Instead of making him into, in an unintelligent and politically amateurish manner, the most well-known enemy of America in the world, giving him the title of the leader of "the rest of the world" against the dollar, the New World Order and the law of gravitation, contributing to the hormonal imbalance of the Serbian regime which imagines itself so significant that it is precisely in Belgrade that the future of this galaxy is being drawn up; instead of strengthening him by naively attempting to depose him, instead of creating a non-stick politician to whom logic will not stick, because all of his options are closed and only his mouth with protruding fangs is open - it would be good if the Americans would just keep quiet!
Were this the case, the Serbs would have added two and two together much earlier and gotten the usual five. Because there are three things that the Americans have never understood and never will. First, Milosevic masterfully chooses policies by which he provides arguments to his opponents to undertake certain moves against Serbia; then, these moves provide arguments for him to undertake certain moves against the Serbian people.
Second, between the Serbian people and Milosevic, at the beginning of their joyous nuptials, a life-long mutual agreement was signed. The Serbs would today, by a narrow majority, immediately break off this marriage which is without love but still has plenty of sex, but Slobo is correctly interpreting the agreement's validity as meaning - until my death or your death do us apart! Therefore, there is no departure from power, no election where he would be the loser, no bartering along the lines of "security and asylum in exchange for resignation". Forget it.
Third, Milosevic has fabulous insight into the true nature of the Serbian people. He knows that he has ruled the whole time as the strongest source of emotional power; in this he has had no competition from the low capacity leaders of the opposition. But that source of emotion can no longer warm the Serbs swept away by the hurricanes of history, hungry, weak, demoralized, dead or little better than dead. Knowing that today he has the support of less than half of the Serbian people, and that his coalition has the support of less than a third, Slobo is ruling more and more harshly and leading the system into delirium as he is compensating with force the former enthusiasm of the masses. In this way he is accomplishing a political goal which does not have a convincing counter-argument among the opposition: quite simply, through a series of practical but brutal examples, Milosevic is showing the Serbs that between him and them, there can never be an amicable divorce!
Lesson learned: If you would be so kind to pretend to believe in what I am saying; don't fall for the fairy tales of the opposition because, dear people, every attempt to divorce, even peacefully, will cost you more than this life, with these small degrees of decline, is costing you. By demonstrating that a divorce would be expensive and bloody, Milosevic is still forcing the Serbs to polish the furniture on the Titanic.
Sub-lesson learned: If an amicable break up with Slobo could be guaranteed, that is, no blood, no batons, no beatings, prisons, fear and endangerment of families, careers and jobs, a convincing 65 percent of citizens would gather at the tournament. But that is not the case.
In order to even discuss the secret of Milosevic's longevity, one must first be acquainted with the anatomy of the body and brain of an average Serbian voter. Among the Serbs, every part of the body has its own ideal of happiness: the mouth, the belly, the eyes, the reproductive system. And all of them are, as is appropriate, in mutual collusion. But the brain, that blind spot, among the Serbs has - and now I am talking about the average just to spite the opponents of generalization - only one wish: to elect a single leader, to turn our fate over to him and to receive in exchange a standard packet of slave gruel and relieve ourselves of responsibility even for our own personal interest, the welfare of our family, the future of the community. We Serbs are unprepared for the complexity of life such as it is at the beginning of this millennium. Everything is too fast, too computerized, too interconnected.
From this predisposition of the average Serbian voter to establish a relationship with the One, from his naive faith in promises that this One will solve all problems energetically, justly and that he will not forget his obedient and silent subjects, follows the lasting obsession with Milosevic. It has been prolonged because the average voter is still not prepared to replace the Leader, with whom he imagines he has a personal relationship going back to the Rally, with abstract democracy. And there is no charisma as yet on the horizon which would be a match for Slobo.
That is why I find humorous the projections of the opposition which claim that it is dialectically predetermined that democracy be established in Serbia after Milosevic. I see at least the same chances, after a period of chaos, for the emergence of some new charisma, some absolutist of the enlightened variety, if we are lucky, or some satrap, if we are not.
Of course, it's tough going. They should come here, all those people who are lecturing the Serbs about being spiritually weak, morally depraved and politically illiterate; they should come to live here. To see how difficult it is in practice to achieve solidarity among social groups subsisting on $30 [a month], in permanent fear of the law and representatives of the laws; keeping watch over their children; recoiling in the dark; among people tired of nodding their heads, apathetic and torn between life such as it is and what they see on television, hesitating to say out loud - Enough is enough! Let them come here and see how an imitation of parliamentarianism, an imitation of industry, an imitation of justice, an imitation of the media all lead to an imitation of life and to a real destruction of families, the people and the state.
There is an argument: that is what you wanted! Exactly! A convincing majority wanted just that. So what? Does the fact that he won an election at the beginning of the decade and lost everything from the middle of the decade onward mean that the Serbs have been deemed genetically deficient material which only a blood donation or blood letting by force can correct?
Let us look at things this way: the Serbs have no experience with changes of government. Slobo became a party leader by putsch and only from that position did he affirm his former superiority in the first elections. An idea of an unlikely precedent that whoever is in power will peacefully relinquish it is a laughable one for the majority of local average voters. This million strong mass is still the same one we had in the beginning of the 1990's: with less tendency, it is true, to gather and stand up and be counted, but still lacks resistance and is easily duped by huge promises and shallow, quick goals, equally enthused by the creation of icons and by their destruction, fascinated by everything emanating from the top including unexpected turnarounds, obvious scandals or circuses.
In the meanwhile, a Kalashnikov generation has come of age, a species familiar only with Milosevic as leader and a system of predatory existence, plunder and street violence as a model of life and a moral concept. I don't know why the opposition considers such a generation intoxicated by the stench of death, elated by the theory of young and beautiful corpses, prepared to watch motionlessly every evil which befalls them, full of disdain for their fathers who did not achieve success in their lives, who did not find ways as many others found ways to make it - I don't know why the opposition considers the majority of this generation as its own. They are the future army of some other leader, some other social revoolution because they have see what can be done and what is allowed.
Some people, with pain and tears, it is true, but on their own - have managed to deslobize themselves; such former believers, united with the heroes of antislobism, this alliance of those who held his nondemocratic politics against him from the beginning and those who hold the collapse of the national dream - if it ever existed - against him forms the majority today. In contrast to state-produced synthetic unanimity created only on the level of public opinion which can be counted and therefore intimidated, there exists a numerical preponderance in the secret opinion of a Serbia which is complaining, flickering and seeking a way to transform its mood into a political option.
However, Milosevic's charisma is still functioning and will not fall below the current level. He has been abandoned by the majority of those who, imagine that, could not manage to hear the national anthem above the rumbling of their own stomachs; and by those who knew how to calculate how these twelve years of Slobo's rule have, on the average, cost each of them a hundred thousand marks. That's how much they would have had if wages were normal, if all members of their households were employed and if their money was not used to pay for wars, illusions, cemeteries and to fill the bank accounts of the elite. After a dozen years, they have come to the conclusion that Slobo is no longer a sound investment for the Serbian people.
It is true that Milosevic rules over politics, the legislature, finance, media, diplomacy, the army, the police, the unions, health care and education - but he is powerless before reality, before life. Just as we are powerless before him. We all know that it's over but everyone hopes to live to see the end and that means avoiding risks.
What is apparent even to his people, to that chrome-plated Machinery - one leader who promises miracles, a nation which stands behind him in forced unity, and a false unity which produces alleged strength, is collapsing just like his promises that he would solve all the Serbs' problems and correct all historical injustices. Some retroactively, from the time the Slavic people came to the Balkans, and some in the future, until the beginning of the Third World War.
Whoever is studying Milosevic or the Serbs, whether it be our opposition, foreigners or the Lord must keep all this in mind. Because, alas, in Serbia today I do not see a single positive strategic process: it is lacking in politics, in industry; it doesn't exist in diplomacy; it is missing from culture; it is excluded from the media; gone from society; I don't see it in psychiatry.
All I see is Serbia as a zone of illusion!