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Of course the Russians themselves would be the best ones to understand Russians. Especially if they have escaped their country-wide jail long enough drop their mental defences and safely reflect. This week I heard a Russian professor on the CBC, who plans to go back when it is safe, and I saw an excellent Youtube video by a Russian blogger: Those two both said the same thing. More on their Big Concept later.
Freedom is sometimes best approached through metaphor, such as a farm with talking animals, or imperialist aliens from outer space. Now, the last time written, or “real,” science fiction used the old “alien parasites controlling people and multiplying” cliche was back in 1951, although of course Hollywood continues to use it, at least as late as Star Trek the Next Generation. (Where little tails poked out above the neck, and the First Officer, William Ryker, wore a fake tail, remember?) In the 1951 novel, The Puppet Masters, the U.S. secret service manages to capture a human with one of the parasites riding him. The old chief interrogates the creature. The captive—his devilish master, that is—makes an offer to the Americans: Give up control and responsibility, and in return we will take care of you. The old man looks disgusted and replies that he and his kind have been offered that deal many times down the years, and it has never worked out.
Cattle are contented; the mark of a free citizen is the willingness to be uncomfortable, (politically) as writer David Gerrold noted.
The author of Puppets, by the way, was Robert A. Heinlein, who during the 1950’s, in various science fiction books, explored freedom, how it is won, lost and kept. In fact, my first exposure to Roberts Rules of Order was when a teenager in Heinlein’s (1949) Red Planet subtitled a colonial boy on Mars, attends a town hall meeting of free men who almost vote to rebel against rulers who are hiding their true nature.
While reading Puppet Masters as an innocent kid, even though I knew history, I never dreamt that decades into the next century, in 2022, people would still be accepting the Devil’s bargain.
The two Russians explain a Big Concept:They said the Russian public has made a deal where they are allowed some liberty in their personal lives, such as around their own kitchen table, and in return they aren’t allowed any public freedoms. None. No sacred right to speak or think in public, nor to gather nor to organize, not in the slightest. I guess the Russian public believes in their deal as part of their sacred culture—at least until there’s a partial mobilization.
In other words, if I have this right, any club can be disbanded at the government’s whim, and you have no legal right to say out loud, out on the sidewalk, that the “special military operation” is secretly a “war” and an “invasion,” although you could still say so at home to your spouse—where it won’t do any good politically whatsoever.
Vlad Vexler on the mystery of why Russians don’t protest
(Oops, the second Youtube is only because I don’t know how to delete—sorry) Above is the Youtube “On the mystery of why Russians don’t protest” where Vlad speaks slowly just like a university professor. Not from trying to be a prof, but because English is his second language. I’m grateful: I feel so empowered from having a better conception of the Russians.
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Sean Crawford
Less than a week before Remembrance Day
2022
Shock from last night, Thursday, on CBC, regarding the Culture of the Russian soldiers (Orcs): As reported by the combined Swiss-and-others documentary, there is no doubt whatsoever that the Russians firing on civilians, the roundups and murders, the gratuitous tortures and rapes, the looting and destruction of parked cars, are not from a few “bad apple” commanders. No, the atrocities are a “widespread deliberate tactic—” a tactic with, as God and the Orcs know, zero effect on the Ukrainian armed forces: The atrocities are done out of spite and evil… When this “special military operation” is over, surely even the most softhearted, most self-deceiving Ukrainians, just won’t be able to forget.
Update: A fellow nerd reminds me that the Star Trek the Next Generation episode was called Conspiracy, the last episode of the first season. (first series) The “tail” was a “gill” for breathing.
Footnote: Last week I mentioned LGBTQs.
Well, speaking of every Russian’s nonexistent freedom to gather and organize,
“gay liberation” (LGBTQ) began, many say, in the summer of 1969 when the desperate “Stonewall riot” in New York City earned gays the right to peacefully assemble in broad daylight.
Before that, they could only meet illegally at night in gay bars that could be raided, and the patrons dragged off to jail overnight, so their names could be published in the newspaper, and then their lives be ruined: Homosexuals, including housewives, had no legal right to jobs, housing or custody of their children once their identity was suspected: no proof needed.
I guess freedom of assembly meant strength in numbers. Also: Gays could see for themselves that society was mistaken; for they could have normal self esteem, strong wrists if desired, feel sane and be winners with good jobs. In 1973 homosexuality was no longer classified as a mental disorder.
