John McCain on weather in Hungary

„Dear Hungarian liberal friends getting enthusiastic about John McCain's eloquent criticism of rule of law in Hungary and applauding his courage to call Hungary's prime minister a neofascist dictator,

I am not going to discuss the details of his statements. That I take issue with John McCain being the one uttering these words is NOT an ad hominem argument against their truthfulness. Their truthfulness is irrelevant; it may very well have been the case that on June 17, 1936 the sky over all of Spain was indeed clear. The problem with that radio broadcast was not that the statement was false but that the purpose of it was to start a civil war.

When John McCain gets vocal about the need to defend democratic values under assault in some far-away land, where the government has fallen out with the U.S. administration lead by his erstwhile opponent, it signals trouble. In particular, it is a signal that the overthrow of the government has bipartisan support in the United States and that the government of the United States of America is going to provide full-spectrum (diplomatic, political, economic and even military) support to the opposition. You know it just as well as I do. You seem to be very happy about it. You hate the currently reigning regime with red-hot passion and it makes it much easier to remove it from power.

That much is true. Let me assure you, that I am no supporter of the current Hungarian government. I will not lift a finger to save it; that is not the purpose of this essay. It is to save you (and myself) from hell. Not the one in which people burn after their death. The one in which they burn before it. There is a pattern to what happens in places where John McCain gets concerned about the rule of law. And it isn't pretty.

I know that you think that it cannot happen in Hungary, but the only reason for this is that you consciously or subsconsciously believe yourselves and other Hungarians to be superior to Libyans, Ukrainians and other recipients of democratic assistance. But that is a mistake. There is very little salient cultural difference between Ukrainians and Hungarians. The reason for hell breaking loose in Ukraine is not that Ukrainians are savages (they aren't any more savage than Hungarians) or that there are some deep cultural differences within Ukraine (there aren't any that you could as much as notice) or that Putin set Ukraine on fire (Molotov coctails started flying in December 2013 and January 2014 saw the first casualties that died from bullets). The reason for hell breaking loose in Ukraine is that no reliable means of determining who should be in power remained except open violence. If John McCain says that it is okay to overthrow an elected government and that it is lead by a neofascist dictator (which are by definition to be removed by any means available) and you agree with it, it means that the only remaining way to determine who will rule over Hungarians is a civil war.

Believe me, I know far more about Ukraine than most of you. A year ago I believed that civil war was utterly impossible there. My head is still hurting with cognitive dissonance. But as long as only a tiny minority can imagine their lives without anyone ruling and the vast majority is willing to toss morals aside for their tribal leaders to rule over the other tribe, the objective fact that civil war is the only way to find out who should rule implies that civil war is inevitable.

And believe me, there is nothing civil about a civil war. War is hell.”