The Antidote To The Strongman Is Responsibility

Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has netted some impressive losses for Russia.  Among those losses are up to 17,000 Russian troops killed, over 40,000 Russian casualties (including soldiers who have been wounded, but not killed), pariah status among the nations of the world, crippling economic consequences, and a series of singular losses on the propaganda front.  But over the last week and a half, Russia has mounted a ferocious cyber-counterattack in order to retake the initiative in the information war.  So we have many, many "news" sites aligned with the Far Right (and blogs by Putin trolls who pretend to be, among other things, morbidly obese housewives) which are criticizing President Biden as weak or incompetent, or accusing Ukraine of developing bioweapons, or who are repeating the tired old Russian talking point that Russia's attack of Ukraine was designed to eliminate a potential "threat to Russia" either from NATO - which has not attacked Russia at all - or from the presence of independent, happy, self-reliant people on Russia's doorstep.  (In other words, "YOUR freedom is a threat to ME!")

The most recent weapon to be deployed in this information war is the threat of the "chaos" that may engulf the world if Russia is not allowed to get its way.  So there are Russian mouthpieces spouting threats of the end of the world, or the threat of nuclear war, or the threat of widespread economic breakdown as a result of the West's resistance against the imperial ambitions of Putin.  To be sure, there is some substance to those threats.  But that substance consists of the weaknesses of position which we in the West have created for ourselves as a result of allowing ourselves to become dependent on Russia for a number of the resources needed in our modern industrial economies.  We knew for decades that in depending on Russia for things like grain, oil, and fertilizer, we were relying on a regime that despises democracy and human rights, a regime that would use our dependence as a tool to try to subjugate us.  Putin's Russia would now try to persuade us that we have only the stark choice between the kind of "peace" that comes from capitulating to Putin versus starvation and shortage.  That, however, is false.

We have also known since the 1970's that the resource base of the societies and economies of the Global North would one day decline to the point where we would have to devise new ways of living - ways that are more suited to a world of limits.  Recognizing those limits is not the end of the world, and we don't need to have a meltdown when faced with the need to make necessary adjustments.  However, a meltdown is just what many of us have had (or, to use a British expression, too many of us have thrown a wobbly) whenever the need to learn to live within limits has been mentioned.  Our tantrums are provoked at the thought that our lives, our ambitions, our dreams, our cravings might to be subject to limits.  This is especially true of the privileged upper-middle-class members of the dominant culture.  And this leads to a danger.  For although we know, deep down, that everyone on earth will have to face a world of limits, the danger is that we will choose to believe strongmen and populists who promise us otherwise - men who promise that by waving a magic wand they and they alone can bring back the days of past glory if only we give ourselves entirely to the wishes of these men.  The experience of those of us who lived through the Trump years or through the disaster of post-Brexit Britain should be enough to teach us otherwise, but as Abe Lincoln once said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time..."

The antidote to the false promise of the strongman and the populist is a willingness to accept the world as it is - that is, to make peace with reality - and to figure out the best and most moral way of living within the reality into which we have been placed.  Grab a clue: the present time of shortages and high prices was coming even without the West's sanctions against Russia.  Didn't anyone notice the shortages of 2020 or how gas prices were rising throughout all of 2021?  

P.S. I have at least three four blog posts in the oven.  Over the next month I hope to publish them.  One post will be an essay on the subject of populist leaders and how the pedagogy of the oppressed is designed to liberate the oppressed from the lies of the populist by teaching the oppressed to take personal and collective responsibility for our own lives.  (Today's post is a sneak preview.)  The second post will deal with the threat which false charity poses to genuine liberation.  The third post will be about programming search engines.  The fourth post will be a brief sketch of my experiences as a small business owner, as well as the things that moved me to pursue entrepreneurship.  Stay tuned.