Sever Voinescu, Dilemma: How we shape politics

An American saying, dear to Ronald Reagan, states that all great changes begin with a dinner in the family. What the great man wanted to say, and unfortunately, as can be seen from history, the irreplaceable American president is that the foundation of any impactful change is a small community that decides to change the world based on the values that unite it. About two thousand years before Reagan said these words, preparing the plot against Julius Caesar, Brutus would discreetly test his friends to see with whom to conspire, opening, on each side, philosophical discussions on current topics. It is said that he began with the theme "What should a wise man do in an increasingly authoritarian regime?" and would gauge the opinions of his interlocutors about the civil war. Marcus Favonius and Titus Statilius were excluded from Brutus's plan because, although they were friends, comrades in ideas, and undeniably enemies of Caesar, they responded that nothing is worse than a civil war and that a wise man does not expose himself in times of tyranny, for risking his life for the foolish is truly foolish. However, when it was Pacuvius Labeo's turn to be provoked into this conversation, the response was to Brutus's liking. Labeo believed that a wise man must be ready to take risks, to expose himself in order to eliminate a tyrant, and Brutus brought him into the conspiracy.

This story, told by Plutarch, reveals much about the ancient Roman world, but it also echoes in our world. An echo in tune with the American saying. Along with the suggestion that the willingness to join a group, of whatever kind it may be, must be tested not by the particular motivations of adherence, but by the convergence of worldviews proven by common reactions to the challenges of the day, the way Brutus recruited his conspiracy companions also says something: loyalty to the group has nothing to do with loyalty to a particular person or another in the group, even if it is the leader of the group. In fact, a certain saying states that it is not good to mix things: the professional circle with the circle of friends, the circle of relatives with the business circle, the intellectual circle with the emotional circle, etc. Loyalty to a group is ensured by the sharing of ideas that bring the group together.

I tell this story because, more than ever, in this period, Romania needs gatherings, it needs people in Romanian society to come together in groups and start doing politics. Not just to comment, to curse, and to go home. Politics needs to start being made by others than these politicians. It is no longer necessary to describe the current political class. It is no longer necessary to explain why we need a complete replacement of the cadre of politicians who lead us today.

Therefore, Romanian society is called to deliver the new political formulas of Romania. We can do this if we gather around ideas about how we should continue as a country. This is what the little ancient story at the beginning of this article is about. It is time for all those who have similar visions about our common future to come together in their groups, to formulate alternatives, and to confront the political establishment.

There are three major obstacles, however. The first - disgust. Any Romanian who has attentively followed the political spectacle of Romania in recent decades has seen slander, insults, and threats, malice, verbal violence, revenge, scheming, good intentions, if not good actions, sabotaged with treachery, and has seen how thieves and shameless people prevail with impudence. All through the media, which is not in any way better than the politics it writes or talks about. Politics is corruption in a moral sense and corruption in a criminal sense. No decent person wants to get involved in such a thing, and if they enter this political world for one reason or another, they quickly exit. The second - fear. If you are not a failure (as most of those who make a career out of politics today are), then you have your own business, a family, a responsibility. Entering politics in Romania brings you many enemies you do not even suspect. These enemies are sometimes people with some power and, as we live in a country of arbitrariness and whim, of abuse and cunning, you can find yourself with reactions that jeopardize your business, your workplace, the balance of your life, and that of your family. For the simple fact that you do politics, you feel that you risk everything you have obtained not otherwise than through your work. I also add here the general social reluctance towards politics. When you do politics, you have to do more paperwork at the bank, you have to give more explanations in forms (which you never know under whose eyes they end up and what decisions they may generate), you have to inform and warn some around you "attention, I am doing politics," as if you were radioactive. The third - availability. Politics is a 24/7 occupation. Most accomplished people do not have such a life arrangement to be able to do it. Most accomplished people have to continue working for their lives, for their families.

It is interesting how long-term politicians have secured their territory by dirtying it. What can a decent person find in such a place? Along with the awareness that, sometimes, in order not to feel the dirt over your own yard, small or large, which you strive to keep as clean as you can, you have to enter unsanitary spaces, there is something else. Belief in your ideas, in your vision of how the country should be organized, and, above all, a sense of urgency. We do not live in normal times, in which the politician is with his own and we with ours. Politicians do not do their duty and put us all in danger. It is time for us to defend ourselves. It is time for us to do the politics that they are not capable of. The first step: to gather around ideas. What do you think about how a wise man should behave in a country like today's Romania?

https://www.dilema.ro/tilc-show/cum-ne-intovarasim-politic