Under the Law of the Silicone
Ralitsa Kovacheva, August 8, 2010
Have you noticed that lately the most popular advertisement billboards in Sofia are about clinics for aesthetic surgery? Silicone is probably the keyword most searched in Google. Even hair shampoos, lipsticks and mascara are already being advertised with a silicone effect - “lift and volume”. Although such a side effect of the silicone has not yet been described, my empirical observations show that the most harmful consequence of these advertisements is that they slowly and persistently penetrate the brain and kill it. Moreover, the infection obviously has a psychotronic impact, because it spreads far beyond the contingent of watermelons. (There is a popular Bulgarian TV commercial, exposing watermelons as a symbol of giant women breasts)
The silicone is omnipotent. It permeates from everywhere and everywhere, it puts its tentacles in the neurons and stuffs the brain. The effect, however, is not the same as in the Silicon Valley, but quite the opposite - complete paralysis of critical thinking. A characteristic of the silicone is selective permeability: we only accept opinions that are similar to our own. It does not accept criticism, but rather stifles it. You can find silicone everywhere: in the tomatoes you buy, on TV, in the conversations of people in queues. The most dangerous, however, is the political silicone because it seeks to make us believers rather than citizens, and obedient rather than active. Don't ask, listen, the silicone says.
It makes possible stories, where the police organise an operation, arrest five people, the court release them with motives which could make every law student ashamed if these were a review of a written examination paper, the executive power gets angry and promises to ask Europol and the FBI (for the purpose all the evidence will be translated into English) and Prosecutor No. 2 in the State declared that the released criminals are a threat for the life of the Prime Minister. Newspapers (at least most of them) overflow with “evidence”, obviously gathered through hard journalistic labour, but nobody is making any efforts to explain that these might not be useful for the court under the Penal Procedure Code. In every American crime series, at least once in an episode, there is a drama, because the police know who is the criminal, it is really convinced, but the prosecution says: there is not enough evidence, it will not withstand in court. But according to the Law of the Silicone, guilt is a presumption that needs no proof.
Why in the 13 volumes, consisting of 4,000 sheets, no useful evidence, for the court, is found? Is it possible the court to 'boycott' cases and what does this mean practically? What would happen to everyone of us if the Ministry of the Interior (and the Prosecution, but it is clearly in brackets) could afford the luxury of accusing on the basis of circumstantial evidence? If it may order a psychiatric examination, which "proves" the commitment of a murder? Or to make a specialised court, where if you come across, you are convicted a priori? What happened to the presumption of innocence? Under the Law of the Silicone, however, these questions are redundant.
According to the same law, the State can operate only by its executive power (the legislature is anyway fully obedient to the executive). Nearly 300 years after Montesquieu, in today's Bulgaria, it is being preached that the principle of separation of powers is noxious and is an obstacle to the state. Moreover, obviously the principle of secularism is being denied too, since people are expected to believe in the executive power in a religious way - without evidence, without arguments, because, as Thomas Aquinas had said, justice is the Reason Divine, incognoscible and incomprehensible to the human mind, but accepted with humility.
The silicone uses faith as a weapon against the thought. For example, isn't it a divine sign that in the peak of the scandal with "the Killers", the relics of St. John the Baptist were found in Bulgaria? And how have we found out that these are exactly his bones? Bozhidar Dimitrov (a historian and a Minister of Bulgarians Abroad) told us - do you need any other proof?! Non-believers may want analysis, but everything comes from the envy of "this fucking people", the minister was indignant. He organised nationwide celebrations to honour the eminent event, headed by Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov, who found money in the budget to urgently finance the repair the church where the relics would be kept. Dyankov knows these things well, because the budget too is on its way of becoming a reliquary, which keeps the relics of the Treasury. Against the backdrop of this performance, the shows of chalga stars on TV Planet are just like a summer camp in the mountains!
The symbolism of silicone roars from every gesture of the government towards its citizens, starting from the fundamental dispute with the judiciary and passing through small but emblematic personifications, such as Rumyana Zheleva (the unsuccessful first Bulgarian nomination for EU Commissioner last year), Vesselin Marinov (a singer and a friend of the Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, who wrote a song about the police) and Shkumbata (a comedy performer, known as the best imitator of the former Bulgarian communist leader Todor Zhivkov and currently appointed as a Bulgarian consul in Chicago). We are expected, at least, to accept all this uncritically, and even better - to tick with fingers and perform the chalga dances until the silicone wave would fully anesthetize the last remnants of thinking. "I think therefore I exist" is already - "I exist, therefore I don't think.". Don't ask, don't analyse, don't criticise. I believe, because the very thought of the silicone is a proof of its existence.
I expect soon silicone (at preferential prices) to start flowing through the pipes instead of Russian gas. Social benefits to be distributed in the form of silicone, and, instead of excellent diplomas, students to be awarded with silicone pads. Until then, try a shampoo, after all your hair is still the closest to the brain. For a maximum effect you could take a shower immediately after the central TV newscasts. How will you know whether it works? When you start singing the songs of Vesselin Marinov in the shower. Sooner or later it will happen. The Law of the Silicone is ruthless.