it.
In short, it is a chain of strange, endless tragic-comic events in Georgia and looks like a maze where we see poorly-staged performances with false applause in every corner.
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