Back in the day, when the good citizens of Poland finally found a way to overthrow the Communist yoke, a common refrain, born of decades of exhaustive effort, was the wish that their country simply be a "normal" one. That of course meant they wanted to live à la Western Europe and the U.S., free and prosperous, under rule of law, without a Soviet Russia breathing down their necks. Two decades later much of that has come to pass, and no one speaks of "normal" anymore. Besides, what is "normal" these days? (Sorry, but that's exactly the kind of question one can afford to toss off when belonging to the West again.)
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