Some people are now shocked that someone like Călin Georgescu managed to secure first place in the initial round of the presidential elections. I’m not entirely surprised, though. We live in a country where, on YouTube’s Romania Top 100 songs, 99% are manele—songs that mostly glorify money—sung by men who look worse than gorillas. And most of these songs are local, not foreign. This tells me that anti-globalism already has deep roots here. Why bother learning English or any other language? Why bother learning about other cultures? Why bother doing any of this when "Made in Romania" is seen as the best? But is it, though?
A few years ago, I finally heard a BTS song on the radio. For Romanian ARMYs, you know how rare this is—back then, even rarer. I was thrilled—until the radio host started talking trash about them. They were “too perfect,” their skin was “too flawless,” they “looked like girls.”
We live in a country where if a man showers more than two or three times a week, uses skincare, or simply cares about his appearance, he’s ridiculed as being “girly” or even called “gay”—which, by the way, is still used as an insult here, or at least it was when I was in school. BTS is dismissed as being “too girly” by Romanian standards, but the same men who “sing” about having multiple women and flaunt oversized bellies spilling out of their clothes are somehow role models?
Why, then, is it surprising that someone like Călin Georgescu has become so popular that he stands a real chance of becoming president? How did we get here? What happened? I used to think there was no one worse than Trump, but I was so, so wrong.
Călin Georgescu literally claimed—out loud—that he is not only skeptical but certain that humanity never landed on the moon, that H2O is not actually H2O, and that water in its “natural, pure” form contains information. He supports both General Antonescu and Putin—two figures who are ideological opposites. He champions both the Orthodox Church and mysticism—again, two completely contradictory things. And then there’s his belief that giving birth via cesarean is harmful to women.
How did we get here? I’m angry, sad, disappointed, and worried. Where are we headed?
P.S. As soon as I woke up this morning, my mom told me that from now on, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and not talk about politics to almost anyone. Are we going back to a dictatorship? It feels like I woke up in a parallel world. Still, while I still can, I won’t be silent.
