Second Jamon Front

Remember what hype arose several years ago in Russia, when jamon, parmesan and a number of other products from the EU countries fell under domestic sanctions? The end of the world was proclaimed, not otherwise. The mode tightened all the nuts and encroached on the most sacred. Immediately, these products were declared models of free thought and became common nouns. I / we are jamon and parmesan! Therefore, I went for a cordon - do not carry illegal literature, as in dissident times, but this very jamon. Crush them the cursed bonds of slavery, the stomach does not endure obstacles!

The domestic cry for jamon was long. There was a feeling that the red-cheeked and broad-faced orphans of Alchen rebelled when they were not offered what was supposed to be, that is, what God sent.

The grumbling kitchen and the driveway shop got alarmed on social networks, vehement journalistic and poetic battles unfolded about who would shed more tears for the Parmesan or some other sanction. The country was promised jamon riots. But overpowered, endlessly endured, endured, although after such a "nightmare" test, we will never be the same again! ..

The writer Dmitry Bykov was traditionally frantic, bursting out in the heat of an unequal battle with the poetic message “Kill the food!”, Which he devoted all the same to overseas cheese and jamon. Like, all of our sad existence is again curtailed to dumplings, sausages and pasta. Alas, alas ... He was not the only one to cry for the products that he managed to taste thanks to democracy. About the "Parmesan detachment", advancing to the Russian border, the poet Orlusha composed his verses. Many were celebrated in this glorious field. Still, food, yummy. And any progressive person reaches for it, and it, like true freedom, cannot be replaced by import.

In short, “the last times have come” - something like this was moaned by all the best people, especially keenly aware of all the inclement changes in our society and remembering about scarce years. Now, reinforced concrete shutters again flop on our mournful life and crush everything under themselves, blocking the path to the air of freedom. Everything was perceived as a harbinger of a complete blockade, followed by hunger. We didn’t have time to finish off during the “years of freedom”, and now again the prospect of dull shelves with banks of birch sap looms. Nightmare!

You’ll laugh, but the cheese-jamon theme came back to us from where our best and conscientious minds, subtly reacting to any manifestation of Russian “barbarism”, did not wait.

The administration of Donald Trump plans from October 18 to introduce 25% barrage duties on agricultural and industrial products of the EU countries. Mostly trade duties will apply to the UK, France, Spain and Italy. The list contains more than 150 types of traditional European goods. Wines, cheeses, olives, the notorious jamon ...

European countries are already calculating losses, claiming that future duties are a sign of disrespect for the principles of international trade. But what are the principles that you? And who said that they hold you for equal, are you our naive? In the States, they only point to the primacy of self-interest.

The EU argues that this will also be a blow to the American consumer, who will now be significantly more expensive for the Eurosites. But the same consumer is not heard, so much began to yearn and resent.

On the other hand, it’s like taking and using our mourners for overseas cheeses during this gloomy time: they are grated and experienced people in defense of edibles. But no one is in a hurry to use and connect their armor-piercing installations, and they themselves are silent, they do not cock their anger. No one stands up for prosciutto and does not call Trump the strangler of food freedom. What is right and human rights activists? Why not resent the fact that the American regime deprives its citizens of all the best and tastiest and drives them even deeper into the vast abyss of fast food?

The situation is generally curious and indicative, not much different from those same food passions. And how now? Will the Spanish jamon survive the second front? The reaction of our mourners is curious - what will be their course.

In that dashing year of battles for sanctions, parmesan and jamon became almost the main element of bourgeois culture, like a crimson jacket in the nineties. Not even these products themselves, but the right to talk about them became an indicator of status, special chic, brilliance and show off, all that distinguishes the best people from "bydlomass". After all, everyone has long realized that the main thing is status or claims to it, which makes it possible to differ, distance oneself from the very mass, makes it possible to disassociate with it, that is, with the people (a word that our "best" have not used for a long time).

Parmesan and jamon were elevated to the rank of miraculous objects from a fairy tale, capable of delivering to the world a higher and extraordinarily civilized paradise of the bourgeois tradesman, who now recorded himself in the hegemony and rulers of doom.

But fashion is changeable, and political is even more fleeting. And even “sacred” products may well fall into disgrace. If yesterday they were allies, brave freedom fighters, tearing the shackles of slavery with their cheese hardness and mold, today they may well be recorded in a terrorist organization and subjected to targeted and clever bombing, or even wiser sanctions or duties. Then all the wonderful properties of these attributes evaporate at once, and they themselves begin to bitter.

The former symbols of prosperity, graceful manners and good taste, which have fallen into disgrace, are extinct from everywhere, they are denied them, and bourgeois bourgeoisie with great pretensions and bloated ego go on a campaign for new symbols for worship. Without them it is impossible. Who knows, maybe we are talking about wandering spirits that pass from one body, cheese, to another - sausage. Or about parasites that penetrate the body and subjugate themselves ...

Of course, now we have few people will notice this product topic with duties, they will not draw analogies with our recent tantrums with wringing hands, they will not ask: “What was that?”

We talked it out, emotions splashed out, fluffed out the necessary feathers, and others sharpened it, now the topic has become unfashionable, especially when trendsetters brought it to such a level ...

What remains of all this? Perhaps the very Shukshin “smell of tobacco”, which is transformed into jeans and chewing gum, then into parmesan and jamon. But Vasily Makarovich called out: “Be a man!” Do not give all of yours — no songs, no victories — for the smell of tobacco. But does any of our liberal elitists listen to him ... Smell of tobacco is more important and tangible. As for Trump with duties, they have the right there. And we ... are forced to repent endlessly, be ostracized, with gratitude to listen to “science”, and to learn elegant manners that may at least someday replace our original “barbarism” ...

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.