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A poor farmer went to a priest for advice: "Father, I live in a tight little room with my four children, my wife, my grandmother and my mother-in-law. We don't fit in this one room. I can't cope. What should I do?" The priest said: "I heard you have a goat in the barn?" "Yes, Father. I have one goat, whose milk I feed my children," the farmer replied. "Then bring the goat home," the priest said. "Father! Me, my wife, my children, my grandmother, my mother-in-law and a goat on top of that? That's not possible." The priest didn't give up - "Do as I say, you have to bring the goat home and come back to me in a week." After a week, the desperate farmer visited the priest: "Father, me, my wife, my children, my grandmother, my mother-in-law and a goat. That's no way to live." The priest says, "Take the goat back to the barn and come back to me in a week." After another week, the farmer visits the priest and says, "Father, you are so wise. We have so much space in the house now, it makes us want to live."

This old joke illustrates very well how everything is relative and how today, after six years of PiS rule, we Poles have changed our perception of the principles that should guide those in power and what changes have occurred in our Polish sensitivity and empathy.

In the past, failure to disclose a watch in one's possession ended one's political career, and eating octopus removed governments from power. Today, one can throw 70 million on elections that will not take place, 2 billion on a power plant that will never be built, and 100 million on respirators that cannot be started, and in return enjoy recognition for caring for the fate of one's compatriots. Today, a border guard who throws a child over the fence to the Belarusian side is seen as a hero fighting to protect our border, and not as an empathetic and inhuman executor of stupid orders. Today, the resolution of the municipal council to introduce LGBT-free zones is read as a manifestation of the councilors' concern for our families, and not as a disgusting exclusion of a large part of our society.

This is nothing more than the effect of a shitty background, to use a term well known to psychology students. Against a shitty background, a thief can seem like a philanthropist, a liar can be confused with a truth teller, ag*wno can pass for candy. The colors for this, our, contemporary, Polish background were chosen by an old man from Żoliborz, and the painters are his acolytes.

PiS has done a lot of big dirty tricks over the last six years. But we don't see it. It seems to us that everything it does is to change Poland for the better. This is the result of lies and manipulation that we have unknowingly submitted to.

Somewhere, once I read a neat illustration of the phenomenon of manipulation. When a mother says to her child, "Put on a hat, or you'll freeze your ears," it's hard to tell whether it's manipulation or not. If the mother says it thinking about the child's health, it's not manipulation but influencing the child for a good purpose. However, if she says it to brag to the village about what a beautiful hat she bought for her child, it's manipulation of her own child. In short, we manipulate others when our intentions don't match what we say and do.

PiS manipulates by saying that judges who steal drills from supermarkets should be removed from adjudicating, because its intention is not to cleanse the justice system of people who have problems with the law, but to subordinate the judiciary to itself. PiS manipulates by saying that it cares about protecting life from conception, because its intention is solely to curry favor with its most hardline, Catholic electorate. PiS manipulates by saying that it gives 500+ in the interests of Polish fertility, because its intention is to buy electoral votes. PiS manipulates by saying that people's freedom should be respected and that they cannot be forced into mandatory vaccinations, because its intention is to maintain an anti-vaccination electorate. PiS manipulates by saying that it wants to protect the Polish media market from capital from outside the European Union, because its intention is to liquidate TVN, which will help them maintain power.

Fortunately, bad power cannot be maintained forever. Bad power sooner or later passes. As history shows, bad power ends either by its own will or by being removed by people. In the case of PiS, there is no indication that their removal will be for the latter reason, because we have been too seduced by their manipulations and do not want to remove them from power at all. This power will end through wear and tear, rot and stumbling over its own feet. Sooner than you might think.