Maurice sat with today’s headlines on a very large monitor. When he did so, he felt he could follow the currents of the world mentally. Politics became less daunting.
He hated the go-to solution of his colleagues, which was to give up digesting the flood and rather resort to a “stand-your-ground” mentality.
While he felt a genuine dislike towards his friend’s opinions, he appreciated his diligence in turning as many stones as he could accomplish.
Which is the reason he smiled melancholically when he noticed the lone figure traversing the garden path.
“What’s the hurry, Benedict?”
“I think I know why the two of us never seems to be on the same page.”
“Yes, I focus on the future, you want to resume the middle ages.”
“In a way, you are probably right. Can I come in? I would love to talk about parliamentary democracy for a second.”
Maurice pointed him to a half open shed in the garden with intact roof. Benedict leaped ahead, threw his laptop open on a marble table and hovered over it too energetic to sit.
“Okay, now what’s wrong with democracy?”, Maurice asked, belittling his friend’s intelligence.
“This is what is wrong with democracy: "
I would also like to thank my colleagues who demonstrated excellent sports results during the small Olympiad – we hold it every year: Kharitonov beat everyone at billiards, he is a great billiard player, a great specialist in agriculture, Afonin beat everyone at chess, and Babich at tennis. So our team can be proud of how they are celebrating the New Year. Well, give our champions a round of applause! (Applause.) They are champions in the State Duma.
“To which the aging liberalist Zhirinovsky answered:”
You say that Kharitonov is a billiards champion. Why didn’t he invite our Didenko? What kind of underground champions are these? Let him play with ours. Ours wasn’t invited! Let’s have a match today, and Didenko will win!
December 22, 2021, State Duma session, Zhirinovsky V.V., LDPR
“Are they bragging about their accomplishments in some stupid vacation tournament?”
“I believe they are.. Okay, that’s not what I came to show you.”
What stalemate looks like
“The thing is that I prefer to read transcripts of government debates. No better insight is offered as to what is currently happening in a country”, professed Benedict.
“So do I. Don’t you find them to be occasionally immature?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I was looking for a lightning bolt in the oratory of at least one of the parliaments or senates, but invariable one listens to a limited number of broken records.
I want to show you excerpts from senate and parliamentary discussions sampled from both USA, Ukraine and Russia. Unsurprisingly there is great homogeneity in each parliament/senate. The overall themes area invariably:
- Ukraine: Russia is the aggressor. We will fight for our freedom.
- Russia: Nazis get away with killing Russians.
- USA: The crooks controlling Russia get away with crimes against humanity.
What I find most peculiar is how narrow those scripts are followed inside each political climate.”
“You basically ask, »why aren’t there any real dissenters in a senate?«”, Maurice helped.
“Why, yes? Why is the Ukrainian point of view not presented in the Duma by at least one member? Or vice versa.”
“Well, the communists in the Rada were banned, so there’s one explanation.”
“Only after the armed conflict started. But yes, perhaps the communists in both Russia and Ukraine needs to occupy a fourth category. What about in USA? No armed conflict internally, and lovers of freedom.”
“Being a communist in USA is not without dangers.”
Benedict nodded and organised his browser tabs with government pages in machine translation, and started picking through the archives somewhat in a random fashion.
I would like to start with the issue of war. For the eighth year, the Russian Federation has been carrying out aggression against our country. For the eighth year, the Russian Federation kills Ukrainians, annexes Crimea and temporarily occupies Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Every week, unfortunately, our soldiers die. And we remember their memory of the dead, fallen, and we know about such an important institution as the issue of state awards. Unfortunately, in addition to real soldiers and people who deserve these state awards, today in our country there are outright scum, traitors, collaborators who still have these titles.
What am I looking at?” - asked Maurice.
“Parliamentary debates. This is from the Rada in Kyiv some three months before the war.”
“What in particular strike you as odd? I mean, any country experiencing invasion tend to abandon any sympathy with the invader’s cause.”
“That is probably the crux of my point: Conflict erases understanding”
Maurice looked at him. When his friend ventured into these seemingly childish simplifications with solemn sincerity, he did as always: Refused to follow.
“Isn’t this a matter of large-scale sociology?
- Conflict of interest leads to lack of sympathy.
- Lack of sympathy leads to mutual lack of sympathy, again leading to ideological trench warfare.
- Tempers flare, and sooner or later people die. Now the conflict can only escalate and explode until it burns up all the fuel.”
Benedict for once looked like he appreciated Maurice’s statement.
“Let’s turn to the US Senate instead:”
I’ll associate myself with Senator Marasso’s comments that he was quoting, I think, Senator McCain saying that Russia is a mafia-run gas station parading as a country. And Russia has real problems. Their population is declining. Their industrial base is weak, but they have extraordinary natural resources. And as I look at Russia, I’m concerned that their ambition does not stop with Ukraine, but that Putin’s ambition, personally, is much broader and that what happens in Ukraine is an appetizer for a growing appetite on his part.
“Clearly not a lot of respect for a country like Russia.”
And I agree with you from the revolution of dignity, which really was about Ukrainians all across the country, not just in Kyiv, but also in Ukraine’s East, saying that they wanted the right to have a closer relationship with Europe, to live more as Europeans live, through the almost 10 years that have, well eight years that have passed since.
“Also in the east…? Is this guy for real?”. This time it was Maurice who took a dislike to the savage American senator.
Benedict looked at many other instances in the transcript.
“They vary, but only according to personality. Some people are level headed, and deeply concerned about Putin’s moves. Some are frenetic and outraged by Putin’s moves. All find Russia’s actions detestable.”
“Nuland brushes Russia’s concerns about NATO completely away.”
[….] that if there are questions that he has or grievances that he has that could be worked through with diplomacy, either vis-a-vis Ukraine or vis-a-vis the U.S. or vis-a-vis NATO, that we are open to having these conversations and that aggression is the wrong way to go.
“… Like, ‘we can still talk about it’, and yet, a little later:”
President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have repeatedly indicated that they seek to deny any potential path to NATO membership for Ukraine and other Eastern European countries, does the administration view this demand as a valid issue for negotiation? No, we do not. And President Biden made that point crystal clear to President Putin today that the issue of who joins NATO is an issue for NATO to decide. It’s an issue for applicant countries to decide that no other outside power will or may have a veto or a vote in those decisions.
“Time to look at the climate in the Duma.”
Moreover, we saw that the citizens of the country are self-organizing, that they have lost their fear, that they understand that they have lost a great country, and now it is not just nostalgia, but a desire to do everything in order to restore the destroyed union Fatherland, first of all by strengthening the union of Russia and Belarus, looking for ways and exits in Donbass, which the Nazi-Bandera gang continues to shell every day.
“Oh, that’s a mild case. Check out the Liberalist Party:”
Stalin kept waiting: what if it doesn’t happen, what if it gets better? - and we waited, three million were taken prisoner and half the country was burned because the order was not given in time. Now - in time; the whole world sees the program: we demand, we wait, we hope. And we do not threaten anyone! They threaten us - foreign troops are standing at our border, weapons are being brought to the adjacent side. Everything is like in 1941: German divisions keep coming, bringing weapons, and not only German, but also Hungarian, Romanian, and Italian - all of Europe was in 1941! And now there are 30 countries in NATO, all of Europe: they train and prepare saboteurs.
[…] This will not be a year [2022] of peace, this will be the year when Russia finally becomes a great country again, and everyone should shut up and respect our country. Otherwise, they will shut our mouths and exterminate Russians first in Donbass, and then in the western part of Russia.
“Yeah… the pieces are certainly placed on the board now. No way out.”
Benedict and Maurice was clicking through Rada, Duma and Senate transcripts. Nothing new showed.
Perhaps for the first time in history, the two friends felt the same thing: The impossibility of peace in the world.
/PARADOX