The Idiot Club
By Kamal Sunavala

Mark Twain said, "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

It takes special talent to be a member of the idiot club. One has to have three main qualifications. A political background, being experienced at deception and sheer stupidity. Or in other words, you simply have to be a politician. Faster entry is ensured if your name is Václav Klaus. I would like to come right out and say, the current President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus, in my opinion, is an idiot. Of course he doesn’t have a monopoly on it. There’s stiff competition from dear old George, whose idiocy the world ‘misunderestimates.’

Anyone following Czech politics will be aware of the fact that since the elections took place in June, we don’t actually have a government. This is October. You can count, can’t you? The shortest government in the history of the country resigned and Mr. President is dithering over the appointment of a new one. Meanwhile, he finds himself under a rare spotlight, as is common, in parliamentary democracies across the world. What does he do with this photo opportunity? Turns it into a platform for making idiotic statements.

His latest one, in the Czech media regarding global warming, and I quote: A reply must be given to the question whether something like this does exist and if it does, whether it is connected with human activities. As my friend Dana put it succinctly- what would it be connected with? Ostriches? The idiocy doesn’t stop here. He further goes on to say: And if any movement in temperatures does occur, and will be x-times smaller than what the media claims, will it have any effect on man?

Of course not, dear chap! You are absolutely right. It has no effect whatsoever on man. That whole tsunami thing was a wild joke that was played by the media to divert attention from the death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh wait, Iraq and Afghanistan are earlier jokes meant to divert attention from the secret CIA prisons of torture, sprinkled over Central and Eastern Europe. Oh I do apologise, the prisons were an April fools’ joke to take the heat off the earthquakes that destroyed much of Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.

He also goes on to talk about the EU’s external energy policy and how nuclear energy is the cheapest form of energy available today, which of course we must pursue, for fear of returning to the Dark Ages. Because he thinks it’s as simple as that. Because he forgets that Lithuania’s entry into the EU was allowed on the pre-condition that its nuclear power plants were shut down due to poor safety and storage standards. Because Chernobyl never happened. With the less than ten neurons he possesses in his head, he must not commit the folly of ‘thinking’ that he is capable of understanding the concepts of fission, fusion or E = mc2.

I would like to ask the dear President if he is ailing. If he is suffering from some kind of mental, psychological, physiological and emotional delusions that are severely hampering his abilities to think but clearly not to speak. I know an excellent psychiatrist in Prague who can help. If he can’t afford the Kč 600 an hour to save himself, then let me offer him some advice on behalf of at least half a nation of thinking people who are embarrassed to be represented by a half-wit. I say half because it’s stupid to simply point fingers at politicians and blame them for all our misfortunes. We are the primary idiots who elect these idiots.

But this message is from the ones who will not suffer fools gladly. What they would like for you to try Mr. President, is to do your job, which is to sit the warring factions down for a lesson in government. Tell them clearly, without personal interest of which party is likely to back your next scheme for re-election, that the country needs a government before it needs nuclear energy. Tell them that a mature democracy is one of compromise and not one of confrontation. That the time for us versus them is long past. The communists have gone and there is no hobgoblin waiting to jump out from the closet so stop gluing your behinds to your chairs. You, Mr. President, should take the lead from your counterparts in other countries, who despite the severe criticism they face from the world, have managed to install governments in countries far larger than the one you don’t rule.