How can any Russians in the West support Putin?
We can understand that Russians in Russia are being lied to by Putin and his cronies. But what are we to make of Russians in the West who defend him?
I cannot understand it. Is it that identity clouds reason? I should know. For years I believed in Catholicism. I identified with Catholicism. I maintained that sense even when reason undermined my childish beliefs.
It took me so long to see the light of reason.
Is that how it is with national identity too? In a crazy world, do Russians cling to Putin and his mythology rather than face the unfathomable reality of the catastrophe he has unleashed on Ukraine and in the world?
How long did it take Germans to recognise the twisted logic of Hitler? Will it take Russians as long?
School Yard Bully
I used to be a teacher. I’m trying to imagine a school yard bully with such power that even teachers wouldn’t intervene to stop him beating up a smaller pupil.
That is the dilemma facing the West right now. A bully so powerful that people of reason are afraid to defend the bullied pupil. Why? Because the bully has threatened to massacre the family of any teachers who intervene to save the pupil who is being beaten to a pulp.
What can the teachers do? Nobody wants their families to be treated like this battered child is being pummelled. And we know that this psychopath would carry out his threats on the families of any and all teachers who intervened.
NATO’s cop out
NATO says: ‘You are not a member. I am not obliged to fight for you. If I fight for you, our cities will be laid waste by this madman.’
It is an understandable response. Our first duty is to protect our wives and children, our homes, preserve peace in our streets. We do not want war to spread to our homelands.
We watch the child being beaten to a pulp, almost to the point of death.
We feel impotent. We cannot make love to our wives. We are limp when we try.
We let the bully continue his unprovoked assault, his rape of the child.
But is our peaceful neighbourhood, our sanitised life, worth living, if we stand by and let this child be bullied, beaten, crushed, raped, killed?
What humanity do we preserve by saying ‘I can do no more’?
Heroic Bullied Child
We watch as the child heroically fights his aggressor, his enemy, the Arch Bully of Humanity. We watch.
Limp-organed, we do things from the sidelines. Radical things, like reducing the bully’s social welfare income. We won’t sell him sweets. We won’t play with him or let our children play with him. We ask him to stop.
But the Arch Bully, the mafia boss, the untouchable, goes on beating the life out of the pupil. The pupil begs for us to help. We say sorry. We can’t. Because if we do, he will do that to our wives and children too. And he will wreck our lovely homes and our happy lives.
The child has been pummelled almost to death. The pummelling continues. The child can barely breathe now.
‘Please, please, please help me,’ he manages, in stuttered gasps, almost inaudible now.
‘I cannot,’ says Boris the Brave. I cannot allow my brave British boys to be beaten like you are being beaten. I’m sorry, child, you must die.’
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