This is a beautiful and powerful statement spoken in court by a young man on trial for “extremism” in a Russian court. It was translated by Masha Gessen and appears in The New Yorker online. it explains the power of Resistance to tyranny and the importance of individual responsibility and love.
Gessen writes:
A twenty-one-year-old university student named Yegor Zhukov stood accused of “extremism,” for posting YouTube videos in which he talked about nonviolent protest, his campaign for a seat on the Moscow City Council, and different approaches to political power. In his most recent video, recorded four months ago, he suggested that “madmen” like Vladimir Putin view power as an end in itself, while political activists view it as an instrument of common action. In many of his vlog entries, Zhukov is seated against the backdrop of the Gadsden flag—“Don’t Tread on Me”—which appears to hang in his bedroom in his parents’ apartment. The prosecutor had asked for four years of prison time for Zhukov. On Friday, a Moscow court sentenced Zhukov to three years’ probation—an unusually light punishment probably explained by the public response to Zhukov’s speech, which several Russian media outlets dared to publish. Hundreds of people gathered in front of the courthouse on the day of the sentencing. As a condition of his probation, Zhukov is banned from posting to the Internet. The judge also ordered that the flag, which was confiscated by police, be destroyed.
Instead of writing my own column, I have translated Zhukov’s final statement, delivered in court on Wednesday. I did it because it is a beautiful text that makes for instructive reading. Parts of it seem to describe American reality as accurately as the Russian one. Parts of it show what resistance can be.
Zhukov’s statement:
“This court hearing is concerned primarily with words and their meaning. We have discussed specific sentences, the subtleties of phrasing, different possible interpretations, and I hope that we have succeeded at showing to the honorable court that I am not an extremist, either from the point of view of linguistics or from the point of view of common sense. But now I would like to talk about a few things that are more basic than the meaning of words. I would like to talk about why I did the things I did, especially since the court expert offered his opinion on this. I would like to talk about my deep and true motives. The things that have motivated me to take up politics. The reasons why, among other things, I recorded videos for my blog.
“But first I want to say this. The Russian state claims to be the world’s last protector of traditional values. We are told that the state devotes a lot of resources to protecting the institution of the family, and to patriotism. We are also told that the most important traditional value is the Christian faith. Your Honor, I think this may actually be a good thing. The Christian ethic includes two values that I consider central for myself. First, responsibility. Christianity is based on the story of a person who dared to take up the burden of the world. It’s the story of a person who accepted responsibility in the greatest possible sense of that word. In essence, the central concept of the Christian religion is the concept of individual responsibility.
“The second value is love. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is the most important sentence of the Christian faith. Love is trust, empathy, humanity, mutual aid, and care. A society built on such love is a strong society—probably the strongest of all possible societies.
“To understand why I’ve done what I’ve done, all you have to do is look at how the Russian state, which proudly claims to be a defender of these values, does in reality. Before we talk about responsibility, we have to consider what the ethics of a responsible person is. What are the words that a responsible individual repeats to himself throughout his life? I think these words are, ‘Remember that your path will be difficult, at times unbearably so. All your loved ones will die. All your plans will go awry. You will be betrayed and abandoned. And you cannot escape death. Life is suffering. Accept it. But once you accept it, once you accept the inevitability of suffering, you must still accept your cross and follow your dream, because otherwise things will only get worse. Be an example, be someone on whom others can depend. Do not obey despots, fight for the freedom of body and soul, and build a country in which your children can be happy.’
“Is this really what we are taught? Is this really the ethics that children absorb at school? Are these the kinds of heroes we honor? No. Our society, as currently constituted, suppresses any possibility of human development. [Fewer than] ten per cent of Russians possess ninety per cent of the country’s wealth. Some of these wealthy individuals are, of course, perfectly decent citizens, but most of this wealth is accumulated not through honest labor that benefits humanity but, plainly, through corruption.
“An impenetrable barrier divides our society in two. All the money is concentrated at the top and no one up there is going to let it go. All that’s left at the bottom—and this is no exaggeration—is despair. Knowing that they have nothing to hope for, that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot bring happiness to themselves or their families, Russian men take their aggression out on their wives, or drink themselves to death, or hang themselves. Russia has the world’s [second] highest rate of suicide among men. As a result, a third of all Russian families are single mothers with their kids. I would like to know: Is this how we are protecting the institution of the family?
“Miron Fyodorov [a rap artist who performsunder the name Oxxxymiron], who attended many of my court hearings, has observed that alcohol is cheaper than a textbook in Russian. The state is pushing Russians to make a choice between responsibility and irresponsibility, in favor of the latter.
“Now I’d like to talk about love. Love is impossible in the absence of trust. Real trust is formed of common action. Common action is a rarity in a country where few people feel responsible. And where common action does occur, the guardians of the state immediately see it as a threat. It doesn’t matter what you do—whether you are helping prison inmates, speaking up for human rights, fighting for the environment—sooner or later you’ll either be branded a ‘foreign agent’ or just locked up. The state’s message is clear: ‘Go back to your burrow and don’t take part in common action. If we see more than two people together in the street, we’ll jail you for protesting. If you work together on social issues, we’ll assign you the status of a “foreign agent.” ’ Where can trust come from in a country like this—and where can love grow? I’m speaking not of romantic love but of the love of humanity.
“The only social policy the Russian state pursues consistently is the policy of atomization. The state dehumanizes us in one another’s eyes. In the state’s own eyes, we stopped being human a long time ago. Otherwise, why would it treat its citizens the way it does? Why does it punctuate its treatment of people through daily nightstick beatings, prison torture, inaction in the face of an H.I.V. epidemic, the closure of schools and hospitals, and so on?
“Let’s look at ourselves in the mirror. We let this be done to us, and who have we become? We have become a nation that has unlearned responsibility. We have become a nation that has unlearned love. More than two hundred years ago, Alexander Radishchev [widely regarded as the first Russian political writer], as he travelled from St. Petersburg to Moscow, wrote, ‘I gazed around myself, and my soul was wounded by human suffering. I then looked inside myself, and saw that man’s troubles come from man himself.’ Where are these kinds of people today? Where are the people whose hearts ache this much for what is happening in our country? Why are hardly any people like this left?
“It turns out that the only traditional institution that the Russian state truly respects and protects is the institution of autocracy. Autocracy aims to destroy anyone who actually wants to work for the benefit of the homeland, who isn’t scared to love and take on responsibility. As a result, our long-suffering citizens have had to learn that initiative will be punished, that the boss is always right just because he is the boss, that happiness may be within reach—but not for them. And having learned this, they gradually started to disappear. According to the state statistical authority, Russians are slowly vanishing, at the rate of four hundred thousand people a year. [Deaths exceeded births by nearly two hundred thousand in the first six months of 2019.] You can’t see the people behind the statistics. But try to see them! These are the people who are drinking themselves to death from helplessness, the people freezing to death in unheated hospitals, the people murdered by others, and those who kill themselves. These are people. People like you and me.
“By this point, it’s probably clear why I did what I did. I really want to see these two qualities—responsibility and love—in my fellow-citizens. Responsibility for one’s self, for one’s neighbors, for one’s country. This wish of mine, your honor, is another reason why I could not have called for violence. Violence breeds impunity, which breeds irresponsibility. By the same token, violence does not bear love. Still, despite all obstacles, I have no doubt that my wish will come true. I am looking ahead, beyond the horizon of years, and I see a Russia full of responsible, loving people. It will be a truly happy place. I want everyone to imagine Russia like this. And I hope this image can lead you in your work, as it has led me in mine.
“In conclusion, I would like to state that if the court decides that these words are spoken by a truly dangerous criminal, the next few years of my life will be marked by deprivation and adversity. But I look at the people [who have been jailed in the latest wave of activist arrests] and I see smiles on their faces. Two people I met briefly during pretrial detention, Lyosha Minyaylo and Danya Konon, never complained. I will try to follow their example. I will endeavor to take joy in having this chance—the chance to be tested in the name of values I hold dear. In the end, Your Honor, the more frightening my future, the broader the smile with which I look at it. Thank you.”
This is a brilliant writing from someone who is only 21 years old. In these short number of years, he has learned more than most people who exist on earth.
Yegor Zhukov: “Do not obey despots, fight for the freedom of body and soul, and build a country in which your children can be happy.’”
“Love is impossible in the absence of trust.”
I think even when it comes to politics, most people want to love our leaders. In the absence of trust, love is impossible, and the rampant corruption in our governments, both federal and state, make trust impossible.
Both the American and Russian societies have decades or maybe even a century to catch up to the Scandinavian countries.
Amen! Truth spoken.
YES!!!
This call to action certainly fits our actions in education. Fail to use our dictated policies and find yourself labeled, bullied or fired. Never mind that it is developmentally inappropriate, boring or plains doesn’t work. Teach a program with no content. Very disturbing.
If you read this post by Wrench in the Gears, she gives us a look at our dystopian future. Unless we fight back, this grim future of social engineering designed by Wall St and Silicon Valley is on its was to becoming a reality. What McDowell suggests is we need more Paolo Freire, The ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed,’ which I read a few years ago. Freire maintains that limiting access to education is a means of controlling the masses in a rigid economic system. “Personalized learning” is a way in which to control access to information. Very scary, but thought provoking! https://wrenchinthegears.com/
We don’t need a conspiracy of capitalists to limit kids’ exposure to information: we teachers are doing it voluntarily! When we say we’re teaching “skills” not facts, we’re saying kids don’t even need much information. But they do! That’s what school should be about! These “skills” we teach, like compare and contrast and inference-making, are built-in. They don’t need to be taught. But knowledge is clearly NOT built in –that’s why schools exist: to give important information about the world that is unlikely to be learned through mere osmosis.
A brief essay on databases:
and a short short story (flash fiction):
e together for all sorts of reason and never ask the politics of those who receive their love.
Now for a political statement: Nancy Pelosi, who had 5 children in six years knows how to love and how to trust and also where tough love has its power. She is the mother Donald Trump never had but needs. I believe her when she says she doesn’t hate our president. She is his opportunity to learn the lesson young Yegor Zhukov embodied when he spoke to the judge at his trial in the land where old Donald’s BFF rules with indifference to the people, cruelty and corruption.
For some reason only part of my comment was published. Here’s the whole thing.
What an insightful young man! At this time of year, many of America’s fourth estate are reporting on local heroes: a school bus driver who makes a family of his charges twice a day, and is promoted by the school to teach kindness! The outpouring of necessities by a community after a fire in a hotel where homeless had been staying and had lost the little they had left. The man who made wooden toys by hand for kids and gave them away for decades, retiring at 96. America is full of good people who love and trust and come together for all sorts of reason and never ask the politics of those who receive their love.
Now for a political statement: Nancy Pelosi, who had 5 children in six years knows how to love and how to trust and also where tough love has its power. She is the mother Donald Trump never had but needs. I believe her when she says she doesn’t hate our president. She is his opportunity to learn the lesson young Yegor Zhukov embodied when he spoke to the judge at his trial in the land where old Donald’s BFF rules with indifference to the people, cruelty and corruption.
Strong men, populist leaders are intolerant of those that speak freely. Under Trump, who has attempted to undermine the credibility of the press, many more journalists have been assaulted and arrested. https://pressfreedomtracker.us/blog/34-arrests-44-physical-attacks-and-more-chilling-numbers-us-press-freedom-trackers-first-year/
“In essence, the central concept of the Christian religion is the concept of individual responsibility.” Zhukov’s second paragraph, of the two on Christian values, is very perceptive, and I wonder whether it is heard much from mainstream church pulpits these days.
It rung a bell for me personally. My mother was a thinking Christian— something of an intellectual and philosopher, and a hobnobber with what was once considered radical left Catholicism. I remember her making precisely the above statement in the mid-‘60’s, when I questioned what I saw as the blanket anti-communism which placed her on the wrong side of the Viet Nam question. It nonplused me [she was always doing that 😉 ] – what had Christiany to do with it, I wondered; was my Mom a religious nut? And how did she square that with her buddy Dan Berrigan’s political position?
Zhukov gives such questions a deeper context. I like the way he grabs deep into the corrupt mess of Russian governing and pulls out a principle—conserving Christian values—that’s worth preserving, and could suggest a way forward. His optimism is inspiring.
Highly recommended, The Two Popes, on Netflix
I think often of Russians like Yegor Zhukov and whether I’d have the courage to do what they do. Getting murdered wouldn’t scare me so much as the real prospect of torture.
Donald Trump would love to turn us into Russia. He is an autocrat at heart. He is importing the autocrat’s ways: controlling the population through cynical lies. So far few threats of violence or politicized trials, but that’s coming if he gets reelected. Let us take Yegor’s words to heart and take responsibility for preserving our republic by registering voters and otherwise helping the democracy party, the Democrats against the autocracy party, the Republicans. Resistance here is still a piece of cake here compared to Russia –for now.
Russia = autocracy
USA= Free Market Ideology and Corporate control
Is there much of a difference considering how “we the people” are now living? And it didn’t start with Trump…..it has been magnified by Trump.
There is a huge difference. We are free; they are not. We can organize to make our lives better. They cannot. We have an imperfect but often fair court system. They have a fake court system –corrupt and politicized. Activists there live in terror. Activists here live in exasperation, but not terror. You, like many, do not grasp the horror of autocracy. Try to imagine yourself in a country where all the power is held by sociopathic thugs. There is almost no hope in N. Korea and places like that. There is still hope here –if we don’t squander our chance to remove Trump.
Hitler unleashed the savage side of the Germans. He fomented cruelty and murderousness. Trump is doing the same. He loves violence and murder:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-shouldnt-forget-what-whistleblower-seals-told-us-about-eddie-gallagher/2019/12/29/7ce7e0f0-28c9-11ea-b2ca-2e72667c1741_story.html
In In the Garden of Beasts an astute Jewish German journalist tells a Nazi official, “You’ve replaced right and wrong with Aryan and non-Aryan”. This is what Trump is doing: obliterating all traditional notions of ethical behavior amongst his followers (hate radio jockeys laid the groundwork for this) and redefining the Good as Whatever Benefits Trump and His Supporters. Once that transformation is complete, expect unimaginable horrors: massacres of liberals, etc.
This is autocracy too: environmental laws scoffed at. People endure their poisoning in silence –or else.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-metal-mines-feed-the-global-demand-for-gadgets-theyre-also-poisoning-chinas-poorest-regions/2019/12/29/c90eac2c-0bcb-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html?arc404=true
ponderosa: Poisoning the poor never matters to those who are making money. Happens in this country also.
How many Puerto Ricans died from drinking filthy water after their homes were destroyed? How many in Flint are affected by their water that still isn’t something anyone should drink? How many schools have contaminated water?
Oct 13, 2017Weeks after Hurricane Maria, with more than 35% of residents without safe drinking water, some desperate Puerto Ricans are taking water from a Superfund site….CNN watched workers from the Puerto Rican water utility, Autoridad de Acueductos y Alcantarillados, or AAA, distribute water from a well at the Dorado Groundwater Contamination Site, which was listed in 2016 as part of the federal Superfund program for hazardous waste cleanup.
Sorry, but I HAVE lost hope. I think we have gone down the rabbit hole and there is no turning back. Every social good has been taken over with the intent to make money from it. We are not far from autocracy and we really aren’t “free”…..we are owned by corporate entities with the aid of our “elected” officials whose pockets are lined by those same corporate entities.
Wrong! We are fighting back and the oligarchs are stunned. We call out their lies. They are persuading no one except Trump’s basket of you know what.
Tell that to this Russian kid or the Salvadoran who is in paradise because he has a job installing sprinklers in Atlanta instead of his gang-controlled homeland or the Hong Kong protesters who dare to resist China’s juggernaut. We must keep working to make the world a better place —if only to avoid being complicit with evil.
Lisa M,
There is something really off about those who try to normalize Trump and today’s Republicans by saying things like “is there much difference between the evil corporate Democrat Obama and the evil of Trump?” These people keep pushing the false and dangerous and pro-white narrative that both Trump and Obama were equally corrupt and evil and therefore there is no difference between Trump appointing 90% of the federal justices and all 12 Supreme Court Justices and a corrupt evil Democrat appointing them.
Certainly I have never heard anyone but a privileged white person — or a right wing troll who loves Trump — insist that there is no difference between Trump and Obama and both are equally evil.
This happened in Nazi Germany, too. Privileged white, Christian Germans who lectured to those concerned with Hitler and said “don’t worry, Hitler is no worse than the corrupt people that ruled Germany before him.”
And if you were white, Christian, and German, it was true. When a white person tells others that a white supremacist or neo fascist is no worse than a corporate Democrat, that is because FOR THEM it is true and that is all that matters to them.
Carol: there is a big difference between imperfect protection and zero protection.
NYC: very well-said. I’m beginning to suspect that even educated liberals often don’t read enough to see what we see. What one knows determines what one sees.
Ponderosa: I agree that the US has ‘imperfect protection’. But it is also true that the US has the ability to make corporations clean up their messes. The political will isn’t there because it is ‘only poor people who are being hurt’.
In China, it is the same…people see the money coming in but not the cost of poor innocent lives.
Does it matter that imperfect protection kills as easily as zero protection, only the numbers are smaller?
I make no excuses for either. In a world where people care for each other, none of this would be happening.
Indeed, those who think that people in Russia don’t have freedom while in the US they do, usually draw the false equivalence between the Soviet Union and today’s Russia. This false equivalence is perpetuated by the US media.
I think we get a bit more nuanced picture if we listen to the interview with Oxxxymiron. (The interview is in English, despite some greetings in Russian in the beginning))
He talks about politics such as Putin and the limits of freedom of speech at about 39 minutes.
In trying to compare life in Russia and in the US, it’s worth thinking about a few issues.
When I write here on this blog or any other public media, I do have to be careful what words I am using, what I am talking about.
Social mobility in Russia is much greater for the poor than in the US due to the fact that childcare, higher ed and health care are free in Russia.
A few years ago, I participated in a peaceful protest for raising the min wage to $15 here in Memphis, and the highly unfriendly police dissolved our protest claiming it wasn’t properly authorized. To this day, I have no idea what the problem exactly was, the experience was frightening, to say the least, since we were explicitly told that those who persist will be taken to jail.
Even if protests are properly authorized, participants may be put under surveillance.
Mmemphis Police Department’s Office of Homeland Security (“OHS”)—originally created
after 9/11 to combat terrorism—implemented a program to surveil
protesters. Officers tracked individuals who attended protests,
monitored their social media activity, and recorded protesters’ names
and activities on OHS spreadsheets. Some protesters also ended up
on “blacklists,” which banned them from entering City Hall unless they
received police escorts. One protester even reported being followed
by the police.
I am not sure what your point is. Would you choose to be poor in Russia rather than here? ( I’m not sure that is an easy question to answer with my full belly.) Would you rather be a dissident in Russia?
Strong evidence that the Republicans really are the party of autocracy:
The authors believe that Christian nationalists like Barr are using Trump to establish a religious dictatorship. These Christians don’t just demonize non-Christian Americans, they think they are literally demons! (Wow, I had no idea I was a demon.) To say the least, this does not bode well for the treatment of us non-Christians should the zealots complete their seizure of the levers of power. For now we have the free press, the Democratic House and many liberal oligarchs standing on our side, but Putin and others have shown how such opposition can be brought to heel (e.g. by convicting the opposition oligarchs of fake crimes in biased courts, tossing them in jail and seizing their assets).
WOW!!!
“In essence, the central concept of the Christian religion is the concept of individual responsibility.”
Actually, not really. The main message of the Bible is that God is in charge, not humans. “Thy will be done”, not “my will be done.” Jesus didn’t take “responsibility” so much as he yielded to the will of God.
Way to parse the Bible, dienne. In the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase “Thy will be done,” can be read as a plea not obeisance. Believers pray for the peace and joy of God’s kingdom in place of the violence and suffering for which human beings are too often responsible. Of course, you can (one can) make a case for almost any action on the basis of some Bible passage. Heck, you can start bashing the heads of your enemies babies against rocks if you want to get really literal.
That was just one illustrative quote. The whole Bible is about bowing to the will of God. Read, for instance, the Book of Job. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” Humans are puny and powerless; only God is in control. On the other hand, nowhere in the Bible will you find the phrase “personal responsibility” or anything like it.
No, it is not, but there are many who would agree with you. You can find support for any position you CHOOSE in the Bible. I choose to try to find the message behind the words, not always obvious or easy. You are in real trouble if you tried to read the Bible literally since it contradicts itself repeatedly. Its contents were compiled from thousands of years of oral and written material to express men’s understanding of their relationship to God within the context of their time. If there is a divine message contained in it it has to be through metaphor for me. I am not ready to start beating the brains out of my enemies’ children or accepting the legitimacy of slavery.
“If there is a divine message contained in it it has to be through metaphor for me.”
Maybe the glaring errors and contradictions hint at the lack of divine messaging. Or else, we can search for divine messages hiding in every poem or novel or even in scientific papers. The choice depends on our imagination and on how much patience we posses to study cloudy arguments wrapped in tedious language.
Pretty clear where you come down on the whole issue. I still hold out hope for something beyond the physical world. I don’t find man’s attempt to grasp the spiritual at all tedious. I don’t expect to find “the way,” it’s a journey of a lifetime and maybe beyond. I was raised in a “Christian” cultural setting, so it’s spiritual messages resonate with me. If there is a beyond, I do not believe that Christians have a lock on it. If there is nothing, I will never know it.
“Pretty clear where you come down on the whole issue. I still hold out hope for something beyond the physical world. ”
Sure, there is something beyond the physical world, way out of reach of science. Just my impression is that organized religions are on too shaky grounds to be convincing as carriers of truths.
Max Born says:
There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that ‘belief’ must be discarded and replaced by ‘the scientific method.
On final truths and possible authorities, human or divine, in possession of them, Max Born says,
I believe that ideas such as absolute certitude, absolute exactness, final truth, etc. are figments of the imagination which should not be admissible in any field of science… This loosening of thinking seems to me to be the greatest blessing which modern science has given to us. For the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world..
“…the belief in a single truth and in being the possessor thereof is the root cause of all evil in the world..”
How many people have been killed by those spreading ‘the one true religion”. Religious wars and repression of large groups of people who are different continues to this day.
Trump is using ‘religion’ believed by Evangelicals to put unqualified people as judges. Their work will put the US back into the dark ages for years to come.
People waiting for Armageddon want the destruction of the world because that proves that Jesus’s second coming is due any day. They see no need to work to help save the environment or improve living conditions on earth. Trump, in their minds, is hastening this venture and is the ‘chosen one’.
People need rational thinking skills and then apply those skills towards making everyone’s life better.
I guess we might be closer in thought than I thought. Yeah, organized religion has a lot to answer for. I don’t know why anyone would expect differently since organized religion is a human construct. Somewhere, here and there, there we may get glimpses at divine truths, but we aren’t terribly good at defining them. Perhaps that is why we have a tendency to give credit to the divine when we experience something incredibly beautiful and/or profound.
“I am not ready to start beating the brains out of my enemies’ children”
You’ve brought that up twice and I’m really not sure how it’s relevant to this discussion. All I’m saying is that the whole “personal responsibility” gospel is not actually found in the Bible. People say things like “Heaven helps those who help themselves” or “If you don’t work, you don’t eat” or, worst of all, “God is my co-pilot” as if those words or words like them come from the Bible, but there is nothing like that in there. Jesus specifically says, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them….But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
Over and over and over the Bible says that God is in charge, humans are not. The only “personal responsibility” we’re given is to choose whether or not to believe in God and follow Jesus. What happens from there is God’s responsibility.
If you want to argue that you can interpret anything from the Bible, you have to find textual proof. Please find me passages from the Bible that support “personal responsibility.”
Psalm 137:9. the OT is particularly grisly, and people are always praising God for “smiting” their enemies. Personal responsibility? The ten commandments in the OT. You can say God ordered them, but people had to choose to follow–take responsibility for their actions in light of those ethical standards. Do we take responsibility for following the law? Is the only reason you do or don’t follow it the punishment that may or may not follow? In order to be part of any social organization, we choose to follow the guidelines of that group if we choose to be part of it. If we don’t like the consequences imposed by the group, we can choose not to belong. Some variation of this pattern has always been true whether you call it God’s will or man’s.
Very brave young person. A landmark in these worst of times–many, many young people militantly opposing state and corporate oligarchies at great risk with society and the planet on the edge of calamity…very hopeful to see them on the offensive.
Indeed. Very, very brave. I fear for him.
And yes. I take great encouragement from the polls I read concerning young people’s stands on the issues. We are in a phase transition, they are hip to the con, and they are going to demand change. At the same time, the goons with power–Putin, Kim, Nkurunziza, Al-Assad, Erdogan, Mbasogo, Duterte, Bosonaro, Duda, Orban, all of the Don, Cheeto “Littlefingers” Trumbalone’s gangster heroes–now have in place technologies for command, control, and coercion that Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and even visionaries like Orwell couldn’t have dreamed of.
So, we’re in for a scary time.
Some are hip to the con, yes, but not all. And who’s to say many of them can’t be “coordinated” by the thugs down the road. Knowledge is the only true safeguard and, frighteningly, our schools denigrate. They think they’re purveying “critical thinking skills” but it’s an illusion.
I hope this brave and smart Russian student is not murdered or maimed for life.
If something happens to this brave young man, you can be certain that Vlad’s Agent Orange, aka Moscow’s Agent Governing America (MAGA), will take the decisive retaliatory action that he took in the case of the murder of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi.
In other words, he will order the Double Bacon Cheeseburger instead of the the Quarter Pounder with Cheese for lunch.
The latest Big Lie from The Wall Street Journal of Corporate Apologetics, owned by the same fellow who brings you Faux News, is an article today claiming that “Capitalism is not a conscious project.” No, it’s just that invisible hand at work, folks.
Well, the hand is invisible all right. It’s the one passing money behind closed doors to ensure that the fix is in and that you are not privy to the deal.
I would disagree on one level. Capitalism is not conscious in that it is a system that arises out of economic relationships between people. Often what we see in our system is not the freely flowing exchange of goods, but the ruthless concentration of wealth for the power it gives.
Russia experienced a hand-off (recently described here on this blog) at the close of the communist party era of means of production from party apparatus to individual apparatus. It was sort of a reverse Orwell moment, wherein the pigs became pigs again rather than turning into men. Zhukov is feeling the brunt of this system, set up as it is to limit freedom and restrict all but a few from participating in the economy. Oligarchy in industry more reflects what Russia had under communism or the tsars than it does capitalism.
Trying to avoid markets where items are exchanged is like trying to avoid breathing. Markets are just a word that means people trying to exchange goods. What is the perversion of this system is the concentration of power that comes with money in the hands of the few. Only rules and a referee will cure the matter, and the ref has to be impartial.
“Russia experienced a hand-off (recently described here on this blog) at the close of the communist party era of means of production from party apparatus to individual apparatus. ”
The fall of Communism is a good example to develop skepticism for peaceful transitions from one political system to the next. Those in power in the old system may end up being in power in the new system as well, since nobody prevents these leaders from keeping themselves in power and from saving their wealth. These leaders simply start chanting the new ideology associated with the new political system.
I think it is dangerous to compare too closely Russia and the US. In Russia they want to make political speech a crime. In the US we want to make political speech irrelevant.
This latter is the 21st century way. Putin still trusts the old ways more. I think the new way is at least as effective but more difficult to notice and fight.