A look back at 2022.
It hasn't been an easy year. In terms of relevance, it was not behind the others. We had high hopes for it, but few came true.
A sure symbol of what we live in was the sound of the speeches of the highest statesmen, namely the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister. A sceptic might say that it was a futile battle between the marketers of two interest groups, one of which relies on ostentatious negation, on the initiation of social diversity and on the confusion of values in order to maintain and eventually develop structures of influence. The other group offers, albeit with a certain elegance, but somewhat cluelessly, instruments that bring neither effect nor hope and, moreover, are presented with a low level of clarity and comprehensibility. Petr Fiala certainly did not disappoint in form or dress. His calm and composed speech with a minimum of gestures and restrained facial expressions was a good combination of confidence and respect. It is encouraging to see our Prime Minister in good form and to hear a speech without grammatical errors. A better job could have been done by the editor and director, especially with the insensitive alternation of close-ups and semi-integers, and the co-author of the speech could have also kept an eye on the problematic phrase 'expensive prizes'. Earlier, the President of the Republic had delivered his own speech. The first third of Miloš Zeman's Christmas message was relatively topical, overly educational, economically oriented and with minor syntactical errors. The rest of the speech was a boring, pathetically sentimental balance sheet. The clucking and coughing seemed out of place, and the premature extinguishing of one of the spotlights gave the impression that it was past closing time and time to pay up and leave.
One can expect no more from speeches by statesmen than an assurance that everything is under control, despite certain difficulties, missteps, blunders and mistakes, which of course always occur. However, these messages usually miss their intended recipients and end up with political commentators, analysts, journalists and other such persons and institutions. So it is probably unnecessary to attach much weight to the content of Christmas and New Year speeches. PF 2023.