Agression in political discourse must be tamed

Georgia's political awakening since 1990s carries a mark of aggression, that proves hard to shrug off. This aggression clouds and trumps the logic, diverts attention from clarifying country's true objectives and condemns the body politics to the cycle of violent self-destruction. Georgia's 'thinkers' - intelligentsia, politicians, the media - carry the most virulent strain of this phenomenon. The task of true political and civic leadership is to transform the energy this process carries into something more productive, more creative and more sustainable.

The government of President Gamsakhurdia attacked the Imperial monster with vociferousness of a zealot, and did not spare own brethren in doing so. The brethren retaliated in kind - with an adequately dis-proportional response. President Shevardnadze sought to dissipate the anger by ushering in a comfortable inertia of a corrupt free-for-all. That worked for a while, for quite a while, but the political system turned into a farce, economy into rubble and country - into a potemkin village. This became embarrassing in the end...so he was forced to quit. The new generation thought they got it right - through channeling aggression into creation, agressive intents into aggressive institutions - army, police, prosecution. But that has stretched the social fabric to the breaking point. Too much resources were needed for making the convoked image of the best, the brightest, the fastest mover country with the reality. And the catastrophies of internal schysm and war have followed.

What Georgian citizens hear still today, are the voices of revenge, agression and violence. What the body politic needs is self-irony, honesty, judgement and statesmenship in leadership. So far, supply of aggression seems to create its own demand. The real change is what we must demand, and that would go beyond personalities, or, strangely, maybe even beyond institutions.