There was a liberal pawn who threw himself into the presidential campaign. I quote exactly: “Mrs Yotova, how many young Bulgarians died in the war in Ukraine? And how many from drugs? I’m just asking!”
Of course, this is not merely a question. It is an insinuation, and that is precisely why it caught my attention.
The answer is obvious. Many more young Bulgarians have died from drugs than in the war in Ukraine. From this, a direct conclusion is supposed to follow: drugs are dangerous, while war is not.
Our drug problem is enormous, while our war problem is nonexistent.
Conclusion: We have a drug problem, and I will not speculate on why it has been pinned on Yotova, but there is also an addition: it turns out that going to war is perfectly safe. This is the result of the extremely low mortality among young people in this war.
I will broaden the question without changing its direction. And how many young people have died in car accidents? And how many have died altogether?
It turns out that, against the backdrop of our entire lives, war is something completely safe.
There you have it—your cognitive dissonance has now been taken care of.
The fact that this war is not ours is being diligently ignored. We watch it like a movie. It is as if you were to ask how many viewers died during the film “Saving Private Ryan” and use that as the basis for insinuating that the Second World War was safe. We are not participating in the Ukrainian conflict with troops, just as we did not participate in the war for the independence of the Congo, nor in Luke Skywalker’s war against the Empire. Notice that no Bulgarian boys die there either.
But if you ask how many Ukrainian young people have died in the war in Ukraine, you will be frightened. So as not to be accused of bias, I will add Russian young people as well. In fact, people there are seriously afraid of the war and, believe me, not nearly as much of drugs. In fact, unofficial figures—because there are no official ones—put the number of dead at more than one million. A number the most lethal drug would envy.
But everything would have ended here and remained only in our heads if, in recent days, the media had not been broadcasting a politically redundant politician calling for us to send our children to the front. No one reprimanded him!
Just try it!