Recently, my twenty-five-year-old student asked me during a proofreading session if I could say something about "my time." This was the moment when the disconnect between how I see myself and how a representative of Generation Z sees me hit me with all its sharpness. I groveled, stating that "my days" are still going on, and that I myself am uninterruptedly in my early thirties. The student specified that he was referring to a moment analogous to that of the group: studies, first jobs, etc. I answered honestly that this period was in the 1990s, and that it was a time of hope, foolish illusions, impatience to reach a bright future, and above all, a great opening to the world.
An opening that didn't need to be forced upon us: ever since I remembered my life in communist Poland, anything that landed with us from the outside, except perhaps goods from the Soviet bloc, aroused uncritical enthusiasm in my surroundings - among children and adults alike. From word of mouth and gossip to products and books. Anything Western, especially coming from the coveted America, the land of true democracy (not people's democracy by any means) was the holy grails. Including Pepsi cans and things that were fundamentally negative, such as the news that in bankrupt New York one had to walk around with a wallet filled with a few dollar bills so that desperate thugs could get their loot without killing the wallet holder. Along with the hype of the new democracy came this as well: crime, idiotic consumption and colorful trash. Fortunately, in the end, the sharing of stairwells with extra bars and the fear of the mafia gave way with the entry into the European Union. Then politicians also graciously took on corruption (the lesser kind) and organized crime (the overly ostentatious kind), and we citizens were given another hope. This time to become real Europeans, and not slobs stuck somewhere on the dark eastern fringe of it. Aspirations shifted from "Dynasty" to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Levis 501 from the land of cowboys no longer excited us so much, as the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, the opportunity to study and work in developed countries entered. For the people around me, the wild and free America somehow began to fade. No one was particularly attracted to the vision of emigrating to a country where there are no European social privileges, but the entrepreneurial elite are welcomed with open arms. War, police and comedy productions on TV began to laugh and bore, and Marlboro Man died of lung cancer. My subsequent travels and projects in the United States only confirmed that the charm of the land of neoliberal happiness no longer worked on me. That I'm still fascinated to explore different American corners, but I can't imagine living in a country that is so... backwards.
The turn of 2025 and 2026 has arrived. President Trump wants to forcibly seize lands belonging to a European ally, with international law and loyalty to NATO partners for nothing. An enraged madman can do anything: "Only my own thoughts can stop me," he stated in an interview after all. The president's private army posing as a federal agency is building internment camps and killing more citizens in the streets of American cities, while European nationalists and skinheads of the British Tommy Robinson type are appealing to Trump to invade Britain and "save" its people from democracy. He is echoed by other admirers of Strong Men, including in Poland.
Under MAGA's spell, the States suddenly ceases to be a symbol of democracy, as the country that was a source of admiration for us sails toward the reefs of a new form of fascism before our eyes. A regime closer to Margaret Atwood's "A Cache Story" than 20th-century National Socialism is being born, after all, socialism is the name of Satan. The Italian and German Nazis gave the people health care, vacation funds and pension insurance. Meanwhile, the hybrid fascism of a president with the mental stability of Emperor Nero (and his arch-nemesis) refuses to give anything but emotions, which can be cheaply generated with Fox News instead of building new road infrastructure or developing social insurance. What they have in common, however, is a hatred of opponents and manifestations of any otherness, an instrumental treatment of religion and an obsession with seizing power over every dimension of reality. Well, and an admiration for neoclassicism.
And what do we make of it? We, who dreamed as children that America would come here, have suddenly woken up to a reality that we are beginning to associate with breathless nationalism. We look around and find that we see too many symptoms of its presence. We see it in cultural domination (what non-American film platform do you use?), technological domination (I'm writing these words in Word) and political domination, for we are still America's Trojan Horse in Europe (like Hungary's Russia). We see it in the primacy of money, measurability and efficiency. In PR replacing journalism. In the frontality of the Polish president. In a language full of feedback, fuckups and deadlines. In plastic and repetitiveness. In subscribing to a reality in which we will soon come to make monthly payments for rented furniture in our apartment. And in powerlessness, because when Orange Man says he wants Greenland, like Putin wants Alaska, what can we do about it? Who will save us from Russia (the lowercase letter is intentional)? Where will liberal intelligentsia from developing countries flee to if the US becomes a dictatorship to the end? Who will support Ukraine against its toxic neighbor? Who will protect us?
The torch of Democracy is going out. Fortunately, not everywhere. I count on an integrating Europe, as long as it finally distances itself from America and neutralizes the divisive nationalists. Only in this way will we be able to find a dignified place for us in the new world order that is inevitably coming. Unless the kleptocrats set this world on fire, reaching out their paws for other people's lands: then there will be no point in writing a column about anything anymore. "And how about our generation?" my student asked, and I could only answer him, "Your gate is closing. If you want to enjoy democracy, you must fight for Europe. This is the last moment."
Jakub Szczęsny
Read more: A&B 2/2026 - Education,
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