Poland is now among the 20 largest economies

No. Not at all inevitable. Poland might have descended into kleptocracy, e.g. Hungary. That this did not happen is worthy of investigation. I'm not holding my breath however; the findings would probably not be welcome.

"A general lack of ideological 'mind viruses' that seem to plague the western world"

Indeed. Poland frequently disappoints the rest of the EU with its stubborn indifference to obligatory Western moral panics.

This is an ahistorical view lacking nuance. Stanislaus found himself in an impossible situation. He was not the Russian pawn you uncharitably make him out to be. Rather, he often used his position to strengthen the Commonwealth in ways that were at odds with Russian interest. Recall that he inherited the throne of a state that was already on its last legs. Russia held a knife at the Commonwealth's throat. He was walking a very thin tightrope with Russia. His efforts, at the very least, contributed to giving Poles a greater cultural ability to survive the subsequent partition, giving it focus.

> nobody ever felt in Poland like in ancient Rome.

I suspect you (uncharitably) suppose I mean everyone in the streets was walking around speaking Latin. That's obviously not what I meant. I am referring specifically to the educated class - sons of the nobility, magnates, clergy, statesmen, diplomats, senators, scholars, the royal court, even country squires. The szlachta's Sarmatian culture saw itself as a spiritual successor to the Roman Republic, and it showed.

> The few scientific achievements from the interwar period are gone forever without heritage or even continuity [...etc, etc, blah, blah, blah...]

This is such a fantastically amusing few lines.

No.

Because Russia has specifically invested in propaganda efforts influencing rural voters in Poland to support Polish far-right parties (and PiS), using it to foster anti-EU and anti-Ukraine sentiment.

The Polish farmers blocking the border checkpoints used for delivery of military aid to Ukraine a few years ago as "ptotest" was a mirror image tactic of the Canadian conservative truckers blocking the roads.

Russian investment and collusion with conservative and authoritarian movements worldwide — and MAGA in particular — is well-documented. I welcome you to read Mueller's report.

>Don't politicise where it is not applicable

Don't tell me what to do.

You're out of your depth here to determine what's applicable, and what isn't.

>this has nothing to do with the cat fight between 'democrats' and republicans

It has everything to do with the geopolitics and the war taking place in Ukraine, in which both Poland and the US hold a stake (and are both targeted by Russian influence campaigns on that dimension).

Not the "cat fight". The real war.

Look, I'm a Ukrainian-American who went to Ukraine during the war (spent a month in Kyiv in 2023), and lived in Poland for about a year.

I speak Ukrainian, Russian, and English at native proficiency, and I know enough Polish to be renting an apartment there, owning a car, etc.

Russian disinformation campaigns are my special interest. I can tell you a lot about Surkov's postmodern Firehose-of-Falsehood machinery, Gerasimov's hybrid war doctrine, and how it was instrumental in the 2014 invasion of Ukraine as well as 2016 US election meddling and the rise of MAGA.

I can direct you to RAND and RUSI studies, books and articles by Pomerantsev, Applebaum, Gessen, which will give you a wider look into Russia's hand in the right-wing "conservative" voices across the world and in the EU in particular (Orban in Hungary, Fico in Slovakia, AfD in Germany, and PiS supporters in Poland).

But you really won't learn anything if you insist on projecting your myopic US-centric attitude that purports that MAGA is a dem-vs-not-dem "cat fight".

I'm happy that you get to live in a world where you can avoid "politicizing" politics.

Out in the real world, complaining about the EU while living in a EU country whose economy was lifted from shambles by the EU is inherently a political issue.

And it's not coincidentally similar to MAGA supporters e.g. rallying against Obamacare only to discover that they literally depend on it for survival, and in general, voting against Democrats while benefitting from and depending on the policies that Democrats established.

And it's not coincidental that the Polish anti-EU rural voters are sharing the anti-immigration, "they took our jobs" sentiment with MAGA even as immigration provided an immense boost to both the US and Polish economy.

Ukrainians number in millions in Poland because of the war; MAGA's anti-Mexican sentiment maps 1:1 to anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland — specifically because Russian information warfare efforts help fuel both (it's a literal industry in Russia, with infamous St. Petersburg human-staffed "bot farms" being well exposed by now).

I'm not saying that all MAGA is like that, but there is a sufficiently big overlap (and a sufficient amount of evidence) that me saying that those rural anti-EU folks are Polish MAGA has a lot more weight than you are realizing.

As other commenters have pointed out, by the way.

So, if I may: please revert your downvote and learn.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.