I just received this letter.
DEAR PRIME MINISTER, HELLO –
thank you for remembering me, and that after not seeing each other for over thirty years! Nice that you think of me and Bernardo, who also received a letter today, sincere thanks also on her behalf!
But I must immediately note that you are still hardly less superficial than in the 1980s. In the letter to Bernardo – I read it to see if you mention any other, more feminine things, but the text is the same – I see that you address her as _Dear Sir_, not _Dear Madam_, as befits her honor. Especially since you knew her, as she worked at MikroAda, so you surely knew her gender! It's not good for such carelessness to creep into the letter.
I note this entirely well-meaning. In this regard, I really watched over you back then – you probably remember I corrected your grammar? It was about that writing of yours on the equal use of Slovenian in JLA, which Zlobec and I published for you in Problemi. My co-editor gave you a bunch of style advice, I corrected your grammar.
I fixed quite a few commas for you, although on average there was nothing wrong with them: as many as there were too many in one place, that many were missing elsewhere.
You surely remember this, as you yourself wrote about it in _Premiki_ (p. 20) like this:
"In prison and later I often wondered why they imprisoned precisely me. It's true that I wrote and published things that others only whispered. For example, Jaša Zlobec convinced me in 1986 to write a treatise for the magazine Problemi on the equality of the Slovenian language in JLA, in which I demanded nationally homogeneous units. He obligingly provided all the necessary literature and gave me a series of tips. Only when they attacked me from all sides and the generals demanded criminal prosecution did I wonder why Jaša, who knows Slovenian much better than me, didn't write that article himself."
Why didn't Jaša Zlobec write that article himself? Well, I can explain that, as I was there all the time. Mainly he didn't write it because you knew the Yugoslav People's Army much better than him! You graduated in defense studies and had the appropriate party function in the League of Socialist Youth of Slovenia: you were its secretary for general popular resistance and social self-protection! And otherwise it would be out of place for Zlobec to write about JLA, who like me never even served in the military due to conscientious objection (and critics could thus rightly reject us as unqualified to write about these things)!
And finally – the idea and wish were yours! You came to us, not we to you! Your insinuation (which at least implies that Jaša was a coward, and underneath that he was UDBA) seems to me a textbook example of logic that can see conspiracy even in the most impeccable actions.
That's all regarding your commas and paranoia.
My second remark concerns the font size in the letter. If you really care about us vulnerable ones, i.e. old men and women, you surely know we can't read fine print. Old eyes are simply too tired for that. Don't you realize that straining the eyes (and brain) alone can trigger Herxheimer storm – a furious reaction where defensive T cells attack the lung tissue of their host, which is then attributed to covid? Of course the phenomenon is not everyday, but with two million letters even 0.1 percent incidence means two thousand (2000) dead. People might hold you directly responsible!
I understand why the letters are small – you have bad advisors. Someone told you "more is better", so you wrote such a long letter, which I, a writer, wrote at most to my late father, also a writer. (Of course that was when he wasn't late yet.)
Do you really think your citizens have so much time to read such a novel-fresco? If you had asked me for advice – and I would gladly give it – I would tell you that people nowadays must spend at least four hours a day complying with your covid decrees – you know, queuing, washing and ironing protective masks, searching for testing and vaccination centers, dialing unresponsive health institution numbers, self-examining lumps and hardenings because such checks are temporarily suspended, self-listening because cardio departments are occupied – so poor people have little time left for reading. I would condense your urging into at most fifteen lines, and not forget to highlight important points in bold.
Then content – I have a couple remarks here too.
Have you really forgotten your former merits? That in the leaden times before the shifts you "wrote and published things that others only whispered"? That is missing from this letter from the heart! Why, for example, do you say that "expectations /of eradicating the virus/ ... have been realized, but only where a large majority is vaccinated", when even sparrows on the roofs chirp that the infection rate is highest precisely in the most vaccinated countries – say in the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Netherlands – everywhere where the leaky vaccine has already threatened the natural immunity of the population.
Hey, vaccine isn't cookie!
Not to be only critical: I really like your reference to unity:
"Our common ... enemy is the virus that threatens all. We must defeat it, and we can do that only together." These decisive words show that you have finally left behind divisions into "ours" and commies, heir of Karantenija and elf from Murgel, pure Slovenes and migrants. Really promising, this thought that we will soon live in brotherly harmony, waving injection needles in the fight against the enemy!
Your argument that "vaccinated ... already billions of people on the planet and with such numbers nothing can be hidden" also suits me.
You are surely qualified to speak about it, with your long rich political experience. When you say that with billions nothing can be hidden, you also skillfully hint that much can be hidden when it comes to just two million inhabitants.
In the letter you especially thank the already vaccinated, saying they have "protected ... also their nearest, community, country and finally our planet". But you forgot to warn them that vaccination does nothing – otherwise there would be no need to sell vaccinated a "booster dose", the first in the series that I now prophetically name "From Here to Eternity".
Finally, back to my professional deformation, grammar correction. I see you write "you will decide more easily". Since it's adverbial use, not adjective, only the adverb is appropriate, so "you will decide more easily". True, the comparative "more easily" evokes unpleasant associations, but you have to accept that.
In the future I would just like you to say more about the unvaccinated. Maybe praise us too, because we act responsibly, as we don't spread the virus beyond the borders of our segregation, while you vaccinated, who are allowed entry anywhere without test, have plenty of opportunities for its uncontrolled spreading among crowds. It wouldn't be right for (un)vaccination status to become a subject of division. After all, there's one serious difference between unvaccinated and vaccinated: unvaccinated don't die from mysterious – and mysteriously overlooked – heart attacks.
I use this opportunity to ask you to convey my heartfelt greetings also to your current wife. It's good to have medical help by your side in these times, even if not strictly cardiological.
With due respect,
Branko Gradišnik,