The Monologue about the telephone call and about t

The Monologue about the telephone call and about the idealization


The European writer Karel ;apek (Karel Chapek) once wrote a story about a man who forgot the details of a road accident, but memorized the sequence of artistic images.

"A houses in the ranks were darkening through out an openwork,
   Dawn already played a mandoline.
    The maiden was reddening.
                To distant Singapore
   You were flying away in the racing car".

You remember up this story, thinking of the telephone conversation which took place between the U.S. President Donald Trump and Juan Guaido. Mass media reported about this telephone call on January 30, 2019.

It is clear that this telephone conversation is part of big politics.

Big politics is global interests, it is natural resources, it is often a violence, it is a calculation.

If emotions, morals and other categories from this series are present in big politics, they are not - in the first rank.  In any case, they are visible not at once and not for everyone.

But if involuntary idealization, romanticization of events - is (sometimes) the property, the part of human nature, why not see in this telephone conversation between one of the most influential people in the world with the ordinary Venezuelan (which made political career) expression of support? An expression of sympathy for the Venezuelan people? Not to see the subtext: "In America (North and South) live different people, but all of them (all of us) - Americans, united by centuries of history"? Expression of friendliness and wishes for the successful completion of a difficult domestic political period?

A lot of things it is possible to object to such perception of this the telephone conversation. Isn't a this perception an unacceptable simplification, a manifestation of political naivety?

But if the idealization, romanticization of reality is (sometimes) part of human nature, then why not see in the fact of this telephone call the friendly support for the Venezuelan people, sympathy for the ordinary people of Venezuela?


January 31, 2019 09:43


Translation from Russian into English: January 31, 2019 10:26.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский “Монолог о телефонном разговоре и об идеализации”.