Opioid of the Masses
Visit sunny Florida, where truth will soon be against the law.
Truth is dangerous for monsters. Their evil power feeds on the opposite: lies to justify — or deny — their predations; lies to enrage and flatter the rabble; lies to vilify their opponents; lies as a foundation for a perverse, self-righteous, populist delusion.
As recently as Feb. 17, Vladimir Putin told the world to ignore the 130,000 massed Russian troops; he had no intention of invading Ukraine. But three weeks later he did. He said Ukraine had been stolen from Russia. But in reality it had been independent since 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He called Ukrainians Nazis and pawns of the West. But those propaganda accusations don’t in any way fit in the same sentence. He told his soldiers they would be welcomed as liberators. But they are perishing as invaders, duped by a psychopath and his web of lies.
Someday, in a post-Putin Russia, students will be taught the truth. Reckoning with history is the only path to righteousness — which is why truth and reconciliation projects have been taken up in Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa, South Korea, Peru and especially Germany. Not for self-flagellation, but for the understanding that must precede accountability, that in turn must precede progress. Such a post-Soviet reckoning had been well underway in Russia until the rise of Putin, who — like his communist forebears — found truth inconvenient. Reconciliation went begging. The righteous path was sodded over. For the sake of a restored empire, and with it restored national pride, the lessons of history were discarded for chauvinism in the mask of patriotic destiny.
So what do we think about Putin’s Russia? Or Erdogan’s Turkey, where whispering about the Armenian Genocide is a crime against the state? Or Poland, where authoritarian President Andrzej Duda in 2018 criminalized any World War II history that acknowledges Polish collaboration with its Nazi occupiers. And what do we think about Saudi Arabia, which last week beheaded 81 citizens, and where insulting the state is punished as “terrorism”?
In these places, truth is a synonym for shame, and shame is not to be permitted. In the Bible, it is the first step to redemption. In Russia, Turkey, Poland and Saudi Arabia, it is unpatriotic.
Oh, and also in Florida.