The Blind Men And The Elephant (Reagan Wept, Five.)

 Follow the Moskva

Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
An August summer night
Soldiers passing by

Listening to the wind of change
The world is closing in
Did you ever think
That we could be so close, like brothers

The future's in the air
Can feel it everywhere
Blowing with the wind of change.

~Scorpions, Winds Of Change

I saw this earlier today.

A New York Times article about middle-class Russians fleeing from Putin's regime, gathering in places like Istanbul and Tbilisi and other cities and countries around the periphery of the former Soviet Union, trying to make new lives for themselves. Most of those fleeing are younger people, a lot of them look like they're young enough to have been born after the start of Glasnost or the fall of the Berlin Wall, if not after the end of the Soviet Union itself. 

Or they're young enough that they don't remember Soviet-era repression. A lot of these people are activists, lawyers, media people, opposition political types and tech workers...people whose prospects in Putin's New Soviet Union are likely rather grim. 

What must it be like, to lose one's own country...or at least, the only incarnation of it that one has ever known?

And worse, to find this in its place?

Not only that, but to find that many of the older people...those who lived through the Soviet era...support this "Z" bullshit??

Think about that, for a second.

I mean, judging from what I've seen so far, I hate to sound that way but it looks like even Erdogan's Turkey is a considerable upgrade from what Putin's Russia is suddenly turning itself back into...and not just with flags and wars either. People are literally being told how much food they can buy at the grocery store. That sounds exactly like Putin has every intention of restoring many elements of Communism...almost certainly, however, this will not apply to elites and oligarchs.

Just to everybody else...which, of course, is exactly the future "Conservatives" want.

And while this is happening in Russia, Republicans continue down the rabbit hole of the Trump cult of personality. Each time, with ever-more-backwards silly bullshit like they think they're going to get some kind of a prize for the most slavish display of obsequious tribal behavior. 

While Russia rains Iskander ballistic missiles on Ukrainian cities using the technology of the Space Age, too many Americans are learning to say Unga Bunga, listening to fairy tales about elephants and practicing Idol Worship like fucking cavemen. God damn it, I've had it with this silly bullshit. And I used to be a damned Republican! And then Trump gets up there and praises Vladimir Putin!

Are you fucking kidding me?!?! There's something wrong with these goddamned people!

Ukraine is the defender of the free world right now. Republicans aren't.

We'd have lost the Cold War if we'd been this way 40 years ago!

Like I said, Reagan Wept.

Hell, I hate that this is what has become of the Republican Party. We don't need this shit right now.

What must it be like, to fear, hate and reject the concept of freedom so damned much that you'll even bow down before the Hammer And Sickle?? I mean, literally the symbol of your faction's most hated historical enemies? Come on, people, what the fuck?

The time will come when this will not suffice.

And more to the point, we see the truth of what needs to be done every single day now, as we watch Ukrainians fight for their freedom against the Russian Army.

It's a fight they seem to even be winning, against all odds, but I'm not sure how much of a difference that's going to make for the people in Russia, or for those who have fled that country.

And I'm sure as hell not sure that even a Ukrainian victory is going to stop Putin from starting a war with NATO. True enough, Putin wants to conquer and ultimately destroy Ukraine, but he's going to see America and the EU as primary obstacles to that goal down the road if he doesn't already.

Although I'm sure Putin sees the Republicans and "Conservative" media as collaborators and Useful Idiots. 

Honestly that's a thing we're going to have to deal with at some point.

We're going to have to address the threat of conspiracy theories and lies and woo woo bullshit, period. If we want to remain free, we have to care about the truth...and we have to, at the very least, make it uncool to be a lying sack of shit again.

Because the truth is, some people just want to believe whatever lies they find comforting, and worship a "Strong leader" and they no longer care what kind of "leader" it is. It's not about any philosophy, it's about the fact that it's easy to abase oneself and bow and scrape for profit.

It's about the fact that too many people in this world have not faced adversity or crisis and have nothing they find worthwhile to believe in. Too many people are feeble-minded, just plain ignorant, or uneducated...and increasingly they don't want to know anything, either.

If we don't start finding some way to deal with that, we can count on the fact that the evil and the ruthless will find ways to give the unreasonable and the willfully ignorant all type of shit they can "believe" in...and then turn them against the rest of us.

And lest you think this an impossibility, we've all just watched 30 years of post-Cold War "New World Order" come crashing down in less than three weeks, with a KGB Agent on track to turn Russia back into the Soviet Union...and not just looking to restore its previous borders and the old Warsaw Pact, but actively engaged in combat, trying to do so already.

So yeah, go ahead and try to tell me how Abortion or Critical Race Theory or Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden's Laptop or having to wear a mask to the damn grocery store is the worst thing in the world. 

If you really believe that, you're a goddamned moron.

And if you're spewing that shit in bad faith, or for some kind of political points, you're an evil piece of shit.

You pick...

We're all staring down the real possibility of World War III in the near future.

Anybody who can, who believes in freedom in Russia is getting out.

The Ukrainians are fighting for their country, their freedom, and their right to exist as who they are.

And "Conservatives" are telling stupid fairy tales about bull elephants as a way of sucking up to a treasonous shit-gibbon who wears a squirrel on his head and calls Vladimir Putin a "Genius."

Like I said, the time will come when this will not suffice.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

And yes, we too, could lose our own country.

Think on that.

And then do something about it.

Part Four

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Слава Україна!

...

In case anybody doesn't get the reference in the title, here's a link. There's a Poem about it too. In conservative Christian circles, stuff like this is used to argue against pluralism because, basically, they view the blind men groping about the Elephant and not putting the picture together as an example of people missing the point. The point in their understanding being "God."

Ironic, considering what Henry McMaster said, ain't it?

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