1420 interview is not dead. This is the problem with social media in general. You get good at something, people notice who you are and suddenly you’re making important decisions. The truth is you were always making important decisions when you were working in anonymity. If now you’re somebody, well, that’s cool. But I don’t really think you should forget where you come from. We used to say things like that when we were teenagers in America. You don’t really want to sell out and you want to be true to yourself. I still give this advice to any young person stupid enough to listen to me speak.
I thought they quit but now, with the news that Ukraine has started to make violent attacks inside Russia, our favorite independent journalist came out with the following interviews. Big apology for the phony advertisement in the middle of it. It’s Russian so nobody ever said that they were a harbinger of good taste.
So what I love about this is that I believe what we are listening to is absolutely true. I talk to people here and they talk like this. And if it sounds like they are regurgitating the state line, it is because regurgitating information is what Russians do. It is the nature of education when one is young to be able to recite poems and the dictates of the teacher regardless of relevance. The importance is the human recording device. You have to hear it clearly and give it back clearly. If you don’t think this is a problem in teaching people English, you’re just not a professional in this field.
So you have the two sides of the coin. I think the reason Daniel wanted to quit is exactly his frustration with the uniformity of Russian rhetoric. The existence of the state party line is such that it influences even those who would be opposed to it. It is a level of suffocation that comes absolutely from biblical sources. The government is absolutely overwhelming and the people stand no chance whatsoever. And if a hero stands up, let them be crucified for attempting to be a hero.
But what does it look like inside the machine? What happens to the people who grow up with the Russian government being over their heads for a quarter of a century? What happens when you fully understand that you are being told to comply with something bigger than yourself and that there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop this machine from doing what it’s going to do. And they know this because they must learn this exactly like this and all the accompanying rhetoric that goes along with it. Number one, the government is God. Number two, you serve the government.
I could argue against this from a traditional judeo socialistic point of view. If we’re going to free the slaves, this is as good a place as any to get started. No, I don’t think the Russians are going to suddenly acquire good taste or common sense anytime soon. But you can relieve them of the burden of a totalitarian government with a taste for blood and violence if it allows anti-semitism to be. If you take away the knowledge that the people telling you you have no choice but to listen to them are busy murdering people at a very constructive rate if you are a bookkeeper. Their job is to murder people and they are doing it. And when they are done they are all coming home. All of those murderers with all of those diseases and all of those experiences.
In this though, even that little bit of a commercial in the middle where they talk about Grandpa living with goats. The living was goats part It’s not really such a big deal. If you’re going to be a small time farmer and you’re going to raise animals for food, you live with animals. I live with cats even though I house them some distance from my own house because I don’t like animals in my house. I do have an association with animals much the way I have associations with my neighbors. Same level of intercourse by the way.
What it means exactly is that he is no longer any good to the state because he is no longer going to be a money producer. He’s given himself to the country and being alone. He just wants meat and he’s happy so leave him alone. If he can find vodka on his small pension or if there’s some other drugs available to do a better job, he has this. But if he can have enough meat to eat, he can enjoy his time left on the planet. And here is the argument in its true form. What do you do with people who were pretty useless to start with but who now have become adults through the violence of war? Even as a right of passage, what happens to people when they agree to be murderers and go through the experience of living like murderers in the fields of Ukraine?
The answer to the question is to put aside the weapons. I for one vote ecology first and foremost. We can talk all day about what it means when Kamala Harris assumes the presidency. The odds right now show that though the actual individual votes are close, the overall structure and the electoral college say we’re looking at a 60/40 win. We are going to have a female president of some character. For good or for bad and whether or not it’s even in her vocabulary to understand self-sacrifice and economic sacrifice for the purposes of stopping global warming. This is going to happen and all of the noise and bullshit that says we are never allowed to do anything will just continue.
That is my one true complaint about Kamala Harris. She’s just going to keep going. Status quote. She will accept the image of being the first female president and then she will allow perhaps some more heavy lifting from AOC or whoever will be the true female president of the USA who actually does something.
In the meantime, nobody seems to mind the murders taking place down in Ukraine and now in Russia. They are murdering each other here. The war continues. The United States feels it is a good opportunity to both showcase their modern weaponry, give it really good commercial air time and then perhaps make money on the loans later on. Everyone doubts the repayments but everyone gets fealty or at least the illusion of it from the Ukrainians. What a disgusting clusterfuck.
The answer is to stop fighting each other and start working together for the good of humanity and the planet. We have an ecological catastrophe happening Right here and right now and it’s cause, amongst many ridiculous sojourns into economic brutality, is this war as much as anything. We don’t have the right to put this much pollution in the air nor do we have the right to bring this much misery into the world. This is not how to run a business and it is not how to run a planet.
