Comment by Ivan Landzev:
Let our just joy over the change of the regime in Hungary not distract us from the fact that there was still someone to change it there. People went out to vote because they felt that there was someone for them. The usual talk about apathy in Bulgaria, although true, always sounds like accusations from politicians to voters: "Well, we are great, but this is what we have as an electorate, they don't want change". Here the two-way nature of the whole argument is missed - the electorate also has this. With you. That is, it lacks anything impressive.
And the good finally turns evil
This two-way relationship is so natural that there is no way around it. The people's representatives represent the people - including their worst traits. Especially their worst traits.
That's why clinging to goodness and flaunting it like a fashion accessory seems so ridiculous, and when it starts to be spoken, it rings hollow. "We are the good ones" is not a platform. People should say that about you, not you telling them.
I have no illusions about Peter Magyar's moral purity. But he is smart enough to know that people don't want saints, because saints are not like people.
People are readers. Even when they are illiterate, they are still readers - they just don't have the freedom to choose what to read and let others read to them.
As readers, we like to identify with sinful heroes who are trying to do the right thing. Their struggle is our struggle, we cry out for them, we want them to win. That way we feel that some part of us is winning too.
Magyar had a story to tell the Hungarians, he had a moving story to sell them. And ours don't even have a story. They are just angry.
Usurpation of the good
Along with all the other analogies with Hungarian development, it is worth recalling that Peter Magyar quit Orbán's party just after a major, nationwide scandal related to child sexual abuse. Because in the normal world, sexual assault against children is taken extremely seriously (in fact, how many things can be more serious than that?). The words of the surviving victims are also taken extremely seriously. They are not automatically accused of lying - and with the sole purpose of discrediting the good.
The bad thing is that the good continue to not realize how much all this will cost them - both this specific story, and the very usurpation of the good, turning it into a synonym for... themselves, for certain specific people there. They have become too good at the art of calling themselves good. And they do not understand that this is not good.