Expat In Romania

The first version of this post was published not long after I moved to Romania, when the political battles in the country resembled mafia clan wars - minus the restaurant drive-bys. (You can find it here ). The same types of unscrupulous bosses laying claim to and fighting for fiefdoms while their lieutenants (ministers or deputies in parliament) run the day to day management, right down to the associates (bureaucrats) who may not be 'in' the system, per se , but who facilitate and gladly take favours when they're given. This is not such an original analogy, if you're looking at the situation objectively, but people here don't quite see it because, even if the government is run by a criminal organization, the ordinary citizen is ignorant as to how organized crime works. Many Romanians are are also ignorant about the way democracy works. Or, if you think about it, how business and economics work. Let's just say we're on a learning curve. But, if we're...

It is not enough that Romania's politicians are smug, incompetent, and generally reprehensible, but their pathetic lack of self-awareness also feeds a seemingly overpowering impulse for outrageous narcissism. It's as if they were saying, "Step aside, Trump, let us show you how it's done." The phenomenon can be summed up in the wisdom of an old Romanian proverb, 'Prostul nu e prost destul, daca nu e si fudul' . It basically means, "a fool is not enough a fool,  if he's not a blowhard too." Which brings me to the matter at hand. I've never directly addressed Romania's plagiarism scandals. In part, maybe, because if that was the worst thing our politicians were doing to this country, I wouldn't have other things to write about. But also because I always saw it as symptomatic of a more deeply rooted cultural issue. For added context, for non-Romanian readers, think of the Asian parents stereotype. From an early age kids are ...