My political awakening, meaning the moment I realized what politics in a communist country actually means, happened around the time I was maybe 12-13 years old.
The idea of communism, meaning collective decision making, always had a tendency to degrade into a dysfunctional epistocracy in which the appointed experts were trying to solve problems in the spirit of communism. We had debates about various public concerns. Housing, shortages, prices, absenteeism, you name it. There were television panel discussions and newspaper back-and-forths trying to solve the problems. Continue reading →