Little is the hope that I might impress a lot of people with what I am going to say now, but I will put it forward anyway: decades are flying away in expectation of a functionally mature democracy in this country, but it is not coming. Instead of being a rule of people, democracy in Georgia (maybe anywhere else too) seems to be a rule of individuals, tastelessly brainwashing the public to perpetuate their self-centered political philosophy. But this is OK.
What is not OK is the universal propensity of our citizenry to be head over heels into politics rather than into production. This might very well be the most succinct diagnostic formula, to describe the good and laborious, but still time-wasting people of ours. We certainly want to make money and live well, but our lust for politicking is much sharper than our readiness to honor our stomachs. Why so? Because, in the last 30 years, we have been thinking that politics is primary and production is secondary, sitting in prolonged anticipation of a change that will bring the plenty and the happiness together. Not happening yet!
The truth is that we can’t physically survive if we are not properly fed, clad and sheltered, but we have totally confused the content of our nourishment, eating politics instead of regular bread-and-butter. This is a paranoiac infatuation with an overwhelmingly verbose ideology: we no longer want to watch movies on the television or listen to music on the radio, even if they broadcast genuine masterpieces of art. We just want to watch those famous talking heads on the box or listen to the pulse of the former chief executive of the country, sulking or pepping himself up in a reformatory.
Meanwhile, there is so much to do in Georgia: land to till, crops to harvest, poultry to rear, cattle to tend, infants to nurse, kids to educate, info to process, a house to build, a factory to mount, a car to fix, money to make, food to obtain, streets to sweep, waste to dump, flowers to water, products to produce, tax to levy, the sick to treat and the dead to bury. Of course, we are in a certain indispensable action, one that makes us tick, but we could definitely do a better job out of it all if the source of our emotions was not politics, but what actually makes human life more qualitative.
I just wonder how many people in this country do a real job of putting food on the table, and who these people are. In other words, how many of us are there with our sleeves rolled up to feed the remaining non-producers? Shall we do a bit of math to figure it out? The ruling bureaucracy, law enforcement, army, artists, students, teachers, athletes, poets, writers, journalists, retirees, and others of that ilk – none of this category produces anything. They just consume, and most of them dip into the vain attempts of telling right from wrong in that jagged and cursed political showground of ours.
So who is feeding us? How large is the part of this nation that produces a real product that nurtures our physical body? If we feel at a loss to answer this question, then our national debt will increase even further and our political delirium will further deepen the abyss we might soon find ourselves in unless we all take the bull by the horns and start producing without any delay.
This nation no longer needs to be prompted by its friends to do better politics and to build a better model of democracy. It is high time for this nation to hear from its friends what to do with its hardly breathing economy, and how to pay back the borrowed cash, not stick into our numbed hands oil to feed our political fire. Vice versa! Get us some oil to pour on our troubled waters. Our western friends can’t take sides here! If they want to be Georgia’s friends, they need to choose the most valuable pieces of advice for us so that the abetment does not pull our trust and love for them out of our broken hearts and hurt minds. If they can, they should give us their producing experience sooner than their politicizing zeal.
Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
