So you’re mentioning something that some of Macedonians know about his emotional vulnerability. We know that he didn’t apply the Machiavellian principle, better to be feared than to be loved. He didn’t apply that.

And we all witnessed that some of the close people around him weren’t presenting the reality truly to him, but they were lying to him.

And now my question is, did that emotional vulnerability of the ex-Prime Minister project it on whole Macedonian nation? My question is, did he emotional vulnerability influenced the happenings in Macedonia and all of the people who lived here?

All leaders in history who have mental health issues, minor or major, don’t have to be major, minor, like emotional vulnerability, it’s a mental health issue. All leaders with mental health issues create contagion, they infect. They infect in concentric circles, they infect their closest, their closest infect the others, the others infect further.

And finally, the whole nation is infected.

Because of their insecurities, this kind of people tend to gravitate towards a personality cult.

So people with mental health issues like Donald Trump, like Joseph Stalin, you know, these people like Mao, like Hitler, like in big ways and small ways, they create personality cults because they feel secure only within personality cults.

Personality cult is an echo chamber where you don’t come across criticism, disagreement, and information that challenges your self-image and self-perception. You don’t come across adversity and conflict. You don’t develop dissonance.

These leaders are actually very fragile people. They’re easily breakable when they are confronted with countervailing data. They need to isolate themselves in order to function.

Now, many of them have been very efficacious leaders. I mentioned all these names, they’re all very efficient leaders.

But their downfall is because they can’t stand reality. They try to convert reality into fantastic space where they can remain safe and secure and never suffer pain or dissonance.

So when you try to force reality to become a fantasy, you lose both reality and your fantasy.

And this is what had happened to all these people.

Reality is stronger than anyone.

And reality is unpleasant.

90% of reality is unpleasant.

This is what children learn when they grow up. Growing up is a process of loss.

And number one loss is the view of reality as a good place to be in.

Reality is not a good place to be in. It’s dystopian.

Reality is abrasive. Reality is hurtful and painful.

Reality is challenging. Reality leads you to mourning and grieving.

Reality is a horrible place to be. It’s a horror movie.

But if you try to supplant reality with fantasy, if your solution is fantasy defense mechanism, fantasy is a psychological defense mechanism.

If you supplant reality with fantasy, you can no longer evolve and grow. Natural selection stops.

Evolution, growth, maturation critically depend on unbridled, unlimited, unmitigated access to reality.

The mother who isolates her child from reality is not doing the child a favor. This child will never grow up to be an adult.

You need to expose your children to reality. I keep saying that the main role of a parent is to push the children away. Not to hug them, to push them away. That’s the main role of a good parent. The main role of a good leader is to share the bad news.

Leadership is not like the Evangelion. It’s not the good news.

Yes, leadership is the bad news. The real test of a leader is when the news are bad and that’s where Donald Trump had failed.

For example, when the news became bad, he became delusional because he preferred fantasy to reality.

And the same with Nikola Goersky.

That’s how he felt too.

Yes, because when the news became bad and the news did become bad in the last years of his reign, of his leadership, he refused to see it. He continued to occupy his fantastic space.

Thereby, he could not adapt. Only exposure to reality causes you to successfully adapt, become self efficacious and extract favorable outcomes only.

Of course, it’s painful process. Adaptation and change are always painful.

But if you are that pain averse, don’t be a leader. Don’t have children.

There is a saying, if you hate the smells of cooking, don’t enter the kitchen.

So, looking 20 years and more years back and all those, since we were very, very young, we remember those articles in the daily newspapers that you published in a book that you mentioned.

And how do you see a Macedonian economy now?

Were those hopes from the beginning of 20th, 21st century, were those hopes and all that working and changing, putting taxes, fiscal economy, all of that stuff? Do you see it as a successful project in the past 20 something years? Or do you see Macedonia as something representation of something else?

Well, as I told you, I’ve been out of Macedonia way for four years. I can’t say that I’m updated.

But from what I see, what I see, you realize, of course, that Macedonia started with enormous, unconquerable disadvantages.

Few countries, to my recollection, few countries in human history, started with such disadvantages as Macedonia did. Anywhere from insurgencies to embargoes to crazy neighbors to, I mean, you name it.

And yet, despite all this, which is indeed the Macedonian character, going back to the beginning of our conversation, your survivors, your survivors, you’re very patient, even topi, you are, you are too patient. You’re survivors.

And so you had survived.

When you look at the Macedonian, from what I see, this is the caveat, it’s only what I see. From you look at the Macedonian economy, it’s in much better condition than it was when I came here.

Of course, the financial sector is in much better condition. Manufacturing sector is streamlined. Even agriculture is improving.

Exports, imports are on a good line, in my view.

The dependence on outside flows of income from international multinational institutions, such as I met World Bank, this dependence is gone. It’s no longer true.

Remittances are still important. But otherwise, Macedonia is much more self-sufficient than it was in the 90s, and so on.

And thereby, much more independent politically and otherwise. You’re integrated in NATO. Probably you will be in the European Union at some point, although I’m not quite sure what’s the big deal about this.

So I think you’re moving in the right direction. And I think you have gained a lot. You’ve made big gains in terms of your economy, even unemployment is down, and so on.

The only black cloud is the brain drain, brain drain of Macedonians. Your best minds have left.

No offense. Your best minds, your youngest minds have left. That doesn’t bode well for your future.

If I were to make two recommendations, it would be to diversify the economy by introducing much more IT, much more bank office services to emulate India, not as far as COVID, as far as economy.

Emulate India to become a service nation, essentially. To shift emphasis from agriculture and manufacturing to services, especially IT services.

Great location for outsourcing and have potential in people.

Yes.

So I would do this. This is first recommendation, immediate diversification of the economy.

Immediate.

And the second thing I would do, I would place, I would subject all the resources of the state with no exception and without one Macedonian dinner left, all of it, to attracting back young educated people.

Israel is doing this. Israel is doing this.

If you return to Israel after five years, you don’t pay taxes for 10 years. You get apartments and all the appliances within the apartment for half price.

So Israel is attracting back young educated people, 190,000 this year alone.

Well, Macedonian needs to attract these people back because it’s not only their brains they’re bringing back. They’re bringing back networks of contacts. They are bringing back exposure to the practices of the world. They are bringing back intimate knowledge with new technologies.

So technological spreading to the genes because they learned it up there.

So they’re bringing back a lot. And this is your treasure. This is your treasure.

And yet you’re doing nothing to attract them back, which is a great thing.

One of the reasons I think is that your politician…

We have vast land for agriculture. I’ve worked in several countries, visited plenty of business parks in the States. We have plenty of space to build new business parks to get all of our ITs, engineers, economists that are abroad to come here.

But unfortunately, no one does that. I will give my own example. I studied abroad. I wasn’t in Macedonia for 10 years. I am here for 10 years. And I decided not to move again, because as we say, the rock awaits on its own place. And I still hope that there is a… Because hope is something that’s natural, even though sometimes it’s very dangerous. I still hope that in my… I’m 36, that people that are around my generation and the younger ones have already the consciousness for the new century.

And with…

Now I need to ask this question. As a normal citizens, business owners, researchers, we’ve witnessed that all those leaders from previous century, end of 20th century, and now all those Macedonian leaders, all of them have something that they need to be glorified. As you said, no one of them wasn’t so honest to confront the problems, because the reality is really cruel. And all that fake propaganda with positive, positive, fake, positive information just destructs our hope and then motivates us.

So emotional disbalance, as I read in some of your texts, is one of the baselines for a future narcissism. And that’s…

So I will ask you right away, are Macedonian rulers narcissists and are they psychopaths?

I don’t know about psychopaths.

I think… Let me retrace a bit. And you know, as you have a saying, hair doesn’t grow in my tongue. So I say what I think bluntly. Many people dislike it. Your viewers may dislike it. Your listeners may dislike it.

But still, people who had been suppressed and oppressed, people, I mean, collectives, groups of people, nations, ethnicities, who have been suppressed and oppressed throughout the majority of their common history tend to compensate for their weakness, for their shortcomings, vulnerabilities, by becoming narcissistic and grandiose.

So if you have a collective which had been subjected to humiliation, repeated humiliations, tortures, confiscations of property, disrespect, extreme disrespect, this kind of collective naturally will develop defenses. It’s impossible to live with daily humiliation, daily disrespect, daily… It’s impossible to look at your child’s eyes when you as a father, you’re humiliated by an Ottoman officer. It’s very…

So it’s natural to develop narcissistic defenses, grandiose defenses. It’s natural in individuals as well. It’s a natural defense to trauma and abuse in early childhood.

I think like the Jews, for example, Macedonians have this embedded grandiose element or grandiose trick. We are special. We’re unique. We’re not… We’re the chosen. We know best. Macedonians have very strong resistance to learning. We know best. Who are you to tell me?

Etc. So these are all grandiose defenses.

Now, of course, the leader, the leader is the amplification and reification and concentration of the collective that he is leading is the blank screen upon which everyone project their own defenses, wishes, hopes, fantasies, and so on.

But all leaders, good leaders, successful leaders, are blank screens, essentially. And so naturally you’re seeing the Macedonian grandiose defenses amplified, magnified, and concentrated in the personalities of your leaders. And your leaders are highly narcissistic. I wouldn’t say psychopathic, no. Highly narcissistic. They’re highly grandiose.

They’re divorced from reality. They have impaired reality testing in many cases. They result to fantasy. Narcissism is a fantasy defense. Narcissism is not fantasies of grandeur, fantasies of fantasy defense.

So they result to fantasies a lot. They reject reality very often.

Reality really has been unbearable and intolerable in Macedonian.

So you have this. Of course, you have this because you are like that.

Now, Macedonians have a complication. You’re weak and small. You’ve always been weak and small. You’ve always been mistreatedsmall. You’ve always been weak and small. You’ve always been mistreated and abused by others. You had developed a defense of grandiosity, but you cannot express this grandiosity because if you express this grandiosity openly, you’ll be punished.

So you developed something which we call in psychology, passive aggression.

You became passive-aggressive. You are never openly aggressive, but you sabotage. You sabotage.

You never torture anyone, but you make the other person’s life hell. You will never slap or beat up anyone like in Serbia, but you will make their lives hell. You will make it very difficult for them to smile.

If you’re an official in the government or something, you will insist on the tiniest letter of the law so as to not give the service or harass the citizen.

Your passive aggression manifests in many ways because your grandiosity is suppressed, not allowed to be expressed, and because you’re constantly abused and mistreated to this very day, maltreated. I mean, you’re constantly maltreated and abused.

You didn’t have a break. You didn’t have a time where to recover.

I really pity you as a collective. It’s very similar to the Jews, but the Jews at least succeeded to establish a state where they are the strongest power in the neighborhood, and anyone who dares to say anything is punished immediately in the most severe way.

So the Jews somehow transcended their collective weakness because the Holocaust was such a trauma that the Jews said, nevermore. That’s it. There was a Holocaust.

In some ways, luckily for the Jewish people, there was a Holocaust. Luckily, in some ways, because it woke them up, they woke up.

The Jews also had fantasies. The Jews had fantasies of becoming German, of becoming French, citizens of the world. They said, anti-Semitism is dead. Now we are all citizens of the world.

They had fantasies. They refused to confront reality. Even when the Nazis came to power, the Jews were denying that anything horrible is going to happen. And they woke up. The Holocaust woke them up.

And they said, okay, if that’s the case, now we understand, and we are going to be the abusers for now. We have been abused for 2,000 years. Now we are going to be the abusers.

No one is going to abuse us anymore. We’re going to abuse everyone.

Of course, it’s a sick, sick decision. It’s a pathological decision. It’s a post-traumatic pathological decision.

The decision to be grandiose, the decision to be an abuser, the decision to depend to blackmail, emotionally blackmail, all these decisions are essentially sick pathological reactions to abuse and trauma, passive aggression.

We react to abuse and trauma in a variety of ways.

The Macedonian way is grandiose passive aggression. The Israeli way is psychopathy in essence. Israel is a psychopathic state completely.

So each one of us reacts differently. The Serbian way is to be victim. The Serbians are great on being victims. They emotionally blackmail the world. They’re always victims. Never mind what they do. They’re victims.

Each nation, each collective react differently.