By Andrea Danglli
Except for those of you who are spitting on Robert Ndrenika!
For years, we have turned Robert Ndrenika into a personal project of conscience and I don't know why.
Everyone has invented their own Robert within themselves, and we get upset when the one we have drawn doesn't match the 84-year-old Robert we see.
We get frustrated, we crucify him, and we spit on social media as hard as we can when the real Robert doesn't behave according to the revolutionary script we've written inside our heads for him.
A Robert who must speak out, revolt, confront power and, why not, overthrow and drag it down.
We want our Robert to raise his voice enough to tear his lungs apart, about prices, pensions, hospitals, infrastructure, theft, degradation of the administration, the arrogance of power and 1001 oppressions that have become a pilgrimage mountain for SPAK prosecutors. He even has his larynx scream to compensate for the apathy of the opposition, which has quite a few leftovers from the transition.
Frankly, we all want our Robert to do what we can't do.
To have our eyes, our mind, and our anger, where with the strength of his name, he can say the things we only stutter at coffee tables or throw like knives into the digital guillotine called Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
All of this is a frightening hypocrisy in the way our great actor is being treated, who today is proving on his back what Sharia means online.
Stupidity has become an algorithm, and reactions are being made to fit what people want to read, not reason.
I am certainly sorry for the scene I saw in court, and especially that Robert's strength is not being used for a reality that most people pretend not to experience.
But why do we only ask him? Or you who read me and say "shame on you, you idiot", with what moral or legal right do you ask him?
How do you explain that the venom poured out against him is also passed on to Erion Veliaj, where with the ease of a like, we strip away his entire life on stage and contribution, trashing the art he gave us.
If we remove the moral veil, it is not he who is in the dock, but the mayor of Tirana, who politically does not pity me at all and I hope that justice will bring him to justice if it is proven that he has stolen the sweat of this country.
Robert Ndrenika (not the one in our minds) is not a prosecutor, judge, or revolutionary with a public contract, nor is he even responsible for our helplessness.
Therefore, today no icon has collapsed, only our myth has collapsed, which requires an old man to shoulder the entire moral burden of society, politics, the elite, and the media.
Those who love understand that the truth in this case is entirely human.
That old man, who came from a dictatorship, has the right to kiss whoever he wants in a democracy, taking into account the light and shadow of the one he chooses to be with.
History itself knows endless artists, writers, actors and intellectuals who at certain moments have supported the wrong people, dictators or cruel governments.
But for them, it is another time that judges. We do not, because we have this moral right.
Therefore, our problem today is not a kiss on the forehead in the courtroom, or even those kisses that many kneel down to give in order to give peace to this life and then pretend to be judges of integrity and dignity.
Our problem is the pathological need to seek moral saviors, given that we ourselves have abdicated individual responsibility.
Let's put our minds to rest for once: Robert Ndrenika is Robert Ndrenika, not the one we have built in our heads that we see as a standard-bearer in battles.
The latter is best imitated by ourselves if we don't have a better version than ourselves.
