Final Word from Tuesday, April 12, 2011
In Karel Schwarzenberg's version of things, politicians are hungry for power and money, and Vít Bárta owes his fall to being so stupid as to put in writing what everyone else merely thinks about. Even if Schwarzenberg didn't look into his own soul to come to this cynical conclusion, he doesn't need to go far to find a suitable example of a lust for power and money in Miroslav Kalousek. The big difference between Bárta and Kalousek isn't in the methods they use (extortion, eavesdropping, etc.), but rather in Bárta's attempt to usurp power instead of working within the existing power structures. In her masterpiece "Captains and the Kings," Taylor Caldwell hinted that JFK was killed because he crossed the international bankers who call all the shots. Vít Bárta is no Jack Kennedy, of course, but the most plausible explanation for his political assassination is that he was delusional enough to think he had real power.
Glossary of difficult words
delusion - a false belief or opinion; a belief or expression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder;
lust - a passionate desire for something;
to cross someone - to oppose or stand in the way of someone;
to call the shots - to take the initiative in deciding how something should be done;
Vít Bárta is no Jack Kennedy - an allusion to a like comment made by Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle in a U.S. vice-presidential debate in 1988;
plausible - seeming reasonable or probable.