**Cultural Day.** Why don’t great patriots know how to connect two words?

Welcome to *Starea Nației*. Dragoș Pătrarul: *"I’m here—no more sitting down."* Right. So, what’s the deal? *"Staying down? Let’s stand up."* How would the wise say it? It should’ve been a meaningful day today, shouldn’t it? **Cultural Day** should’ve been, but it isn’t. Culture isn’t just empty festivities staged by institutions or hollow patriots who let their fellow citizens die in buses to reach work on time. Culture is what holds us up as a society. Please, what should hold us up—especially together? Do we feel we’re there yet? The problem is we act as if we *were* there, but we’re told not only that we were, but that we *can* return to those glorious, perfect times that never existed. Culture as an exercise of thought vanishes not just from us—from everywhere—since this endless content floods us. Here, the ground is richer because it’s fertile. *Tati, excuse me.* You don’t need to tear down much to seize the minds of these people—something we’ve regrettably observed. **Mihai Eminescu**, in my view the most dangerous man after Jesus Christ, is just a modern-day guru, selling messages pushed by vast, unaccountable funds. **Let’s embrace culture.** Culture isn’t today’s staged festivities, as I said—it’s been hijacked by extremists. Culture isn’t a costume you wear to become a great patriot.