A brief history of the best of all possible worlds

(N1 Croatia)

It is the twenty-eighth of March, spring has begun with bombs in the Middle East, Lebanon is now burning, two thousand Lebanese refugees have arrived in Cyprus, in Israel - thank you for asking - the situation is normal, in Jerusalem the police have arrested about fifty Palestinian female students and three of their teachers who were demonstrating against the Israeli army's incursion into schools in the West Bank, the Secretary-General of the Arab League is asking the Secretary-General of the United Nations for urgent UN intervention, due to the Middle East crisis, the Egyptian National Security Council is even proposing the establishment of a joint military force of Arab countries, while Europe is meanwhile dealing with itself and its own problems: the Director-General of the German Employment Office, for example, is warning that one million and two hundred thousand unemployed Germans do not want to work on construction sites, in steel mills and factories, and that the German economy urgently and desperately needs foreign workers.

In Croatia, however, the topic of the day is the just-concluded traditional poetry event Goran's Spring: Goran's wreath on the old, balding head of the poetic classic, deep in his eighth decade of life, caused a stir in the Croatian public and demands to change the method of selecting laureates, and that in the future the award be awarded so that the poets themselves choose the best among them, in order to avoid, I quote, "the one who wins the hearts of those in whose hands the ballots are only through popularity, perfection of showmanship or the 'courage' of public performance".

Okay, when I write "Croatian public", it's just saying that: after the news from culture and the winner of Goran's Spring, the Croatian public is actually waiting for the broadcast from Madrid and the winner of the spectacular match of the strongest European football club competition between Real and Bayern. In Split, for example, the announcement of the "Competition for the urban architectural solution of the Spinut-Poljud sports and recreation zone in Split with the NK Hajduk football stadium and the top sports zone" is more important than the Middle East crisis, Goran's wreath, and the Real-Bayern match.

That's what it looked like on the twenty-eighth of March, when a monstrosity three football fields long and the entire campanile of St. Duje emerged from the spring morning mist in front of the Split harbor, occupying the entire island of Brač on the horizon. That was when a gigantic American aircraft carrier, the largest warship ever built, an entire floating city with five thousand inhabitants - and the capital of the famous American Sixth Fleet - arrived in our city as part of a mission in the scorching Middle East, and the mayor, Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll Jr., laid a wreath at the foot of the Fallen Sailor Memorial Lighthouse, accompanied by the Yugoslav Navy orchestra and the anthem "Hey Slaveni", paying tribute to the fallen partisan sailors.

Oh yes, I forgot to say: it's the twenty-eighth day of March - 1976.

That long-ago spring, the civil war in Lebanon was raging, Beirut was burning in clashes between right-wing phalanxes and left-wing militias, Israel was occupying Galilee, the Zionists were planning to settle the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli representative to the United Nations, Chaim Herzog, was furious at non-aligned Yugoslavia at a Security Council meeting for its positions on the Israeli-Arab conflict, and Ambassador Jakša Petrić responded that "we will not allow ourselves to be taught about democracy and human rights by those who have resorted to aggression, illegal occupation and acts of state terrorism for many years."

After returning from Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, President Josip Broz Tito traveled to the Kingdom of Sweden at the invitation of King Carl XVI Gustaf, and on the same day, in Split - by the way, amidst the controversy in the Croatian public over the awarding of the Goran Wreath to the aging classic Dobriši Cesarić and the competition for the urban architectural design of the stadium at Poljud for the 1979 Mediterranean Games - as part of a mission to the Middle East, a three hundred and thirty meter long sea monster, the pride of the Sixth Fleet and a veteran of the Vietnam War, the famous American aircraft carrier USS Saratoga CV-60, arrived.

The chroniclers, however, missed the fact that the arrival of the three football fields long and Dalmatia Tower high nuclear aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford CVN-78 last Saturday, March 28th, fell on the exact and round fiftieth anniversary of the famous visit of its predecessor at the head of the famous Sixth Fleet, the old Saratoga, which appeared in front of the Split harbor on March 28th, 1976.

Such coincidences are rare and beautiful historical occasions for settling accounts: what changed in those round and exact half a century from one March twenty-eighth to the next? Well, except for Goran's wreath, which, to the horror of the Croatian public, fifty years after Dobriša Cesarić, was crowned with the old, balding head of the classic who, deep in his eighth decade of life, sings, "look at the little pussy after the rain, it's full of drops and swaying"?

I remember that March 28, 1976, well: after lunch, we from the street rushed to the Riva, where American sailors loaded us onto boats that allowed citizens to go sightseeing on the huge floating island every day from two to five in the afternoon. Enchanted like those kids who greet the oceanic Rex in Fellini's Amarcord in the sea mist - which we were watching at a matinee at the Tesla cinema just those days - we watched the mythical Saratoga off Split, climbed onto the giant sea monster and enthusiastically took boxes of unfiltered Camel or Pall Mall from American sailors, issues of Playboy and Hustler, chocolate bars, chewing gum and other American crap, like real, real cans of Coca-Cola, the kind we had only seen in movies until then, and which we kept on the shelves like totems for years later: we were little morons, we were twelve and we thought that the world of Coca-Cola was the best of all possible worlds.

What did we know? In those days - just one example - after visiting Saratoga Sports Wednesday and the broadcast of the Real-Bayern match, we were waiting for what seemed like a round of the domestic championship: The Champions League was then called the Champions Cup, and Real and Bayern did not play in the quarterfinals, but in the semifinals, where - the older ones will be reluctant to remember - Hajduk was supposed to play in the other pair, eliminated two weeks earlier in that tragedy with overtime in Eindhoven.

When, however, exactly fifty years later, last Saturday, March 28, the giant silhouette of the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest warship ever built - ten meters longer than the old Saratoga - appeared in front of the Split harbor - there was no longer Hajduk in the quarterfinals of the Champions Cup, nor were there curious children to cram into boats to tour the floating Disneyland with chocolate bars, chewing gum and Pall Mall without a filter. This time, the crew of the American giant did not arrive in Split to lay a wreath to the Partisan sailors, on a mission to maintain friendly relations with the world's small non-aligned power, but for "regular maintenance and a short vacation", after missions in the Caribbean, Red and Mediterranean Seas, anchored off the coast of Venezuela and the Middle East.

And it's not the first time either: this is the third visit to Split for the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, it sails here regularly like an Italian cruiser, and it was anchored in front of the Split port half a year earlier, last fall. At that time, it was true, not in the middle of World War III, but in the middle of the financial shutdown in the United States, the blockade of the American state budget, because of which it docked in the Split port only for the purpose of - purchasing the necessary supplies. In short, to buy chocolate bars, chewing gum, cigarettes and cans of Coca-Cola in Split. Fifty years later, you understand, we have had American nonsense at home for a long time. All since we live in the world of Coca-Cola, the best of all possible worlds.

So, terrified that the pride of the American Sixth Fleet has anchored under our window in the middle of an undeclared Third World War, we lean over a map of the best of all possible worlds and calculate the range of Iranian ballistic missiles.