When a nation historically has an inglorious past, a frightful present and an illusory future, its people develop a dogged determination of indefinite hatred against entire categories of strangers and also toward themselves. Distressingly, in its present moral as well as material condition, Hungary, like Afghanistan, resembles a state without any redeeming aspiration to overcome its hopeless despondency. Ubiquitously praised by the United States of America and Western Europe throughout the 1980s as “the happiest barrack in the Soviet Empire,” today’s Hungary mirrors more Stalin’s one-party dictatorship than a Westernized free and democratic state. The once hyper-liberal bunch of young anti-Communist-turned Communist rebels of the late 1980s, who called themselves the Alliance of Young Democrats (Hungarian acronyms: FIDESZ), have morphed into the authoritarian and kleptocratic gang of “Illiberal Democrats” of the 21st century. Clearly, Hungary, a member state of NATO as well as the European Union, has lost its way between 1990 and 2021 on the road to the accepted norms of prevailing democracy.
As the turbulent past of Hungary as well as the very recent failure of nation-building in Afghanistan have proved, almost all of the most terrific catastrophes of history have been the consequence of erroneous decision making that has always been based on a set of incompetently concocted realities. These incompetently concocted realities, having been mostly or completely devoid of truthful facts, have had with predictable regularity produced untold tragedies in the form of wars, genocides, and even civilizational destruction. And as in the case of Afghanistan, the entire federal bureaucracy in the United States of America, including all the intelligence agencies, the Departments of State and Defense, have been engaged with respect to the newly independent countries of Central and Eastern Europe in reporting to the White House as well as Congress ideologically tainted pseudo-realities. Deplorably, the American media too has been guilty of contributing to the general intellectual schizophrenia in the United States of America. These deliberately fallacious transmissions of realities to the decision makers, have long prevented all the knowledgeable individuals from asserting the truths over the politically motivated and maliciously disseminated cult-like lies.
A case in point that the American media, regardless of its political leanings, is trapped by the tainted ideologies of false realities, has been Fox News Channel’s host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” reporting from Budapest, Hungary during the first week of August 2021. Having been totally silent about his father’s widely reported lobbying activities on behalf of the Viktor Orban-led government in Washington, D.C., Tucker Carlson sanctimoniously and hypocritically justified his long sojourn to the ivory tower of “Illiberal Democracy” thus: “If you care about Western civilization and democracy and families, and the ferocious assault on all three of those things by the leaders of our global institutions, you should know what is happening here right now.” Thus, Tucker Carlson the incorruptible champion of truth seeking, proceeded to uncritically sink into the poisonous swamp of ideological unrealities devised by Viktor Orban to fool his country’s friends and foes alike. In this manner, Tucker Carlson successfully recreated Franz Kafka’s world of fusing elements of pseudo-realism and outright lies about the extremely retrograd political regime of Viktor Orban the Hungarian autocrat.
Even as the bureaucracy as well as the media in general and Tucker Carlson in particular try to manipulate the decision makers and the people on their uninformed prejudices, they also turn otherwise ordinary persons into spiritual and emotional zombies, who would be incapable of distinguishing between obvious truths and deliberately mismanufactured lies. In addition to being driven by their aggressive careerism and boundless lust for power and money, these brothers-in-arms are blocking real talents from public life and the media, while supporting an army of counterfeit intellectuals with identical views.
Deliberately confusing good and evil, these unscrupulous demagogues also turn morality on its head by profaning the principle of reductio ad absurdum, or the law of non-contradiction. In these and countlessly similar manners, participatory politics as well as its pillars – political, economic, cultural and moral freedoms – are corrupted to a degree that will only produce a hellish dictatorship of crooked dunces. These crooked dunces, in turn, want to create an intellectual vacuum, in which they intend to pour nonsense to be sold to the unsuspecting people as the ultimate wisdom. The best examples of such an orgy of the incompetent opinion makers are the Soviet Communists’ creation of the category of “useful idiots” and the hate-based shauvinistic ideologies of Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism in the first half of the twentieth century Europe. In these worlds, political, ideological or moral neutrality are nonexistent. Either a person conforms willingly or opportunistically, or in case of resisting, will be eliminated mercilessly.
Thus, as in the case of Afghanistan for many decades, American politicians and the media are as clueless as they have been when it comes to the global political and cultural climate in today’s Hungary. Even if it were possible to leave aside the blind indifference displayed over the years by so-called American liberals and progressives toward hard realities outside the United States of America in general and underdeveloped and developing countries in particular, the notion that a magic wand of lies and deliberate distortions by politicians and the media could make human evil sudenly become nonexistent is idiotic. Yet, what the American bureaucracy in general and the opinion makers in particular, try to hide is that the civil wars in those countries, including Afghanistan and Hungary, is not just about the future political direction of those countries, but it is also about the destructively dangerous centrally organized cultural loathing of all those who dare to think differently.
Moreover, as in the case of Afghanistan, top American bureaucrats and media personalities appear to trade the stability of Hungary, and by extension, the security of the United States of America, NATO and the European Union, to promote unfounded scenarios about alternative political and cultural utopianism in faraway nations. Again, this is the defeatist fallacy that has been in full display in Afghanistan too. It turns reality into unscrupulous unreality, in order to hide evil to feel good and paint those who try to do good by unmasking this fraud as despicable inhuman beings.
Finally, top politicians and media personalities like Tucker Carlson employ fraudulent linguistic magic to transfer authority to ideologically tainted talking heads from the people who constitutionally must be in control of the elected politicians and the appointed bureaucracy. The juxtaposition of this repressive and authoritarian pseudo-reality, however, demonstrates how preposterous and dangerous this undignified and misleading fixation of this so-called establishment is with keeping the vast majority of the people in the state of slave purity and sick psychopathy.
Comparing the Stalinist-like “Illiberal Democracy” of Viktor Orban to the American constitutional democracy and doubly recommending the former to be emulated by the United States of America is evil par excellence. Even more precisely, it is outrightly idiotic. Particularly, in light of Viktor Orban’s reported speech at Kotcse, Hungary, on September 4, 2021. This scantily educated dimwit attempted to provide his followers with a political tour d’horizon laced with “philosophical” wisdoms about Hungary’s place and role in the world. Claiming that he represents “the call of the Hungarian people,” which he fails to define, he called on all Hungarians to adjust to his view of the new realities in world politics. Stating that the People’s Republic of China already defeated the United States of America globally, he mused about whether Europe or the United States of America would become the number two power behind the triumphant expansionist as well as authoritarian China. As far as the domestic situation of Hungary is concerned, he remained suspiciously silent. Yet, Hungary’s domestic state of affairs are in complete disarray. Instead of political, economic and financial stability, Hungary faces ubiquitous ruin. Brussels’ financial contribution as well as the taxpayers’ monies have been plundered and have been spent generously on building soccer stadiums that are empty, stuffing almost 1 trillion HUF into the coffers of soccer clubs that have become the joke of Europe and the world, enriching the Orban family and his coterie, and fueling hatred, lawlessness and shameless corruption across the nation. To wit, Viktor Orban has already lined up behind China’s global ambitions and all encompassing corruption – thus becoming the international pariah of his own stupidity.
Tucker Carlson’s kiss-up interview and comments about Hungary are misleading and destructive. Instead of being honest about the Stalinist nature of the Hungarian political regime, he falsely praised what he unambiguously rejects in the United States of America. Adding insult to injury, he even warmly recommends for the United States of America to follow Hungary’s political lunacy. However, Hungary today can be likened to a volcano that is about to erupt. Such an eruption would surely damage NATO and the European Union when unity is the most important imperative. Plainly, the United States of America does not need another Afghanistan. The Biden Administration must grow up to the challenge, appoint competent ambassadors and not political hacks to Budapest and the other Central and East European capitals. Concomitantly, the media will have to start reporting on Hungary in an unbiased and objective manner. Only this way, could Washington, D.C. avoid another catastrophe with worldwide repercussions.