State of Failure: Splorts

Belgians are mostly world champions in sports that enjoy almost no international recognition, such as pigeon sport, three-cushioning and field cycling.

Yet, there are some achievements by Belgian sport professionals that have been etched into the collective national memory:

The interbellum giants: at the Antwerp Summer Olympics (1920), Belgian athletes achieve 36 gold medals, all in archery and clay pigeon shooting. All winners were former military police and army officers who had had ample opportunities to practice their trade in the trenches and on striking miners.

The cycling emperors Rik I and II: after WW2, Rik I Van Steenbergen rules cycling with an iron fist.  Rik II Van Looy then becomes an especially cruel and pitiless tyrant, who, by his own admission, wanted “to kill everything in sight”. The Rik dynasty only abdicates when Rik I is caught playing a role in a porno movie in 1968.

Steeple chasing: during a police control in 1963, liquor salesman Gaston Roelants wants to prove his produce has no influence on athletic achievements and reaction time. He puts on a pair of running shoes and 9 minutes later, covers a 3km distance with hurdles and water puddles. A legend is born.

Rivals forever: Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck. Merckx becomes an international cycling celebrity and wins pretty much everything there is to win on nothing but a diet of sandwiches. Roger De Vlaeminck would later rival this achievement, but then in womanizing.

The Silver Generation of Mexico ’86: although Belgium came 4th in the FIFA World Cup, the country celebrates as though it has won the Cup because it had defeated the Netherlands.

The discovery of Jean-Michel Saive: Saive discovers that pulling up his table tennis shorts to just under his armpits gives him a huge advantage, and thus humiliates millions of Chinese. The IOC rewards Saive for this achievement with a quadrennial ticket to the Olympics until he turns 82.

Big in Japan: in the ‘80s, Judo men Robert Van De Walle and Ingmar Berghmans make major strides to international fame. Later, ultra-liberal Jean-Marie Dedecker cashes in on these spectacular achievements by training an entire generation of female bodyguards for Muammar Qaddafi.

God on la Redoute: Frank Vandenbroucke goes stratospheric and wins Liège-Bastogne-Liège, just as he predicted. Everyone goes insane, most of all VDB himself. He soon takes over the Ministry of Education and shoots at his colleagues with a hunting rifle.

Tennis on the edge: JuJu vs Kim. Young Kim Clijsters reaches the upper echelons of female tennis in the early ‘00s. As a consequence of Belgian ‘waffle iron’ politics, a Walloon player is guided to the top as well: Justine Hénin. Both women compete with one another in titanic battles, fired up by enflamed crowds of fans. Justine is now being kept alive artificially, whereas Kim is now quadriplegic and can’t eat on her own anymore.

The Golden Generation of ’18: Belgium comes in 3rd in the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, defeating Brazil and defeating England twice just for the sake of getting England to shut up about their faded glory.

State of Failure: the Land at Large (b)

Political structure

Belgium is infamous for its many governments and administrative structures, because why do things the easy way if you can do them in the worst way possible? The federal government currently comprises a right-wing, two centre-right parties and a party of martyred Christians who have perfected the art of turning the other butt cheek time and again.

Desperate to outdo the 500+ days without government and the immobilism under the Di Rupo administration, the Michel administration is doing everything it can to be a disaster in almost all policy areas.

Meet our government:

• Charles Michel (MR): PM and a character from the popular board game ‘Who is it?’
• Jack Ham (N-VA): Minister of the Interior and Imaginary Dance Parties
• Didier Reynders (MR): Minister of Foreign Affairs and ventriloquist doll for Big Finance
• Kris Peeters (CD&V): Minister of Employment and Blandness
• Alexander De Croo (Open Vld): Minister of Telecom and the 9th Earl of the Crooland
• Denis Ducarme (MR): Minister of the Middle Class, who has steadily been melting away into a puddle
• Sophie Wilmès (MR): Minister of Budget, currently resides in a shantytown with no electricity
• Marie-Christine Marghem (MR): Minister of Burn-Outs
• François Bellot (MR): Minister of Immobility and Endless Traffic Jams
• Daniel Bacquelaine (MR): Minister of Old People and Benefits for MPs
• Steven Vandeput (N-VA): Minister of Defence – also illiterate, thus unable to read reports
• Johan Van Overtvelt (N-VA): Minister of Fraud – can’t do basic math
• Koen Geens (CD&V): High Priest of Justice, regularly defuses tension with his Christian demureness
• Maggie De Ronde (Open Vld): Minister of Health
• Theo Francken (N-VA): Secretary against Migration, noted for his absence of eyebrows and scruples
• Zuhal Demir (N-VA): Secretary against Equal Rights
• Pieter De Crem (CD&V): Secretary for Foreign Dining
• Philippe De Backer (Open Vld): Secretary of Privacy, the North Sea and Peepshows
• Darth De Wever (N-VA): The government’s mother-in-law, Sith Lord and Antwerp’s God-Emperor
• Pol Van Den Driessche (N-VA): The government’s creepy uncle

The government of Flanders and the Dutch-speaking Community are led by MinPres Geert Burgerman (N-VA), the first wax statue to ever rise to this position in the region. Wallonia’s MinPres is Willy Borsus (MR), a fiscal construct that thrives in darkness. Wallonia’s rule also extends to the East Cantons.

The German-speaking Community’s MinPres is Oliver Paasch (PRO.DG), a person no one gives a particular shit about and who holds so little power he even has to ask Borsus permission to visit the toilet.

Brussels’ MinPres is Rudi Vervoort (PS), one of the less corrupt politicians from the PS and thus hated by most people in his own party. Furthermore, Flanders/Dutch-speaking Community as well as the French-speaking Community each hold a stake in the Brussels government as well, parachuting incompetent imbeciles into admin jobs by way of social employment.

To combat other forms of unemployment, a position for MinPres of the French-speaking Community was co-created by Wallonia and Brussels, and this is Rudy the Moth (PS), a giant insect with a receding hairline.

Cuisine and food

In terms of cuisine, Belgium enjoys worldwide renown. Most of its food stuffs originated as food for poor people – fries, mussels, battered fish, cold stew and several fruit syrups. It is often said that Belgian cuisine offers French quality in German quantities. This is probably true, judging by the prevalence of obese middle-aged and old people to whom restaurant visits are observed with religious zeal.

“Staying together for the kids” is American, “staying together to complain about bad food and service” is 100% Belgian.

Every town quarter in Belgium – and in its neighbouring cities – has at least one frietkot/friterie. In these places, class, race, language, age and gender don’t matter. Everyone is there for their love of fries. While the death penalty doesn’t exist in Belgium, people who don’t like frites are shunned by civilized society. More and more, traditional frietkoten/friteries are hosted by immigrant Chinese, Turkish or Moroccan people. Belgians absolutely do not mind as long as the quality of their products is good.

While Belgians may be racist from time to time, they are not racist when it comes down to foreign cuisines. Thai, American, Chinese, Turkish, Irish, Hungarian, Moroccan, Indian, Mexican, Indonesian, Swedish, Italian, Greek, Spanish and Japanese food have all found broad acceptance in Belgium.

The only exception is Dutch cuisine, which is universally regarded as a crime against humanity. Flemings and Walloons are unified in this particular kind of distaste, which ensures that Belgium will never split up and Flanders would never, ever join the Netherlands. Sorry Geert.

Belgium is a beer country. This tradition originated from monks and peasants who wanted to forget the misery of being ruled by foreign powers. Nowadays, many Belgians also drink wine or spirits, but the goal remains the same: to forget one’s own deplorable life condition, working for some faceless multinational company or having no prospect on a life partner beyond the truly desperate.

State of Failure: the Land at Large (a)

Belgium is a land of opposites, and those frequently lead to political tensions. However, a scenario such as what happened to Yugoslavia in the ‘90s is unlikely.

One: Flemings are too cowardly and fat to fight. Two: Walloons are too lazy. Three: Bruxellois are understood and acknowledged by no one. Four: the Eastern Cantons wouldn’t even be allowed to fight, because if German speakers get involved, where’s the fun in having a war?

Flanders and Wallonia share co-guardianship over their little boy, Brussels, which cannot live on his own due to his severe physical deformities. Despite this, Brussels brings in a lot of money for the estranged couple, due to its cabaret work on international fairs and events.

 

Flanders

Belgium’s north, more or less Flanders, is low-lying. Several important rivers cross the Flemish fields and faint hills, such as the Scheldt, the Lys, the Gete, the Nete and the Money River to Wallonia. Flanders’ climate is temperate due to the Gulf Stream that rolls past its coast-line, but it is also unpredictable enough so that Flemings always have something to complain about.

Flanders’ soil makes it an excellent choice to grow liquid fertilizer and self-contentedness. More and more, however, conurbations are taking over the natural landscape. The capital of Flanders is Zuregem, and its national fruit is a lemon. Its heraldic animal is a black lion with well-polished red nails, flowing hair and a naughty tongue, shown on a field of gold.

Wallonia

Belgium’s south, which more or less corresponds to Wallonia, is more hilly and forested, because the Walloons think getting rid of superfluous growths is a sign of submission to patriarchal capitalism.

Rivers such as the Ourthe, the Samber, the Lesse and the Meuse have a great deal of kayakers and tourists aimlessly drifting around, who the Walloons are happy to supply to their rivers every year. Western Wallonia has a dark, volcanic landscape, the east regularly has rains of blood. It used to be a hotbed of coal industry, but today, it is mostly a hotbed of utter misery.

The capital of Wallonia is Bidonville, and its national fruit is the carapillar, an insect that thrives on cheap beer. Its heraldic animal is a rooster, because it’s the only animal that remains upbeat and sings atop a pile of shit.

Our national character

Politically, Belgium is ruled by several dynasties that each have their own baronies and duchies. These include the Michel and Wathelet families from francophone Belgium, the House de Croo and de Crem from Flanders, and the all-encompassing House de Haene.

In as far as Belgian nationalism exists, Belgians prefer to call themselves modest, quiet and diplomatic. It’s a nice way of saying we’re a nation of weaklings and cowards. Belgians also love identifying with the victim role. It took until 1830 for other nations to glom onto the fact that those always-moaning, complaining and whining Belgians weren’t worth suppressing. “It seems like they are waiting to be humiliated and beaten here, so that they might complain,” a Dutch civil servant wrote in 1828.

Culture and music

Culturally speaking, the Burgundian legacy lives on in a numerous amount of pot bellies, dirty teeth, sausage fingers and fantastical photo material for proctologists. The Flemish Primitives were experts in painting salty, dissatisfied bourgeois, and surrealism was big in Belgium as a political current in the 20th century.

In international music competitions, Flanders and French-speaking Belgians have been locked in a tight conflict over who can send the most embarrassing candidate to the Eurovision Song Contest.  The Queen Elisabeth contest is an annual highlight of music for autistic Koreans and severely in-bred Austrians to see who can do better at playing music no one listens to anymore.

Belgium counts as one of the pioneers in electronic music, first by making depression about looming nuclear annihilation somehow worthy to be danced to in black make-up with the likes of Front 242 and then inventing new beat as a way of getting drug addicts out of the gene pool much faster.

Current electronic dance music is a bastardized and walmarted version of the genres mostly invented by Belgian pill poppers. Growth in this sector is almost single-handedly realized by Yves Deruyter’s rebellious mass, which absorbs new DJs every year. With Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike, Belgium has finally also beaten the Netherlands in terms of suckage by defeating the suckage of DJ Tiësto.

Cross-over musicians 2ManyDJs, aka Soulwax, aka Samantha Fu aka The Sons of Digits and Letters are another noted duo. In rock music, dEUS are the country’s biggest egos. Even their leftovers and trash form bands of their own: from their discarded TVs (Channel Zero), digits (Triggerfinger), pets (Goose), genitalia (Revolting Cocks) and their faeces (Cocaine Piss).

Important rap musicians include a guy who’s pregnant and Baloji, a towering, glowering hunk of Liège syrup.

Flanders has another unique tradition: the schlager, which it shares with the German world.  Schlager-singers are mostly good Catholic boys who look like 40-year-old children and sing the blandest, most aggressively inoffensive and dead-eyed songs loved by every Flemish grandma and a sizeably right-wing part of the electorate.

Toots Thielemans is a jazz icon who unfortunately passed away in 2016 at the age of 194, just on the tail of completing his 88th Very Last Tear-Jerker Tour. However, Belgium’s most beloved musician will always be the late Jacques Brel, who, despite being ugly as sin, managed to have seven families simultaneously, and spawned imitators like Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg in terms of lifestyle and Richard Nixon in terms of sweat production.

Another important thing in Belgium is comic books, called “strips” in Dutch and “bandes-dessinées” in French. Belgian comics have a penchant for featuring tween boys and girls solving crimes. In terms of literature, while the country has produced many excellent authors, its only Nobel Prize winner in this field was Maurice Maeterlinck, a French-speaking Belgian from Dutch-speaking Ghent.

Love and sex

Sexually speaking, Belgium is progressive. This is largely owed to the fact that every family has an unmarried uncle who livens up family gatherings with inappropriate jokes and comments.

To Belgians, sex is just a thing of life and something that is occasionally very enjoyable, ranking just below good food and being able to call your awful house your own.

Few homosexuals are still closeted in Belgium. It was the world’s 2nd country to legalize gay marriage (in 2003). Later Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo would later go on to publicly marry gay celebrities Debby & Nancy.

Unfortunately, successive scandals of paedophile serial killers rocked the nation from the ‘90s through the ‘00s and ‘10s. This unjustly gave our nation an image of a paedo haven, even if inspectors like Maigret, Witse, Maes and the Luxembourg forest rangers do anything to catch them.

State of Failure: History

What now follows is an abridged history of Belgium. Check out this thread to learn a thing or two the LIBERAL MEDIA won’t tell you.

58BC: Julius Caesar says the Belgae tribe are the bravest of all of Gaul, whereupon he promptly kills them all.

5th-7th century: The Romans are largely driven out by the Franks. Clovis makes Tournai his capital, ushering in a 1,300 year period of urban decay.

 

1096-1100: Gottfried of Bouillon invents a new way of chopping up the Saracens and tossing them into soup.

12th-14th century: Flemish cities experience a golden age thanks to the trade in lumpy frocks. Only the richest Mediaeval people have enough money for lumpy Flemish frocks.

1302: Road-tripping French knights get stuck in a bog and get clobbered to death by Flemish peasant militias.

 

15th-16th century: The Burgundians unite the Low Countries and are stuck with permanently jutting chins thanks to the many headaches these territories give them. They will pass these chins on to their successors, the Habsburgs.

1585: Antwerp surrenders to Spanish troops who enter the city through a makeshift bridge across the Scheldt river. Antwerpians have since developed an unreasonable fear of bridges.

17th-18th century: After the 80 Years’ War, future Belgium first remains in Spanish hands, and then winds up as a possession of the Austrians, who have no clue what to do with this territory.

1798: During the Farmers’ War, a handful of peasants tries to combat the French occupation forces by muttering and glowering in front of their fireplaces at night.

1815: Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo because he is unable to read the bilingual road signage.

1830: At last, the Belgians manage to defeat another nation – they toss out the Dutch.

1835: The first continental train delay happens. The inaugural train ride between Mechelen and Brussels is two hours late because of cows on the tracks. The Belgian Railways minimize the incident and promptly ask for more money.

1884: The Catholics win the ‘School Struggle’ against the Liberals after a decisive bout at 4pm behind the Church, out of the teachers’ sight.

1889: Congo learns all about Western civilization. The Congolese citizens would have applauded for so much Belgian generosity, were it not that their hands had been chopped off.

1908: Leopold II dies and leaves behind a legacy as a perverted, cruel and fat man with a questionable taste in facial hair. He becomes a role model for many Belgians.

1914-1918: Germany plants mines in Flanders’ fields as an agrarian experiment, while the Belgian army develops new irrigation techniques. The Germans return back home disappointed in 1918.

1940: The Belgian army refuses to believe Germany will the exact same thing a second time. After 18 days, it is forced to revise this opinion.

1944: Allied troops liberate Belgium from German occupation and liberate countless local girls of their virginity.

1950: A tense, heated debate on the king nearly leads to civil war. A typically Belgian compromise has Leopold III abdicate in favour of an asparagus.

1960: Congo gains its independence. As a parting gift, Belgian mercenaries are allowed to murder Patrice Lumumba.

1962: The language border becomes fixed. For laughs, it later turns out. Rwanda and Burundi become independent. Also for laughs, it later turns out.

1967: A big bonfire in the ‘Innovation’ store in Brussels is the starting point of 40 years of visionary degeneration of the capital.

1978: A difficult political reform turns post-modern when one stubborn MP keeps on yammering about rights for Klingon speakers.

80s: The Delhaize supermarket chain has to reckon with unsatisfied customers from Nivelles.

1986: The ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’ boat sinks near the port of Zeebrugge, allegedly because its British crew couldn’t understand “En veur d’Ingelsmans ‘t zelfste”.

1993: King Baudouin I dies in Benidorm, Spain, after a heated discussion with Queen Fabiola, who couldn’t manage to make fries the proper way even after 33 years of marriage.

1996: The Dutroux-case boils over. Moustaches disappear almost overnight.

2007-2011: Belgium proves to be incapable of forming a new government. This heroic failure is displayed at the Guggenheim Museum.

2014: For the first time, the permanently dissatisfied, victimized Flemish nationalists hold almost all power. They remain just as dissatisfied, leading to a cognitive dissonance where they blame all their failures on everyone else.

2018: The Red Devils come in 3rd at the FIFA World Cup in Russia, proving racism can be overcome and multiculturalism can thrive if everyone is a millionaire.

State of Failure: Our Neighbourhood

Since time immemorial, Belgium has been surrounded by five neighbours. Whereas our country used to be a bloody battlefield for bordering great powers, they have now chosen to humiliate us at the Eurovision Song Contest instead.

So, before we start investigating our country and reveal surprising facts, let’s pop out and visit our neighbours.

The Dutch: a noisy neighbour in a caravan

It is said that God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. Judging by how ugly it is, this is probably true. To respond to climate change and the constant threat of rising water levels, the Dutch have become the tallest people in the world.

Foreigners sometimes ask whether Belgium and the Netherlands shouldn’t be one country (at least, Flanders and the Netherlands). It’s already been tried and the wheels came off after only 15 years, when the Dutch tried to introduce sweet mayonnaise and call our frieten/frites ‘patat’.

The Germans: an industrial zone with fast thoroughfares

Germany is the cradle of the mullet and the porn moustache. It is also known for its Black Forest hospitals full of adulterous people, badly-dressed police inspectors with tacky leather coats, and being the source of 66% of all Hollywood villains.

The Nazi stereotype associated with Germany is fading. Now we just see Germans for who they truly are: people so joyless they probably require a stamped permit to have cold, loveless sexual intercourse.

The Luxembourgians: sublet to the highest bidder

Being the world’s largest microstate is a little like being the least incontinent inmate at a home for the elderly: everyone will still take the piss. Not that there’s much to mock Luxembourg for, because the Grand Duchy is so rich even the homeless can cheaply pump gas.

The French: snooty neighbours who are after our backyard

The French pride themselves on their savoir-vivre. This means they love their nice cinder block barbecues in the Parisian suburbs and burning rubber tyres at strike checkpoints.

More cultured and high-ranking Frenchmen traditionally have affairs and orgies, and you’re not a truly successful Frenchmen if you haven’t fathered at least one illegitimate child or haven’t been accused of sexual harassment.

The British: those from across the water

British people are very diverse and easy to tell apart: Scots are loud and drunk, the English are drunk and angry, Welshmen sound drunk even if they are sober, and the Northern Irish blow each other up.

The UK’s crown prince is the oldest horse in the world, and proudly presides over disaster areas with 7cm thick fries, piss water beer, cloned sheep brains and mad cow burgers. Brexit can’t come a day too early.

State of Failure: Introduction

During the week that started on October 22, I manned the Twitter account @belgiumers. Every week, a different Belgian tweets from this account to teach the world (and ourselves) a little more about the country. I took this message to heart and cooked up a veritable wok dish the size of a flying saucer. Because some people told me they had no time to follow all the tweets or simply dislike reading tweet threads, I’m reposting everything in a neat blogging package here. Avast, ye bastards!

HAY GUYS. I am @antonvoloshin; a writer from Ghent. As this week’s Commander of space ship Belgiumers, I will be teaching all who are interested about the many marvellous failures, flubs and fuck-ups our country enjoys.

DISCLAIMER 1: I will be posting 18 chapters over the coming week, hopefully each as a series of threaded tweets. Look for the yellow bar that states a chapter begins!

DISCLAIMER 2: Some of this content dates back to my days at @DeRechtzetting, and in its original form, some of it was co-written or edited by my former colleagues Jonas, Sam and Benoni.

None of this was ever released before, and over 90% was created by me. About 70% of all this content is as new as your last miserable pay check. You can find my website at www.antonvoloshin.net. I am also on Facebook. Most of my content is in Dutch, which is widely recognised as the language of lurrrve. I will post in English here, though. So, strap in and enjoy warp speed! Here’s the agenda.

Let's start with some infographics.

 

Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa's Summer hit is atrocious

Frankly, I'm rather neutral on Calvin Harris's work. I own Dua Lipa's self-titled debut album and I think it makes for a good pop record. I also enjoyed her empowering songs like 'New rules' and 'IDGAF', which will probably be very recognisable to a lot of girls and women. So go Dua!

But I hate - and I turn off the radio every time I hear it - her collaboration with Calvin Harris. On an artistic level, it sounds bland and low on energy, like the kind of generic cocktail bar elevator music you might hear in some non-descript seaside pop-up. But the lyrics are even more galling.

The accused in case: "I look like all you need." I like Dua Lipa's music, but I have a big problem with this line of hers. I'm all for female empowerment and I'm all for tearing down patriarchy. What I'm not for is replacing it with an entitled attitude. Any woman who would ever say that phrase to me would get the boot. Shocked? Imagine a man saying that to a woman. Yes - the context is different, in that male entitlement is a huge issue (leading some men to outright murder women), but adding female entitlement is hardly a solution to gender issues.

"I look like all you need" is just the Coca-Cola guy of feminism. Creating a female gaze doesn't erase the male gaze, and objectifying men doesn't reduce objectification of women. It sounds tone-deaf and narcissistic. It syncs up with a movement where people are supposed to not have any standards when it comes down to female beauty. And while I recognize that society's tastes have been super-narrow for decades, moulded by fashion giants and the media, replacing that taste with an equally forcible image isn't going to make things better.

Have I been infected by patriarchy and its absurd ideals of beauty? Absolutely. Am I, as a man, also not living up to the increasingly popular idea of a man as a muscular, athletic guy? Also, yes. But to be truly inclusive and broad, we need to remove this kind of zero-sum game from the equation altogether.

No, 'One kiss' is not all it takes.