How many Poles can you fit on a C-17?
Poland FOMOs going all in on US dependence at the worst possible time. What can go wrong?
I’ve been meaning to finish this post for a while, opening the draft every time some news dropped along the lines of “Poland tells Berlin to fuck their Hitlerkurwa mother” or “Warsaw wishes Brussels drinks methanol and dies“. Lately even Kiev got some flak, regarding their dishonest stance on the stray missile that killed two Poles.
The title says it all, really. This post could end here, but I just want to get some stuff off my draft drawer and be done with The Polish Question for a while.
Previously on a Grain of Paprika
I - and any self-respecting Hungarian - don’t even object to [Action Slav tough talk]; when the Poles have the balls to tell the Norwegians to sell their gas cheaper, I have to side with my East European brethren. What do those uppity northerners need the extra blood money for, to buy another Tesla? Fuck em, pay up!
When this break between the EU and the Action Slavs eventually happens, and Poland wakes up with a hangover, I will side with them, no matter how much they taunt us right now. They’re drunk. It’s fine. We’re still in the same boat, we’re still East Europeans, we’re still V4, Brussels still won’t let us live until both of our governments are color revolutioned away. In the eyes of the West, we’re still the same shit.
— Western Europe's East fatigue might soon set in
May 23
Might soon set in. Define soon, right?
For Poland, soon has already arrived, Western Europe treats them as useless and a net annoyance since summer, war or not.
The past decade gave us some hope that we’re leaving this behind, that we’re learning the Austrian way of Central European prosperity, which is a predominantly selfish, insular and rational one, where business is first: the great hack that can supersede the poisonous relations we had established by longing for past territories and losing sleep over each others minorities residing within our borders. Brothers in making Euros, embracing an inner Švejk, keeping our respective Banderas locked in the closet.
A vertical greatness, not a horizontal one. A goal Hungarians are still aspiring for, a goal Poles chose to abandon since late February.
But wait a second, to a country like Poland, this is shift is not optional, it’s existential: first of all, look at their history… well I don’t care, sorry, I’m sure it’s pure Solzhenitsynian horror and hope crushing injustice over and over, yeah, we get it, we all do, that’s called being in East Europe.
While I’m willing to give the Poles a pass due to the genetic memory of past traumas during the war’s first gloriovs 36 hours (the Lavrov Jenkins phase, get it?), eventually even they had to realize that conquest by Russia is a demographic impossibility, so they won’t be able to boss the West around indefinitely by pretending that Moscow is an existential threat to anyone outside the very east of Ukraine, and thus a rabid Poland is a necessary bulwark that has to be supported at all cost to keep the vatnik hordes away from Gay Europe.
Poland calls for end of phone calls with Putin - "Did anyone talk to Hitler like that?"
The fact that Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron keep calling Russia's head of state Vladimir Putin annoys Poland's President Duda. After all, the Allies did not constantly telephone Adolf Hitler during the Second World War either
Getting a bit high on victimhood morale. They get even higher:
“Poland’s foreign minister on Monday signed an official note to Germany requesting the payment of about $1.3 trillion in reparations for the damage incurred by occupying Nazi Germans during World War II.
Zbigniew Rau said the note will be handed to Germany’s Foreign Ministry.”
— pbs.org
Oct 3, 2022
It’s an extremely unrealistic demand, a blunt, undiplomatic troll, one that’s only allowed to fly due to the fragile, wartime zeitgeist. Once that shifts, the Slavs will be put back in their place by Western Europe. My Polish brothers, look at what they did to Greece; and the Greeks were shifty and meek, compared to your current, combative Westward stance. You’re whipping up some serious resentment towards yourselves.
Warsaw acts as if they have a Stargate that’s open 24/7 to America, one that allows them to ignore the geopolitical realities that the rest of us have to deal with, one that’s wide enough for trains, trucks and pipelines to go through, one pipe pumping fresh air that blows the stink of Eastern Europe away and also makes you high on bravery.
Gay Europe, watching Putin struggle over the summer, realized that they don’t rely on Poland for physical security, so Berlin and Brussels returned to business as usual, admonishing them for their ideological dissidence like it’s 2019.
Poland, in 2022, after alienating every local player around them, depends on the sole support of Washington to keep them afloat. (Oh yeah, the Baltics are with them, right? Sure, when it comes to winning a genocidal nuclear war with Russia (on Twitter), however, when Brussels tells them to stay the fuck down, when Brussels wants Poland isolated so it can be punished, the Baltics, as good students do, comply.)
And float the Poles do; in fact, they stand proud on the Old Continent’s stage, righteous and all. Uncle Sam is standing beside them; now he changed a bit, he has giant fake tits and he’s wearing a leather dog mask, but it’s still Uncle Sam, and he (they/them) is still there, for now. Poland stronk!
A frustrated German’s comment:
I have no sympathy for Poland, PiS are demented chauvinists, they're deliberately stoking anti-German hatred (not just with their reparations campaign and their Molotov-Ribbentropp 2.0 nonsense that is constantly peddled by propaganda outlets like Visegrad 24, they've even more or less threatened to take it out on the remaining German minority in Silesia by cutting language classes etc.), they're all-in for confrontation with Russia (and no, I don't buy it's out of "fear", imo it's because PiS are delusional enough to think they'll become a great power by forming a Polish-Ukrainian bloc), and most bizarrely of all, they think they can keep their national conservative Catholic idyll where abortion is mostly banned etc. WHILE BEING CLOSELY ALLIED TO THE PROGRESSIVE AMERICAN IMPERIUM THAT WANTS TO REMAKE THE ENTIRE WORLD IN ITS IMAGE (!)
— Sep 17
Too harsh? Maybe, I wouldn’t know. Provide your insight,
Poland didn’t learn the lesson from last year’s summer, how Afghanistan was abandoned once the US decided to cut its losses and stop airdropping feminism on Pashtuns is lost on Poles.
Do I need to provide links, or do we all clearly remember the Kabul airlift shitshow?
So long, suckers! *C-17 takes off*
There was no economic importance to Afghanistan, some geopolitical, but it’s usually just trouble for anyone stupid enough to meddle in that forsaken place, so any takers are welcome, nothing of value was lost with the abandonment. It was a 20 year long hobby project. A lot of corrupt people got rich in the US crony capitalist elite, but that money can be embezzled by other means, without a distant war as an excuse, so it wasn’t vital to remain there.
Ukraine is not a Ukrainian project. It’s not even a European project: last time we were involved, the French and Germans over Crimea in 2014, we were thanked and told to fuck off.
It’s an American project, and the importance of Ukraine itself to America is very little. It exists to annoy Moscow.
Hunter Biden's position in Burisma wasn't important to us because we care about your elections: it was important because it proved that the elite in Washington views Ukraine as just another free for all shithole to meddle in. Just like they - used to - view Hungary.
Taiwan, Southeast Asia is essential to America. Should their focus need readjustment to that region, they will drop their Butthurt Belt hobby project. We can annoy Vlad or his successor later, if we still think it’s important. In the mean time, good bye, deal with the mess yourselves!
For now, as long as the C-17s are here, Warsaw is safe; not from Moscow, Moscow has other problems; from the intra-alliance pressure to get with the program and submit to the Glacier of Liberal Hegemony.
Poles, as long as you’re America’s Greatest Butthurt Belt Ally, daddy Washington will keep the Gay away! Right?
Right?
Well, this has just dropped:
USAID Announces Central Europe Program
USAID, with bipartisan Congressional support, is supporting new locally-driven initiatives in Central Europe with the goal of strengthening democratic institutions, civil society, and independent media, which are all pillars of resilient democratic societies.
In Central Europe, USAID is proud to support local partners in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to:
Increase the capacity of civil society to strengthen democratic principles and empower citizens to protect fundamental freedoms.
Strengthen the competitiveness, financial independence, and sustainability of the independent media sector.
Build the watchdog skills of civil society and media to enhance rule of law observance, combat corruption, and increase access to justice.
Increase civic engagement through collective action of citizens to strengthen democratic systems.
— Press Release: USAID Announces Central Europe Program
December 12, 2022
For the dummies who don’t get the message:
In the past decade, neutrality has been treated as a refuge for the former leftist political elite after they’d burned themselves in the late 00s.
Now you can’t have your cake and eat it, or more precisely, fuck and stay virgin: over the years, terms such as “non-governmental organization”, “movement”, “civilians”, “independent“, “observer“ or even “real conservative” lost most of whatever power they had originally held.
US interference in the Hungarian elections - The defloration of neutrality
TLDR: The US doesn’t like Orban’s face, so they’ll throw money at anyone who opposes him.
It’s understandable. Viktor has earned it.
It’s Poland listed up there that makes this announcement tragically hilarious. The Poles, Allah have mercy on them, have put all their potatoes into a single plastic bucket, but by having no leverage over Washington (just like they have none over Brussels, unlike Budapest), they’re 100% at the mercy of America’s good will.
Unfortunately, in the Biden-Blinken era of US foreign policy, Washington’s diplomacy is extremely ideology-driven, and it’s also all sticks, no carrots.
Poland’s government, great ally or not, holds views that would be considered domestic terrorism in Biden’s America.
Not the kind of mercy I’d like to rely on.
Post-Kabul Hangover
I was a bit unfair, pointing out that the Poles have no leverage over Washington. Who the hell has any?
Exactly! That’s why you don’t rely on their mercy, dumdum!
If you look at the historical record (why though, huge cliché ahead for anyone over 13), betting your nation’s survival on the total deference to the giant that the US undoubtedly is will earn you endless regional enemies for a short gain in status. When the giant eventually leaves, and the legitimacy it used to provide evaporates overnight, the collaborators are in for a cold awakening.
This has happened all throughout the world since the end of WW2: the US comes, the US leaves and the mess they’ve created remains for the locals to sort out. If you’re lucky, the formerly US-backed ruling class will be swept away in a way that they won’t be able to make a comeback back for a generation, if ever. If you’re less lucky, it’s instant civil war. If you’re even less lucky, it’s revenge time for all the neighbors you trampled on while you had the Elephant at your back.
I do have some good news, so I can end this post on a positive note: we will be here after the C-17s leave. Hungarians will be here for you, Poles, no matter who you upset, you crazy kurwas. As always.