I suppose that few still remember the revelation of the American Ambassador to Sofia Nancy McEldowney: "One piece of trash goes out, another piece of trash comes in" - and this compliment was addressed to the deputies of the Bulgarian Parliament.
Neither then nor later, none of the "trash" dared to refute her words. This is the end of our pride - to forget the insults, and finally to acquire the ability not to accept them as such.
I thought of the "trash" these days because of H. Martin McDowell, who has been serving as the US Ambassador ad interim for nearly a year and a half. One recent action of his has nothing to do with Nancy's arrogant tactlessness, but it is still embarrassing enough to warrant our attention.
Martin McDowell is certainly aware of the peculiarities of this Le Havre, at least the most visible ones. That is why it is more than strange that he intervened in such a large-scale corruption scandal - the illegal settlement near Varna, and in defense of one of its main characters - the mayor of Varna.
And this, let's put it bluntly, looks like a challenge to the justice of a country.
Whatever the mayor's supporters and guardians claim, the indisputable fact is that the settlement in question was built during his term.
And now, right in the midst of this unparalleled affair, the American ambassador is visiting him - and no one will believe that the visit is the result of some indiscretion.
There will certainly be a lot of conspiracy theories fueled - and with good reason, since an American diplomat is not indifferent to an illegal Ukrainian project.
However, most of the local media remained indifferent to the ambassador's unmeasured initiative, perhaps not see nothing reprehensible in it...
Excluding the ambassadors, immediately before and after the Change/November 1989 - and most of all Polanski, Hill, Bowlen - the other envoys of Great America always found a way to challenge us to accept a number of their oddities, and even some outbursts of obvious "carnivalization", to put it politely, which should have nothing to do with the delicate nature of diplomacy.
Ambassador Warlick was particularly persistent and even talented in this regard. But his performances were still preferable to the rudeness of a Pardue, whose language was extremely sharp, the words in it seemed to resemble the clatter of soldiers' truncheons.
He resembled the monstrous sergeant from the comedy "Police Academy", he did not spit at all and would be mortally offended if he found out that at least some fleeting delicacy was expected of him.
And he calmly went to encourage the students who had occupied the University, without even realizing that he was compromising the mission he was leading.
It was as if the well-known phrase was written for him: "The message does not carry
any meaning if you have not chosen the right ambassador".
Now I cannot refrain from quoting one of the president's favorite lines Reagan: a little boy came across a pile of horse droppings, but happily exclaimed - "Oh, so there's a horse nearby!"
And what can we, the "aborigines", expect to meet after we come across people like Pardew?
The phrase about the message and the ambassador that I quoted should make us despair: no one has long been interested in what messages we expect to reanimate at least some of our hopes.
In any case, we least hoped to get some sign from Warlick's adventures in the Sofia disco "Yalta", together with famous pop singers, or from his undisguised desire to be remembered as an actor from the TV series "Glass House".
He was some kind of stranger and he would certainly be astonished if someone had suggested to him that we expected to see him in a role that would even in some insignificant degree follow the insights of "that", the real Yalta.
This would probably have finally confirmed his conviction that he was dealing with complete fools - or, to put it more clearly, with scum who feel good with other scum...
Let's not get too melancholic, but it seems that we must sooner or later get used to the fact that we are separated - or distracted - from our own ideas about politics, and also about diplomacy.
We receive messages that are indifferently thrown at us - most often unclear or even infantile, and perhaps we do not deserve even that.
The servants themselves must read the vague signs of their Guardians.
Sol Polanski however, he was a truly serious class and this gave him the right to be interested, for example, in what our politicians are "made of" - Aleksenia Dimitrova mentions these words of his in her investigation "The Secret Reports of Sol Polanski for November 10".
I've heard them from him too, in a slightly different version: why do they so persistently slander our people against each other?
Alexenia is a wonderful researcher, she can get her hands on any document that interests her, no matter how incredible it may seem, she can even gain access to God's office...
By the way, Polanski was not completely convinced who the real authors of the November 10 Coup were.
And one more thing: the reports make it clear how helpless our media were before the "Change", they look like that, even when they are embellished retrospectively by some late braggarts...
A while ago I used the word "kidnapping" - this is a dangerous word, especially if we think about what is happening to us.
Here is the most recent story: a passenger plane flying from Warsaw to Israel reports that it has been hijacked. Israeli and Turkish fighter jets, as well as two of our own, intercept it, escort it and, ultimately, push it towards Bulgaria - Turkey, Israel and Cyprus do not want to accept it. And it lands in Burgas.
The pilot of the supposedly hijacked plane accidentally pressed the button for "unlawful interference on board" - end of comedy.
The hijacked plane lands near a population that, if it had any sense left, should have felt hijacked long ago.