Whoever Doesn’t Sit Isn’t Slovenian

Melania Trump reminds me of the Bosnian joke about Mujo sitting on a rock. “What’s up, Mujo, sitting and thinking?” “Nah, Haso, just sitting.”

Throngs of amateur and professional Melaniologists have for years, ever since she first moved into the White House, been feverishly following and analyzing her every public appearance, every look, gesture, shoe, outfit and hat.

With the recent premiere of the documentary about our American First Lady, we may at last have an answer to the question of what lies behind those chronically pouting lips and half-veiled eyes staring catatonically into the unknown.

Nothing. Nada. Neč, as young Melania would have said in her local dialect before she set off from Sevnica into the wide world to seek happiness and love. That, at least, is what one might conclude from the opinion of most film critics, who were, to put it very, very, very mildly, not well disposed toward the documentary that earned Melania a fat 28 million dollars. I admit I can’t judge for myself, since I haven’t yet managed to see the documentary. It isn’t showing anywhere in Strasbourg yet. And so far no one in France seems to be complaining much about that.

But, you’ll say, these are the elitist hacks in the mainstream media who don’t care about the little man anyway. And indeed the opening attendance exceeded the gloating predictions and comfortably outperformed any documentary in the history of cinema.

Which is of course logical. Not only because so much money was spent on promotion that you could have reshot every documentary in the history of cinema with it, but because we are dealing with a cult. You go to the cinema to show your devotion to the great, wise husband. Ticket sales in local American cinemas match local political support for Trump.

It is similar in Europe, at least where the film is already showing. Only far fewer tickets are sold. Because in Europe we not only don’t like Trump much, we like him less and less.

Slovenia is a story of its own in this American–European contrast. Because Melania was once from Sevnica, and so many try hard to believe that Melania is still ours.

Nah, Haso, just Melania.

There is no evidence of her supposed and much-vaunted attachment to her home turf. She reportedly mentions Slovenia only once in the film. She paid us the most attention when, with the help of her then lawyer, she sued her former fellow townspeople from Sevnica because some had tried to earn a dollar or two from her fame and name.

But OK. In our case, it isn’t so much the fact that we Slovenians have also squabbled over whether the film is worth seeing—after all, we are capable of quarreling about anything. What is unusual is that for some political parties Melania, and above all her husband, still represent a trump card in which they believe and on which they are building political support ahead of the upcoming elections.

That they did so years ago one could still somehow understand. But today? After everything we know and are served daily? The vulgarity, the authoritarianism, the morbid narcissism, the clear signs of cognitive decline, the Epstein files, the dalliances with porn actresses while our Melania was giving birth to our Barron, the violence and shootings by his semi-private masked agents, the attacks and threats against other countries, the insults left and right, the pally relations with dictators, the plans for resorts in Gaza, the Mar-a-Lago alternative to the United Nations, the appeasement of Putin and his aggressive policies? Hello?

In circumstances in which even Trump’s greatest admirers and imitators on the European far right feel compelled to distance themselves from their discredited hero, who has become repellent even to their own voters, many here still see Trump as a political trump card up their sleeve. Because Melania. The key to her husband’s favor and the highway to a future in which Slovenia, together with the US, will rampage across the world. Or something like that.

But not everyone is like that, you’ll say; fortunately we still have politics here that stands firmly on fundamental civilizational principles and values.

Eh.

Just as the right in Slovenia has problems with Trump, on the other side many have problems with his ideological companion in the Kremlin. A whole string of politicians, public figures and intellectuals are selling us, in one form or another, talking points written for them by Russian bots and intelligence services. Whether they do so out of conviction or not isn’t even that important; the effect is ultimately the same.

Far be it from me to lump everyone together. In the end everyone must take responsibility for their own positions and actions, and one set of misdeeds cannot be excused by another.

In this story, the Slovenian fans of the American president even have one advantage. We cannot accuse them of hypocrisy. They are completely open in their admiration of Trump’s policies. What we see in the US today, they would like to bring here too. Masked regime militias hunting people in the streets. The collapse and subordination of all democratic institutions that protect society from abuse of power, hatred as state ideology, power as the right to plunder, a Christian nationalism that has as much to do with Christianity as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has to do with democracy. They think it’s cool. They don’t hide it.

On the other side we have the attitude of part of the Slovenian public toward Russian imperialism and Putin’s rampage through Ukraine. Alternative facts and projections that adapt reality to ideological preferences. A quasi-pacifism that throws responsibility for the aggression onto the victim. That will not and cannot condemn the fascistoid regime Putin has built in a quarter of a century in power. Systemic racism, homophobia, sexual and verbal violence against women, murders of journalists and political opponents. Everything they (rightly) condemn with indignation everywhere else, except in the Kremlin. Nodding along to assorted Lipuščeks and populist Resnicas. Down with the rotten West. Down with NATO. You know who else doesn’t like NATO?

Putin and Trump.

The further apart the two sides are, the more alike they become. The most grotesque thing about this Slovenian polarization is that we quarrel and divide to the death over our attitude toward two authoritarian leaders who, in their ideological characteristics, imperialist worldviews and obsession with force and power, are so close that it will soon be impossible to tell them apart. In the end we may achieve our cherished national unity at the absolute moral bottom. Where the extremes go so far that the horseshoe becomes a circle.

And perhaps that is precisely the important message of Melania’s documentary. We may not learn much about her, but it holds up a mirror to us. Through her moral emptiness and our attitude toward her, a picture emerges of a society that doesn’t think, but just sits—and follows.