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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

I have been to Northern Greece. I have friends from Macedonia. This is the stupidest international dispute I think our reality can support.

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It's the Balkans: disputes may seem inane to an external observer but they last generations and usually end up in (or perpetuated by) wars. It's the first time since I can remember where a dispute is resolved peacefully, without huge external pressure.

I don't know how long it's going to last but to be honest it was a prime example of ostrichism on our part (I'm Greek btw). Not that the other side didn't partake in kitsch demonstrations of nationalism, but at some point we should have taken cue from the rest of the world that called the country Macedonia and moved on, rather than pretend the matter is not de facto over and behave like a stubborn child

No, it's not as stupid as you might think. FYROM was part of Bulgaria for a very long time. Lots of history of the empires happend there, they claim that it's theirs. Same for Alexander Macedon(he's obviously greek). If you claim some identity in front of many people you must be able to support it otherwise you end up looking like a fool. Imagine a nation of such deluded by the system people.

> Same for Alexander Macedon (he's obviously greek)

Alexander III of Macedon died in 323 B.C. That's 2,300 years ago. Turning a millennium-and-a-half footnote into a geopolitical issue is stupid.

> If you claim some identity in front of many people you must be able to support it otherwise you end up looking like a fool

Greece's per-capita GDP is three-quarters that of Europe's average [1]. Macedonia's is less than one-third that of Greece's. This is a stupid thing for two poor countries to create economic, political and geopolitical hurdles out of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Eu...

A lot of these things are not about wealth, they are about identity. Wealth is much easier to create than identity.

Things get a bit more difficult when the identity is standing in the way of creating wealth. This seems to be the case here, assuming EU/NATO memberships would be largely positive economic forces for Macedonia.

Modern Greeks have as much in common with Alexander as anybody else here. There are many historic clues that the ancient Greeks didn't understand the ancient Macedonian language, and that the Macedonians coudn't figure out how to write their language with the Greek alphabet, so they gradually (but not fully) adopted the Greek.

Can't be that bad. No dead people.

Fairly certain this is, strictly speaking, inaccurate. As I recall Greece's unhappiness with (North) Macedonia led to some coordination challenges wrt things like the flood of migrants from the Middle East.

I'd wager there were fatal consequences from this dispute.

Oh, my sweet summer child. Your innocence is so beautiful.

Never underestimate the degree of stupidity our reality can support.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. Also please don't make disagreements personal.

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