Skyline Happenings

By Anne Applebaum  in the Washington Post

Thanks to Marilyn W for sending this along

This is a dark moment for those who care about the rule of law in the United States, even for those who worry about the future of democracy in the country. The president openly violates not just the law but also the principles of decency. He uses social media to brag and boast, reducing the authority and respect of his office with every tweet. Yet at the same time, it is hard to imagine what kind of language, what kind of political campaign, could possibly win over his most hardcore supporters.

In Slovakia, February 2018 was a similarly dark moment. The country had been led by a populist government linked to corruption and organized crime. Jan Kuciak, a young journalist who tried to investigate those links, had been brutally murdered, along with his fiancee; there were dark rumors of official involvement. Mass street protests had persuaded the prime minister to resign, but it was hard to imagine what kind of language, what kind of political campaign, could possibly win over his party’s hardest-core supporters.

The surprise answer came from nowhere — or rather, it came from Pezinok, a small city in southwest Slovakia where Zuzana Caputova, an environmental lawyer and social liberal, had spent many years battling a landfill that would have polluted the air and water of the region. Angered by the murders, Caputova entered the presidential campaign in March 2018 as the candidate for the tiny Progressive Slovakia party. A year later, she won.

How did she do it? Caputova was in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I had the chance to ask. She told me that she began her political career by trying to understand why people were voting for a ruling party that had used anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner rhetoric as well as attacks on the media and “elites” to justify its hold on power. “People are afraid of the unknown, of changes,” she said. “This fear is used by populists to come with very simple, very clear solutions.” But Caputova also noticed opinion polls showing that the politics of fear had another effect: “People are tired of conflict.” She resolved to “avoid heating up the discussions,” to offer not just her views but also the moral reasoning behind them. In televised debates, while the other candidates bickered, she came off as calm and measured.