Reflections On Current Events
They do not all say the same things, using the same catchphrases, because they are part of a grand conspiracy, but rather because none of them has either the independence of thought or the facility of speech to form and express a non-conforming opinion, or to give serious consideration to an idea that has not already been predigested for him. As for the ones feeding these predigested opinions to them, on the other hand….
The U.S. election, one week away as I write, is effectively a Russian election, specifically a contest between Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Lenin. There is no hyperbole in this, except in the sense that neither of the stand-ins whose names will appear on the actual ballots is a tenth of the individual they are standing in for, as evidenced by the fact that they are perfectly willing to live as mere dupes and imitators of men identified with ideas and aspirations that are already long dead. Lenin’s dream has been exposed as a tyrannical fraud through and through for more than a century — and yet Kamala Harris (read “the cabal of progressives who have hitherto called themselves Joe Biden”) is content to serve as the new mask for this most decrepit and obscene face. Meanwhile, Putin is a pale imitation of his communist party predecessors and trainers, a vain chimpanzee whose regime is already exposed as a failure, and who is killing young Russians by the tens of thousands in a futile war of aggression that he knows he has already lost, to the point where he is now openly begging laughable North Korea for soldiers to serve as sacrificial animals on the front lines, because he is running dangerously low on disposable Russian men — and yet Donald Trump continues to praise him, to boast of his relationship with him, and to represent Putin’s global ideal of populist authoritarian demagoguery on the American stage, even while his role model and puppet-master is flailing and desperate back in the motherland.
Would you, dear Americans, vote in this election if the terms were made explicit as I have just done — Lenin vs. Putin — or would you have enough pride, or enough shame, to refuse to so belittle yourselves? Please don’t answer. The truth is too ugly, and it is my nature these days to try to maintain a few comforting illusions on the fringes of my life, merely in order to continue bothering.
As for Putin’s aforementioned desperation in begging for Kim Jong Un’s help in his Ukraine war, the statement this alliance of convenience makes is so clear that one can only imagine the effect it might have on the Russian military. For more than two years it has been readily apparent that Putin was willing to use Russia’s young men as fodder, sending them into a lion’s den with failing equipment and little means of protecting themselves. Imagine the mind games a Russian soldier must play to deny the obvious to himself, namely that his president regards his life as worthless and dispensable, and indeed has every intention of letting him die for the sake of his own flimsy ego. And yet this new North Korean stunt has burst the illusion completely. He is clearly throwing Kim’s slaves into the battle for no reason other than to boost the number of dead his side can absorb in this pointless war of attrition. In other words, his reasoning is plain for all to see now, which means no one in Russia can doubt any longer that the Russians who have already died in this war have died as intentional sacrifices in a worthless endeavor, the vanity project of an ineffectual chimpanzee. Given Putin’s nature and past behavior, it is entirely possible that he knows that this is the message he is sending, and he intends it that way, as a means of intimidating his enemies and the Russian population with the disturbing thought that they really are dealing with a rogue strongman who will do whatever he wants without compunction or reservation. In truth, begging a beggar for help only makes Putin look even more farcical. It reminds us of his topless horseback photos, his infantile myth-making about himself, which he shares in common with his counterpart and equal in Pyongyang.
