FUCK 'EM ALL

I'm worried that my friend, the genius mathematician – yes, yes, I insist on the genius part, for obvious reasons – is going political. I mean, I have nothing against politicians as politicians – they are in the business of discourse, and they do nothing but deliver statements that appeal to loads of emotion and nothing else; that's the function of political discourse – but I'm worried about intellectuals as politicians. An intellectual as politician is simply an impossibility. By definition, if you're an intellectual, your business is to think and produce a discourse that reflects thinking and nothing else, so it surprises me a great deal when I hear that intellectuals, now and then, have designs on political life: for, also by definition, if you're an intellectual, you are not in the business of pleasing the masses. And if you don't please the masses, what's the outcome? Well, it ain't rocket science: as you become unpopular so fast, you'll be taken down even before your goddamned political career takes off.

Now, the mathematician, who is a first caliber writer of not only numbers, but other things that particularly amuse me a great deal, is contemplating doing something drastic after the latest Romanian situation in DK, like, leave the country or going into politics, which means that he will deprive me of his genius thoughts. And we can't have that. Period. Here's the situation: some disturbed bozo, who after his release from prison in Romania, hit Denmark, killed a Norwegian stewardess, and then off he went downstairs at the Radisson Hotel to gamble a bit on her credit cards. Upon his return, and realizing that his face was recorded on some camera, he decided to give himself up. The police officer, chief of the investigation, made this statement to the press, upon closing the case without fussing: “well, of course, Romanians are like this, they'll kill you for 200 kr; they're all brutal.” My friend has been feeling crushed, and hit in his Romanianness ever since to such an extent that, now, instead of writing some things that won't make me worry, is counting how many years, days and nights, hours and minutes he has been in Denmark, without any chance of real recognition – he feels brutal, as established – and what all that time is worth in terms of assessing wasted time, future time, and remaining time, before the time comes to hit the heavenly paradise. I find myself seconding opinions of the following kind from fellow-Romanians, as to what the best strategy is. One of them wrote on Herr Lektor's blog: “nothing can can take away what you can, stand tall, fuck 'em all”. Amen, I said: fuck 'em all.

On a more general level, I felt ashamed to admit that nothing has changed for me since I hit Denmark 20 years ago, which is 11 years and 8 months longer than my friend's permission to stay here. I still want to say what I wanted to say then, upon realizing that, hey, as you're not French, or something more cultured, there's no way in hell anyone is going to give a damn on what you can or cannot do. So, if you want to make it in Denmark, the best strategy is to ignore the schmucks (now, also generally I actually wonder whether ignoring people, popularly speaking, is the result of your thinking that they really are schmucks, but we'll leave that thinking to those in businesses other than politics).

Turning to feminism helped me a little, as with Gloria Steinem: “power, if you want it, grab it, woman, don't wait for them to give it to you.” That's right. I did what I could. While getting myself an education I started telling regular Danes that I came from New Zealand. I always relished their reaction, which was completely blank, and devoid of stereotypical images. “New Zealand, oh, how interesting, good for you,” they'd say. If there was any reaction, yet adding to the general ignorance, then it was this kind that completely bypassed orphans, gipsies, pickpocketers, criminals, and other fuckers: “New Zealand, there are a lot of sheep there.” To this, while thinking, “tell me something I don't know,” I would politely say, “yep, you bet your ass.” So, what's there to say, Herr Lektor, your lektorship, if you can't take it any longer, before you go into politics, you might want to visit New Zealand. There are a lot of sheep there. Exercise your politics on them. You won't come out as either naive, avid for power, or some other, ultimately rather uninteresting and sheepish altruism that's impossible to achieve i dagens Danmark. The sheep will be the only kind that will allow you to keep your intellectual integrity as you'll go bleating with them through the fields. Beeeh.