Happy new age

Elon Musk shared some thoughts from Stephen Nikola Bartulica on his X-profile, and that's probably all you need to know about the world we woke up in with a hangover after welcoming the happy New Year 2025.

American tycoon Elon Musk, one of the most powerful and certainly the richest man in the world, a financial wizard worth almost five hundred billion dollars - every sixtieth dollar of the US gross domestic product is in Musk's wallet! - is the owner of the social network X, formerly Twitter, but also the founder and owner of the Tesla automobile concern, the space exploration company SpaceX and several other technology companies and foundations, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, research companies in the field of neurotechnology and artificial intelligence, and a close associate and advisor to the new old President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, executive director of the newly established Office of Government Efficiency DOGE, an eccentric known for greeting with his right hand raised high.

Stephen Nikola Bartulica, also known as Stjepo, is a Croatian politician and financial wizard who, after paying the monthly installment of a loan to buy a house, lived with his wife on thirty-eight euros a month. This eccentric improved his family budget by winning a mandate in the European Parliament as a candidate of the Homeland Movement on the HDZ list, which he celebrated by driving around the city in the red Ferrari of a well-known Zagreb criminal who had been finally convicted of attempted murder, when the spokesman for the Croatian radical right, Velimir Bujanec, who had been convicted of paying prostitutes with cocaine, greeted him with the words “Donald Trump sent him to us!”, after which he left the Homeland Movement and founded his own party, Dom i nazionalno okuljanje.

The world's leading information and industrial mogul, one of the most powerful people on the planet and the high-handed right-hand man of the American president, in short, in his free time - between lunch with Donald Trump and a meeting at DOGE about abolishing the FBI - scrolls through his smartphone and on his social network profile enthusiastically shares the speech of a completely useless Croatian conservative, who convinced his voters that he lives on one euro a day, so they sent him to Brussels on a salary of eight thousand euros, and who, after the end of his European mandate, will be remembered by exactly as many people as MEP Sinčić today. Whom the rest of us remember anyway only because his name is Vili Dalibor.

Yes, Ivan Vilibor.

It is probably the same as if the world had woken up hungover after welcoming the happy New Twentieth Century and found the richest man in the history of the United States, John D. Rockefeller - the founder of the oil giant Standard Oil Company and the owner of every sixtieth dollar of the then American GDP - as a generous financier and close associate of President William McKinley, in his spare moments, between lunch at the White House and a meeting with pioneers of the historic Efficiency movement, the capitalist Efficiency Movement from the turn of the century, while walking past the Croatian homeland club, he found some obscure European magazine on the street, some "Balkan", and in it an article by a certain Aleksandar Šandor Brešćenski, a Catholic activist and president of the Pure Party of Rights, or Croatia, as it is now known. After which the delighted old Rockefeller rents out entire pages of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and conveys Šandor's extraordinary thoughts about, I have no idea, the lying mainstream media and the judgments of ordinary people, turned to the Croatian Catholic press and new media, which "imbued with a true Christian and patriotic Croatian spirit, refute everything that contradicts the teachings of the Church".

With the proviso that the aforementioned, as you said his name was, Aleksandar Šandor Brešćenski, unlike Stephen Nikola Bartulica, was at least a university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb.

The comparison is, of course, stupid - both the one between Brešćenski and Bartulica, and the one between Rockefeller and Musk - but the frantic and wild century that has settled between them has finally abolished everything that separated the rich and powerful world masters from even the eccentrics from the outskirts of Washington, let alone from the distant outskirts of the known world. And the most precise measure of our age is precisely its Rockefeller Elon Musk and the petty, insignificant Croatian Catholic scoundrel Stephen Nikola Bartulica.

And what is it - I see you're interested - that our Stjepo-named Stephen Bartulica is thinking about, that Mr. Musk is so enthusiastic? Well, I told you: about the mainstream media, the judgments of ordinary people and new media, which, imbued with the true Christian and Croatian spirit, refute everything that contradicts the teachings of the Church. Okay, not exactly those words of Šandor Brešćenski - after all, a whole century has passed since him - but that's about it.

“Older people in Croatia still watch television, but young people get their information through YouTube and social networks, X is growing in Croatia, and I communicate with young people on these platforms. This is the future, the biases and lies of the mainstream media have been exposed to the point of no return, they are collapsing and everything is ready for a new era of political communication. I think it is healthy, this is a good time, we want more freedom, choices, and I believe in the judgment of ordinary people. In Brussels, many see themselves as masters, not servants of the people, which is why they want to regulate and censor speech,” says Croatian Catholic activist and politician Stjepo Bartulica in an interview with Mario Nawfal, an Australian entrepreneur and host of the popular The Roundtable Show on the X platform, and his profound observations are then enthusiastically shared on his profile by the owner of the platform, Elon Musk, in a post titled “Croatian MEP: mainstream media is dead, now X is the media!”

Which, let's be clear, is undoubtedly true.

What, honestly, could be the problem with such a small thing?

Namely, if in this "new era of political communication" people no longer watch television or read newspapers, but instead watch YouTube and read X, why would anyone alive be annoyed and worried about "classic mainstream media"? If in the equation the classic "mainstream media is dead", and they are, and if YouTube and X are "media now", and they are, then - just a moment to calculate, I delete MM, write Y, remember X - then in that equation the new mainstream media turn out to be X and Y.

Yes, Bartulica will say, but the classic mainstream media is controlled by wealthy powerful people who, as they say, "see themselves as masters, not servants of the people", and "therefore want to regulate and censor speech", and control ordinary, little people. Very good. Except that "ordinary people", I remind you, no longer follow the mainstream media, and except that their "servant of the people" in that equation has a monthly salary equal to the annual income of "ordinary people".

And besides the fact that the powerful person in this equation is Elon Musk, owner of the X network, the richest man in the world, director of the Office of Efficiency with complete control over the US payment systems and free access to confidential data of American taxpayers, a tycoon who, through "biases and lies", and "censorship and regulation" of objectionable content, has so cleaned and regulated his mainstream media that even the beacon of freedom, Vladimir Putin, is seriously considering lifting the ban on X in Russia these days.

"Musk has fallen", as Mr. Bartulica would say.

Yes, "mask", sorry.

Everything is therefore "ready for a new era", "this is a good time". The very one that, according to that popular equation of right-wing populists and idiots, gives birth to "weak people", who will then create "bad times", to give birth to "strong people" who will ultimately create "good times".

Just a little patience.

(n1info.hr)