Reading Croatian newspapers over shoulders in cafés, I see scandals galore. Politics, the economy, the church, sport. I am looking forward to cultural scandals.

Addendum (December 16, 2011)

Of course, I am not talking about culture in the narrow sense of the term, including such innocent pleasantries as the fine arts and theater. I am talking about culture in its entirety. That is, the culture of deception, thieving, and murder that has arrived with the transition from so-called socialism to capitalism. I am talking about the primitive accumulation of capital under special conditions of civil war, war profiteering, rampant nationalism, and the like. Croatian culture has been transformed in the last two decades into something that is scandalous, indeed.

This is far from an affliction of Croatia alone, I hasten to add. Even without the debilitating civil war, which has affected only the jagged shards of former Yugoslavia, other countries of Central and Eastern Europe that have gone through the transition rigmarole have all been transformed in similar ways. Cultural scandals abound in all of them, too. The grab for almighty capital has been colored by the previous system in many noteworthy ways, but corruption and organized crime have changed people’s perceptions of the world in its entirety.

Now, the transition has taken place under very special conditions in the capitalist world, as well. Completely unleashed after the collapse of so-called socialism, capitalism has swiftly evolved in unprecedented ways. Deception, thieving, and murder have become the norm across the entire globe. No country has been spared. And this has also affected the transition in the countries behind the Iron Curtain of old, Croatia included. It is the unbridled capitalism that has changed all cultures, and especially those that joined it completely unprepared for the tumult. Cultural scandals galore, for true.