--- title: "The Brave Citizen Gogonete and the Matter of Snap Elections" date: 2026-06-28 description: "From a twenty-line civic pamphlet to a fiction in three temporal planes: 1941, the political present, and the algorithm that decides what you read each morning. The brave citizen Gogonete hates nobody — which is precisely why he sees everything more clearly than the six people on the television." author: "Petru Cojocaru" categories: - name: "Personal development" url: "https://cojocarupetru.info/personal-development.md" --- # The Brave Citizen Gogonete and the Matter of Snap Elections **Being a faithful and impartial account of the political anxieties of a country that had voted, forgotten it had voted, and was now being asked to vote again — with references to prior events and to devices that glow in the dark**[![The Brave Citizen Gogonete and the Matter of Snap Elections](https://cojocarupetru.info/images/Dezvoltare-personala/resized_chestiunea-anticipatelor.jpg "The Brave Citizen Gogonete and the Matter of Snap Elections")](https://cojocarupetru.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=452:the-matter-of-snap-elections&catid=39:personal-development&lang=en-GB&Itemid=503) --- > **Note.** This text is an intentional fiction engaging with ideological and political concerns.Although it affects detachment, the tone is unmistakable: contempt for the current political class, for the "news" channels, for the "all-caps group chats," for the algorithms. The critique is partially warranted, but delivered in a manner that aspires to universality and ends up sounding rather like a disappointed grandfather holding forth — one who has, as he will tell you, *seen it all before.* --- The citizen Gogonete Fănică, formerly a ticket inspector on the urban bus routes of Botoșani, retired on a second-grade locomotor disability pension acquired not in the line of duty but at a wedding in Cătămărești-Deal where he had danced too long and fallen into a ditch, was a man of exceptional goodwill and a profound understanding of public affairs, cultivated over the twenty-two years he had spent aboard the buses, where citizens speak freely because nobody of importance is watching. On Gogonete Fănică's bedside table stood three objects: a glass of water, an agricultural almanac from 1987 which he had never read but kept out of respect for continuity, and a smartphone purchased for him by his son Cosmin from Italy, where Cosmin worked as a welder and sent money home with the regularity of a man who feels that filial duty can be discharged from a distance — perhaps more reliably than from close quarters. The smartphone was black, thin, and glowed in the dark with notifications about matters Gogonete Fănică had not requested and did not know how to stop. --- Gogonete Fănică's grandfather, one Gogonete Haralambie, had lived in the same town forty years before his grandson and had possessed neither smartphone, agricultural almanac, nor glass of water on his bedside table, because the bedside table itself had been confiscated in 1940 along with the rest of the furniture by an administration whose reasons had never been fully explained, but which had produced the correct paperwork and two men in uniforms that looked official. Gogonete Haralambie, who had been a blacksmith and repaired ploughs, carts, and the occasional bicycle, was himself a man of considerable goodwill — inherited or acquired — and when the two men in uniforms arrived to collect his furniture, he had offered them each a glass of plum brandy and enquired politely whether they required the chairs as well, or only the bedside table. They had required the chairs as well. In the summer of 1941, Gogonete Haralambie sat on a wooden crate in place of a chair and listened to a valve radio belonging to his neighbour, one Pavăl Dumitru, a retired grain merchant whose retirement had come about for reasons of circumstance, broadcasting reports on the progress of the war. The valve radio was the only object of Pavăl Dumitru's that nobody had confiscated, presumably because it was unclear to whom it would be of use. — Haralambie, Pavăl Dumitru would say — for he was a man anxious by nature and had grown more anxious still through practice — what do you think will happen? — I don't know, Gogonete Haralambie would say, which was true. But someone knows. Someone has already decided. We are waiting to find out. The valve radio broadcast victories. It broadcast nothing but victories, with a regularity that ought to have both reassured and unsettled anyone with a modest sense of proportion. Pavăl Dumitru was not reassured. — If all these victories are genuine, he said one evening, why is it taking so long? Gogonete Haralambie did not reply, because he did not know, and because the valve radio was not the sort of device that received questions — only one that transmitted answers to questions nobody had asked. --- His grandson Gogonete Fănică did not listen to valve radios. He received — without having asked for it — information from a Smart television which the same Cosmin from Italy had sent him the previous Christmas, together with an instruction manual that Gogonete Fănică had read once, misplaced, and had not felt the need to find again, because the television worked perfectly well without instructions — better, in a sense, since without instructions one did not know what could be turned off, and so left everything running of its own accord. The Smart television was connected to the internet via a router installed by his neighbour Petrișor, whose password Gogonete Fănică had written on a slip of paper stuck beneath the kitchen table — the most secure location for passwords, in his view — though he was uncertain precisely from whom he was protecting them there. Each evening, the Smart television offered Gogonete Fănică at least four channels discussing snap elections simultaneously and at varying levels of intensity. Two of the channels maintained that snap elections were democracy's only salvation. One channel maintained that snap elections were a conspiracy. The fourth channel did not discuss snap elections at all, but rather a completely different subject presented as urgent and definitive, though the subject changed each evening without the urgency or the definitiveness diminishing in the slightest. Gogonete Fănică watched all four with equal attention and equal goodwill, and at the end of each evening was no better informed than at the beginning — which is to say, he knew that something was happening and that something needed to be done, without it being clear precisely what, or by whom. --- The smartphone on his bedside table sent Gogonete Fănică, on average, between fourteen and twenty-two notifications per day, which he had counted methodically over the course of a week, being an orderly man. Of these notifications, three to five were from his son Cosmin, who sent photographs of himself at work, of the factory canteen's daily offering, and occasionally of sunsets seen from his bedroom window in Turin — sunsets that were, objectively speaking, much like any other, but which Cosmin found remarkable and which Gogonete Fănică appreciated without reservation. The remaining notifications came from an application Cosmin had installed for him, which had a name consisting of letters and numbers that Gogonete Fănică had never memorised, but which he recognised by its blue icon. Through this application, Gogonete Fănică had been added, without having requested membership, to three groups: a family group with twenty-three members who shared photographs of food and seasonal greetings, a group called "THE TRUTH THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU" with a hundred and fourteen members, and a smaller group of six former bus colleagues who discussed the state of their pensions. The group called "THE TRUTH THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU" was by far the most active. Every morning when Gogonete Fănică awoke, he found between thirty and seventy new messages containing links, photographs, and texts written entirely in capital letters covering an assortment of subjects: that snap elections were being imposed by external forces; that snap elections were being sabotaged by internal forces; that a certain politician was in fact a different person entirely; that a certain vaccine contained something; that somewhere a thing was being constructed that ought not to be constructed; and that in general the world was organised by a small number of people who had nobody's interests at heart save their own — which Gogonete Fănică found plausible in principle, though the specific details struck him at times as more imaginative than credible. The most prolific contributor to the group was a certain Puiu, whom Gogonete Fănică did not know personally and who had never explained how he came to be in the group, but who posted material daily with a devotion that impressed Gogonete Fănică regardless of the content. Puiu knew things nobody else knew, received them from sources he declined to name, and was convinced that snap elections — whatever position one took on the matter — were part of a broader plan whose ultimate purpose remained obscure but was certainly negative. Gogonete Fănică read Puiu's messages with attention and goodwill and never replied — not out of contempt for his contributions, but because he did not know how to type on the telephone without pressing the wrong things and sending incomplete or incoherent messages, which he considered worse than silence. --- Gogonete Haralambie, in the summer of 1941, had possessed no WhatsApp group, no application with a blue icon, and no Smart television. He had possessed neighbours. The neighbours of 1941 constituted a complex information network, generally more reliable than Pavăl Dumitru's valve radio, because the neighbours had no editorial policy and transmitted both victories and defeats, depending on what they had heard and from whom and in what state of mind they had heard it. The neighbour on his right, Doamna Safta, knew everything about the mobilisations because she had had two sons taken, and tracked the movements of military units with a specialist's attention. The neighbour on his left, a widow whose name Gogonete Haralambie had never managed to pronounce correctly and had eventually abandoned, knew nothing of mobilisations but knew precisely the price of every product at market and its daily fluctuations — which was another way of knowing where the war was heading. — Haralambie, Doamna Safta told him one morning in July, some two hundred of them passed along the road last night. Heading east. — East, Gogonete Haralambie repeated. — And others came through yesterday. East again. — Everyone is going, said Gogonete Haralambie. Nobody is coming back. — Not yet, said Doamna Safta, who was a woman with a practical turn of mind. Gogonete Haralambie went to the forge and repaired a plough, because the plough needed repairing regardless of the direction in which the world was moving, and because his trade offered the rare satisfaction of a task with a clear beginning, middle, and end — which at the close of the day was either repaired or it was not, with no grey areas and no television channels to explain why it remained unclear. --- Gogonete Fănică's smartphone also contained a news application that sent him alerts about snap elections between three and seven times a day. The alerts had short, imperative headlines — like military orders in peacetime: BREAKING. SOURCES. EXCLUSIVE. STORY OF THE DAY. Gogonete Fănică read them all and observed that each STORY OF THE DAY was followed the next morning by another STORY OF THE DAY, which caused him to wonder whether days possessed an unlimited capacity for bombshells, or whether the same ones were simply being recycled under slightly different names. His neighbour Petrișor, who was more conversant with technology, had explained that the algorithm sent Gogonete Fănică the stories it calculated he was most likely to read, based on what he had read before — which Gogonete Fănică found logical and mildly alarming, since it meant that the more he read about snap elections, the more he received about snap elections, and that escaping the subject would require an active effort he did not know how to undertake technically. — It's like a bus that only runs on one route, Gogonete Fănică explained to his neighbour Petrișor, and the longer you stay on it, the further you get from where you actually wanted to go. — Precisely, said his neighbour Petrișor, who was impressed by the analogy. — And there's no button to get off? — There is, said Petrișor, but it's buried in the settings. Gogonete Fănică noted that the button to get off was buried in the settings, and that the settings were a place he had never entered on any device, operating on the principle that things which are working should not be disturbed — and that perhaps this principle required revision, but that revising one's principles at his age seemed an investment of uncertain return. --- On Thursday morning, Gogonete Fănică encountered at the market his lifelong friend, one Tănăsescu Gheorghe, known as Quiet Ghiță — called Quiet not because he did not speak, but because he spoke rarely and only when he judged that what he had to say added something to what was already known. Quiet Ghiță was examining tomatoes with extraordinary concentration, pressing each one individually as though each contained a different secret, and when Gogonete Fănică greeted him he looked up with the expression of a man interrupted in something important. — Ghiță, what do you make of these snap elections? asked Gogonete Fănică. Quiet Ghiță set down the tomato, looked at it for a moment, then at Gogonete Fănică. — I don't make anything of them, he said. — Why not? — Because they won't change the tomatoes, said Quiet Ghiță, and picked up another one. Gogonete Fănică found this philosophically sound within its own limits, though he suspected that tomatoes were not the only criterion by which a political change might be assessed. But Quiet Ghiță was a man who lived in the concrete, and one could not reproach him for it. Beside them at the stall, a woman with a plastic shopping bag was buying peppers and speaking on the telephone about snap elections. She was saying that they were a disgrace and that she knew perfectly well who was behind them, and that she had sent something on WhatsApp to her friend which explained everything — a twenty-three-minute video that made it all crystal clear, you didn't need to be an expert, it was obvious the moment you watched it. Gogonete Fănică wondered whether the twenty-three-minute video was the same as the ones Puiu sent to the group, or a different one, and whether there existed multiple twenty-three-minute videos all explaining the same thing or different things in the same tone of absolute certainty. --- Gogonete Haralambie had possessed no twenty-three-minute videos. He had possessed rumours. The rumours of 1941 travelled on foot, at the pace of a man going from house to house and adding something at each stop — not out of malice, but because the human memory fills its gaps with whatever seems plausible. By the time a rumour had crossed from one end of the town to the other, it had become something entirely different from what it had started out as, though not necessarily less true, since the original truth had itself been uncertain and had been completed by someone. A rumour from August 1941 held that the war would be over by Christmas. Another, a fortnight later, said it would last another year. A third, from a man who had come from elsewhere and whom nobody knew well, said it would never end — that this was the kind of war that does not end but transforms into something else and continues under a different name. Gogonete Haralambie listened to all the rumours with equal goodwill and dismissed none of them, because he did not know which was true and thought perhaps they were all partially true, or that the truth lay somewhere between them — in the space that no rumour occupied with any precision. He repaired ploughs. He looked after a horse that was no longer his but had remained in the yard through administrative inertia. He paid his taxes on the dates they were due, because he was convinced that taxes paid on time are a form of respect for the order of things, even when the order of things did not always return the courtesy. One October evening, Pavăl Dumitru — the neighbour with the valve radio — came to him wearing an expression Gogonete Haralambie had not seen before. — Haralambie, he said. They've stopped broadcasting victories. — What are they broadcasting? — Nothing clear. Music. Speeches. But no victories. — Perhaps the victories have run out, said Gogonete Haralambie. — Or perhaps something else has run out, said Pavăl Dumitru. They sat together in silence and listened to the valve radio, which was broadcasting a march — very firm, very determined — in no particular direction. --- Gogonete Fănică's Smart television was broadcasting, on the evening he had finally resolved to understand snap elections completely and definitively, a debate involving six people who were all speaking at once. Three of them were in the studio. Three appeared on smaller screens in the corners of the large one, like images from a dream in which the same question is being asked simultaneously in different locations and the answers cannot be heard clearly because they overlap. Gogonete Fănică turned off the sound and watched the images in silence, as one might watch a silent film about very agitated people. Without sound, their agitation seemed less urgent and more choreographic — like a dance in which everyone knew the steps but nobody knew where the dance was going. He turned the sound back on and gathered that the subject of the debate was not in fact snap elections, but rather who actually wanted snap elections and why — and that this question about the intentions behind the declared intentions was more important than the snap elections themselves, at least for the people on television, who inhabited a level of reality in which intentions had more substance than facts. The smartphone vibrated. It was Puiu, in the group, with a link and the message: "READ THIS AND UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!!!" followed by three exclamation marks. Gogonete Fănică pressed the link and arrived at a website whose design reminded him of the funfair posters of his childhood — large, coloured letters and a general sense that something extraordinary was about to occur. He read the first paragraph, which stated that snap elections were being imposed by an international organisation; the second, which stated that this organisation also controlled a number of other things, listed without sources; and the third, which requested that he forward the material to a minimum of ten people, since otherwise the information would be suppressed. Gogonete Fănică put the telephone down and looked at the ceiling. His grandfather Gogonete Haralambie had possessed Pavăl Dumitru's valve radio, which broadcast false victories with calm authority. He himself had a Smart television with six people shouting simultaneously, a smartphone with Puiu and his materials, and a news application with daily bombshells. Gogonete Haralambie had known that he did not know. Gogonete Fănică felt that he did not know either, but that the quantity of things claiming to inform him was incomparably greater — which made his not-knowing more cluttered and more exhausting than his grandfather's not-knowing, without being any less a not-knowing. --- The following morning, Gogonete Fănică went to find old Hrihorescu on his bench in the park, who was reading an old newspaper on philosophical principle. — Hrihorescu, said Gogonete Fănică, my grandfather lived through a war in which the radio broadcast nothing but victories. I live now with four television channels and a telephone and still don't know what is happening. How is that possible? Old Hrihorescu lowered his newspaper. It was a month out of date. — Fănică, he said, in '41 there was one device lying. Now there are a thousand devices contradicting one another. The effect is the same. Perhaps worse, because in '41 you knew that one was lying. Now you don't know which of the thousand. — And what do you do about it? — I read old newspapers, said Hrihorescu. They've already been settled. I know how much they were lying. Gogonete Fănică considered this a solution of limited practical application but solid philosophical foundation. --- That evening, Cosmin rang from Italy. It was a video call, because Cosmin was a modern man and believed that seeing his father's face added something to the conversation — which Gogonete Fănică appreciated, though it required him to hold the telephone at a distance sufficient to compensate for his deteriorating eyesight. — Dad, what's the news at home? — They want snap elections, said Gogonete Fănică. — I know, I've seen, said Cosmin. What do you think about it? Gogonete Fănică considered for a moment. — I think those people ought to stay put and do their work, he said. No television appearances. No telephones. No party group chats. Just them, their papers, their legislation, and their wits. — And if they won't? — Your great-grandfather repaired ploughs during a war. He repaired them when they were winning and when they were losing, because the ploughs needed repairing regardless. I checked tickets for twenty-two years regardless of who was in government, because the tickets needed checking. — And the MPs? — The MPs have their own tickets to check. If they won't check them, there are others who will. Cosmin was quiet for a moment. — How many others? — A thousand, said Gogonete Fănică. At the very least. Cosmin laughed — something he did not often do on the telephone — and Gogonete Fănică set the smartphone down on the bedside table beside the 1987 agricultural almanac. --- That night, with the Smart television off and the smartphone glowing in the dark with notifications from Puiu and the news application's daily bombshell, Gogonete Fănică thought about his grandfather Haralambie, who had sat on a wooden crate in place of his confiscated chair and listened to a valve radio broadcasting victories. His grandfather had repaired ploughs. Paid his taxes. Looked after a horse that was not his. He had not known what would happen, and had known that he did not know — which was, in Gogonete Fănică's estimation, a form of wisdom considerably more valuable than Puiu's certainty or that of the six people shouting simultaneously on the television. Gogonete Haralambie had not had the means to know what would happen, because the information media of his era concealed it carefully. Gogonete Fănică had, in theory, the means to know — but the information media of his era informed him with such zeal and in so many simultaneous directions that the theoretical possibility remained theoretical, and the actual truth was impossible to isolate from the general noise, like a human voice in a crowded marketplace in which everyone is shouting the same thing in different accents. The one clear difference, Gogonete Fănică reflected, was that his grandfather had received his disinformation from the state — with uniforms and official stamps — whilst he received his from an algorithm that wore no uniform and required no stamp, being invisible and ubiquitous and perfectly calibrated to his reading habits, which it had calculated with a precision that no intelligence service of 1941 could have dreamt of. The smartphone vibrated once more. It was Puiu, with fresh material. Gogonete Fănică let it vibrate. --- On the third day, Gogonete Fănică went to the local council offices to enquire about a document, and at the queue found Mitică Bostan — the former bus colleague who had put up campaign posters. — Mitică, how are you? — Waiting, said Mitică Bostan. As usual. — And what about these snap elections? Mitică Bostan looked at him with the weariness of a man who has heard that word far too many times in far too short a period. — Fănică, I stuck posters up for three weeks. I drank coffee with people who didn't want coffee. I explained the programme point by point. The man won. Now he wants to leave. — Perhaps he's had enough. — Perhaps. But I haven't had enough of having stuck the posters. And the people who voted for him haven't had enough of waiting for what he promised. Gogonete Fănică understood. — The burden of inherited problems, he said, in a tone that was not his own but belonged to all the speeches he had listened to in recent weeks. — No, said Mitică Bostan shortly. They and their people have been there all along. The whole time. Before and now. There is no inheritance from others. There is only continuity with themselves. At the counter, a clerk called the next number and Mitică Bostan stood up with his papers. — Fănică, he added before leaving, my grandfather used to say that in '41 the people in charge were leading the country to war and calling it victory. Now the people in charge are leading the country somewhere else and calling it progress. The wireless set has changed. The tune is the same. He went to the counter, and Gogonete Fănică remained in the queue, reflecting that Mitică Bostan was angrier than he was, and that his anger was clearer than his own goodwill — which was not necessarily more comfortable, but perhaps more useful. --- Gogonete Fănică walked home, though he could have taken the bus, because he wanted to think, and he thought better when walking — a discovery made during twenty-two years of travelling by bus, where he could not think because he had to check tickets, and which he had applied consistently since retirement. He passed a billboard advertising a new smartphone, slimmer than his and with a larger screen, which promised to connect him to everything that matters. Gogonete Fănică looked at the billboard and wondered how the manufacturer had determined what matters, and whether it matters the same for everyone or differently for different people, and whether a device that connects you to everything that matters simultaneously disconnects you from what does not matter, or makes a more nuanced selection. He found no answer on the billboard, which had not been designed to receive questions, and continued on his way. At home, he put the kettle on and sat at the kitchen table with a sheet of paper. He wrote, carefully: *Grandfather Haralambie — a valve radio — false victories — ploughs repaired.* *Me — a Smart television, a smartphone, a news application, a WhatsApp group with Puiu — snap elections from everyone in all directions — what am I doing that is of any use in all this time?* He looked at the paper. The kettle whistled. Tomorrow, Gogonete Fănică thought, he would go to market, buy tomatoes with the concentration of Quiet Ghiță, sit on the bench with Hrihorescu, ring Cosmin. He would not resolve the snap elections. The snap elections would resolve themselves or not, without his direct contribution — like most large matters that resolve themselves or not without the direct contribution of those who bear the consequences. But if snap elections were truly what they wanted, those who wanted them ought to stand before the people who had elected them and say clearly what they had done, what they had not done, and why. Without television crews behind them. Without party group chats feeding them their lines. Without twenty-three-minute videos in large coloured letters. Just them, a table, some chairs — that nobody had confiscated — and the people in front of them. And if they could not do that, or would not, or considered it unnecessary, then there were, indeed, a thousand people at the gate. Perhaps more. --- *Closing note:* *Gogonete Fănică continues to receive notifications from Puiu and from the news application. He has not stopped them, because the button was buried in the settings and his principle remained that things which are working should not be disturbed. The smartphone glows in the dark as Pavăl Dumitru's valve radio glowed in 1941 — with the same confidence of a device that is functioning, without guaranteeing that what it transmits is true, or that what is true is what it transmits.* *Gogonete Haralambie repaired ploughs until 1953, when there were no longer ploughs to repair in the sense in which he had understood the craft. He left behind a wooden crate — the one he had sat on — and a horse — the one that had not been his and had already left some years before — and a goodwill towards public affairs that his grandson had inherited without knowing quite from where.* *The snap elections remain under discussion. The ploughs, what few remain, are repaired by others.* --- ## Author's Note *— three temporal planes, a single question —* On how a twenty-line pamphlet became a narrative with three temporal planes, a dead blacksmith, a living algorithm, and a citizen who does not know how to find his way out of the settings menu. --- ### The Starting Point — Cristian Stăncescu's Text > **Snap Elections!** > > Why not? That's what everyone claims to want, after all! They claim it. They don't actually believe it. A handful of lads from certain so-called "news" channels are absolutely desperate for snap elections! That's what *they* want, mind you! Let's see what the people want, shall we? The people have only just said what they want — through the ballot box, at the last election, haven't they? Back then, the parties had different leaders, and the electoral promises were still plastered across every fence in the country! Let's have a look, then, at why the current Members of Parliament would want to give up their cosy little seats. Those who formed part of the coalition and dutifully voted through every marvel proposed by the Liberal prime minister — what exactly would they say to the electorate? That they didn't know what they were doing? That the boss told them to? That it was late and they weren't tired? That they'd forgotten their glasses and couldn't quite make out the text? And what will those in the so-called "opposition" say? *"We made little videos on TikTok, the wicked ones refused to pass our bills, they did at least send us abroad on plenty of delegations."* (That last bit they won't say out loud.) **The people on the ground** — the MPs' own supporters — what on earth would they say during a campaign? There will be a campaign, won't there? *"The proposed team is the very best, dear Romanians, dear citizens of Botoșani, dear...!"* They're yours, aren't they — your party's own people? When you put them on the lists, when you put them forward, you — yes, you, party chairman — you knew who they were, didn't you? They were ready for the job, were they? They swore an oath to the country. Not to the party and not to the whims of a few leaders. If they insist on snap elections, they ought to stand before the voters and account for themselves. *"The burden of inherited problems"* cannot be invoked here. They and their people have been in the thick of it all along. Incompetence? Not even that excuse will do. We haven't forgotten the campaign adverts they ran at the last election. So what's left for them? **To work.** No holidays — they've had quite enough of those. No drivers, no secretaries, no advisers to the advisers. Papers, pencils, the statute books, the dictionary — just themselves and their wits. No chatter on the party group chats! That's not where their salaries come from! When the country is running as it should, when every Romanian can be seen to be content — then, by all means, they may take a holiday. Until then — step aside. **There are a thousand people at the gate.** > > *— Cristian Stăncescu* --- It all began with a short, terse, and accurate text. Cristian Stăncescu had written twenty lines about snap elections using the classic instruments of the civic pamphlet: rhetorical interrogation, controlled irony, simulated direct address, an aphoristic sentence at the close. The text worked. It was sharp, it was honest, it belonged to a man who knows how to handle anger without spilling it. The question that opened this narrative was not *what does the text say*, but *how might the same thing be said differently* — with more patience, more flesh on the bone, with characters who carry the argument rather than proclaim it. The answer was Jaroslav Hašek. Not as a model to be imitated mechanically, but as a method: let the absurdity emerge naturally from situations described with maximum seriousness. Do not comment. Show. --- ### The Evolution of the Idea — From Pamphlet to a Narrative in Three Planes The first impulse was simple: translate Stăncescu's arguments into the voice of a naive and well-meaning citizen — a Romanian Švejk. Gogonete Fănică was born from this need — the retired ticket inspector, a man of constitutional goodwill, who hates nobody and for that very reason exposes the absurdity of the situation more effectively than anyone. The second impulse came from a question absent from the original text: *where does this collective incapacity to see clearly actually come from?* And the answer could not be given entirely in the present tense. The present has roots. Today's disinformation has a direct predecessor in yesterday's — which wore a uniform, carried a stamp, and came in the form of a valve radio. From this emerged Gogonete Haralambie, the blacksmith of 1941 — the grandfather who repairs ploughs while Pavăl Dumitru's device broadcasts false victories. The historical plane is not decorative. It is structural. It demonstrates that the mechanism is the same; what has changed is the apparatus, not the tune — as Mitică Bostan puts it in the text, perhaps its most direct moment. The third plane — technofeudalism, smartphones, Smart televisions, Puiu and his twenty-three-minute videos — imposed itself as a logical necessity. If 1941 is a device that lies with authority, and the political present is a stage with six people shouting simultaneously without hearing one another, then the infrastructure linking them is the invisible algorithm that decides what Gogonete Fănică sees each morning when he picks up his telephone. Technofeudalism not as an academic term, but as lived reality: you are the platform's serf without knowing it, because serfdom no longer arrives with chains but with notifications. --- ### Acknowledged Limits **The historical limit.** The 1941 plane is schematic. Gogonete Haralambie is a symbolic character, not a fully constructed one. The summer of 1941 in Botoșani — with its mobilisations, the columns of men moving east, the market prices that said what the newspapers would not — deserves a novel, not a few pages of narrative serving an argumentative function. History has been used here as a mirror for the present, not as a subject in its own right. This is a deliberate simplification and a genuine limitation. **The political limit.** Stăncescu's text names no parties. Neither does this narrative. But declining to name them is not neutrality — it is a choice that protects the argument from immediate perishability whilst depriving it of documentary precision. A text that speaks of all MPs calling for snap elections may appear to accuse them all equally, which is not necessarily just. Some have better reasons than others. Ironic uniformity is a rhetorical instrument, not a legal verdict. **The limit of the character Puiu.** Puiu, who sends twenty-three-minute videos under the heading "THE TRUTH THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU," is treated comically throughout. This is fair — the type exists and is real — but there is an unresolved tension in the text: Puiu may be ridiculous in form and partially correct in substance. Some conspiracy theories are false in their specifics and true in their structure — meaning the system is indeed opaque, undeclared interests do exist, coordination without transparency does occur. Making Puiu entirely comic is a simplification that serves the narrative irony without fully serving the truth. **The limit of the Hašek method.** Hašek is exceptionally effective at exposing absurdity. He is considerably less effective at proposing alternatives. Švejk builds nothing — he subverts. Gogonete Fănică is the same: he sees clearly, describes well, changes nothing. There is a tension between the aesthetic method chosen and the need for real action implied by the subject. This tension is not resolved in the narrative — deliberately — but it must be named. --- ### Internal Tensions **The tension between goodwill and clarity.** Gogonete Fănică is well-disposed towards everyone — the MPs, Puiu, the young man at the party offices. This goodwill is Hašekian and produces the irony. But at certain moments in the text, goodwill becomes passivity, and passivity may be misread as approval. The attentive reader understands the ironic distance. The inattentive reader may conclude that Gogonete Fănică agrees with everyone, which is not the intention. **The tension between the three temporal planes.** The 1941 plane and the technofeudal plane are comparable as mechanisms but not as stakes. To equate wartime disinformation with a Facebook algorithm is an analogy that illuminates the structure whilst potentially minimising historical trauma if taken too literally. The valve radio of 1941 prepared men for death. The algorithm of today prepares people for votes and for consumption. The mechanism is similar. The stakes are not identical. **The tension between the local and the universal.** Botoșani is present in the text as implicit geography — Cătămărești-Deal, the market, the bench in the park. This anchors the narrative and makes it concrete. But the very local concreteness may limit identification for a reader from a different county, a different city, a different geography. Gogonete Fănică belongs to Botoșani; his problem belongs to everyone. --- ### Subjective Errors Acknowledged The 1941 plane ought to have been longer and more specific. It was kept schematic to prevent the narrative from losing its balance — if history grows heavier than the present, the architecture tilts — but the sacrifice is real. Gogonete Haralambie deserves more life than he was given here. Puiu ought to have had one moment of partial lucidity — one detail in which he was right, unintentionally, amid his twenty-three-minute videos. He was kept entirely comic, which is cleaner narratively and less than fully honest. Doamna Gogonete Veronica appears twice and is, on both occasions, more perceptive than any of the men in the text. This is accurate and true and probably insufficiently developed. --- ### The Embedded Arguments — Aesopic Language Decoded The text contains several indirect arguments, framed in apparently neutral or comic terms, which carry an explicit message when read with attention. **Embedded argument 1 — The horse that was not his.***"He looked after a horse that was no longer his but had remained in the yard through administrative inertia."* The horse is the state, or the institution, that the citizen maintains even though it has been formally taken from him or never truly belonged to him. The implicit message: the citizen tends the state out of a sense of duty, not ownership. The state does not consistently tend him in return. **Embedded argument 2 — The button buried in the settings.***"There is, said Petrișor, but it's buried in the settings."* The settings are the mechanisms for exiting the system — unsubscribing, verifying sources, critical thinking — which exist in theory but are designed to be inaccessible to the average user. The platforms do not want you to get off. They want you to stay on the bus. **Embedded argument 3 — The wireless that stops broadcasting victories.***"Haralambie, they've stopped broadcasting victories. — Perhaps the victories have run out."* When propaganda abandons victories and turns to music and speeches, it signals that reality has outpaced the official narrative's capacity to cover it. Applied to the present: when television channels shift from analysis to spectacle and scandal, it is possible that the political narrative can no longer be sustained and is camouflaging itself in noise. **Embedded argument 4 — Shoes that pinch.***"You take the shoes off yourself. You don't hand them to someone else to wear in your place."* A political mandate cannot be returned to the electorate for them to carry in the politician's stead. Snap elections called by those already elected represent an inversion of democratic logic: rather than serving out the mandate received, the problem is handed back to the source — with the interest of a new election campaign added. **Embedded argument 5 — Hrihorescu's old newspaper.***"I read old newspapers. They've already been settled. I know how much they were lying."* An irony about the real-time verification of information: the only certain way of knowing whether a story is true is to wait until it has been confirmed or refuted. But by the time it has been confirmed or refuted, it has already done its work. Hrihorescu is the impossible solution — wise, useless in real time. **Embedded argument 6 — Cosmin from Italy and his sunsets.** The absent son who sends money and photographs of sunsets is the Romania of the diaspora — financially present, civically absent, communicating affection through beautiful images in place of actual presence. This is not an accusation. It is an observation about how attachment functions at a distance in the age of the smartphone. --- ### Rhetorical Devices Identified in the Narrative **Irony through goodwill** — Gogonete Fănică never attacks directly. He extends the most charitable interpretation to everyone, which makes the absurdity more visible than a frontal assault would do. **Structural analogy** — 1941 versus the present, not as a thematic parallel but as a demonstration that the mechanism of disinformation is independent of its technology. Change the device; the function remains. **The revelatory digression** — the bus passenger who pays to the end of the line and gets off at the third stop. Apparently a professional memory; in fact, the moral verdict on abandoned mandates. **Secondary voice as verdict** — Mitică Bostan and Hrihorescu say things that Gogonete Fănică would not say because he is too well-disposed. The secondary characters carry the harder arguments the protagonist avoids by temperament. **Absurdity through precision** — *"between fourteen and twenty-two notifications per day, which he had counted methodically over the course of a week."* Numerical precision applied to chaos produces comedy and simultaneously demonstrates how measurable the digital intrusion is, if one pauses to measure it. **Verdict through silence** — the close of the author's note, like the close of the narrative, reaches no rhetorical conclusion. It leaves an image: ploughs repaired by others, a smartphone glowing in the dark. The conclusion belongs to the reader. --- ### What You Can Do Tomorrow — Five Concrete Suggestions A narrative in the Hašek mode can leave the impression that everything is absurd and that the absurdity is beyond remedy. That is not the intended conclusion. Gogonete Fănică is a character, not a model of passivity. Here are five concrete, modest, feasible things to do tomorrow: **1. Trace a single story back to its primary source.** Do not share, do not comment, do not react to the headline. Read the article in full. Find the source cited in the article. Verify whether the source actually says what the article claims it says. It takes twenty minutes. Do it once tomorrow and note what you find. **2. Leave at least one WhatsApp group in which information is unverified and abundant.** Not all of them. One group. The noisiest one. The one with the most capital letters. The button to leave is not buried in the settings — it is directly in the menu. Gogonete Fănică did not know. You do. **3. Put a specific written question to an MP or local councillor.** Not a general petition. A precise question: *What did you vote for on date X? Why? What measurable effect has it had?* By email, through the institution's official form, via the official page. Both the answer and the absence of one are useful information. **4. Have a face-to-face conversation with someone who holds the opposite view on snap elections.** Not on WhatsApp. Not in the comments. Face to face, over coffee if possible, with no winner. The aim is not to persuade. The aim is to understand where their view comes from and to test whether yours holds up against the reality of theirs. **5. Read the electoral programme of the candidate you voted for at the last election.** It will be on the party or candidate's website. Take a pencil. Tick what has been done. Put a cross against what has not. Not in order to be angry — in order to know. So that the next time your vote is requested, you can say with some precision what a promise actually means. --- ### What to Avoid — Actions That Do Not Help **Do not share material before reading it in full.** The headline is designed to provoke sharing before reading. Sharing without reading is not information — it is the amplification of noise. Puiu exists because there are people who share. Be less Puiu. **Do not confuse indignation with action.** Being indignant and expressing that indignation online produces the sensation that one has done something. One has done nothing. Indignation is useful as a starting energy, not as an end in itself. If you have become indignant, ask yourself: what comes next, concretely? **Do not abstain from voting as a form of protest.** "I won't vote for anyone" is a decision that penalises nobody except yourself. The electoral system does not register your absence as a message — it registers it as absence. If no candidate seems worthy of a vote, a spoilt ballot is still a vote — it is presence with explicit refusal, not absence. **Do not treat all sources as equivalent.** Scepticism towards the press is healthy. Equivalence between all sources — "they all lie equally" — is epistemic paralysis. Some sources lie more, more systematically, with fewer consequences. The difference matters and can be assessed methodically. **Do not wait for the perfect moment to become involved.** There is no perfect moment. There is the present moment, with the incomplete information currently available and the energy currently to hand. Gogonete Haralambie repaired ploughs during the war, not after it. The ploughs did not wait for the war to end. --- *This author's note forms part of the critical apparatus of the narrative and should not be read as a political statement with a declared position. It is an account of a writing process, with its unresolved limits and tensions. If anything in it appears too certain, that is probably the place where the author went wrong.* --- **Written in Botoșani, a political autumn.***With thanks to Cristian Stăncescu for the text that started everything, and to Jaroslav Hašek for the method that transformed it.* --- **Final verdict:** Petru Cojocaru has a talent for the sentence and a sense of rhythm, but here he has fallen in love with his own voice and his own intelligence. The result is a text that is inflated, self-satisfied, and ultimately forgettable. It would have been considerably more powerful as a short, sharp pamphlet — like Cristian Stăncescu's original. Rather than enriching it, he has drowned it in goodwill, strained historical parallels, and meta-literature. ---