Day 803
If one looks back on the great speeches of last century, perhaps the greatest was Winston Churchill's "We will fight them" speech. With mere words, he managed to inspire an entire nation, giving them the moral courage to persevere against what must have seemed insurmountable odds.
In Ukraine, there has been oodles of oratory They have been happy to make. By "They" we mean the country’s top officials who daily pop the starchy morsels of numbing sufficiency into our collective brain, media-wise. Those pep talks, the ones shown on the national TV-marathon, perpetuate official happy-face idiocy, the shimmering dogmata of implacable optimism and faith in the supernatural.
Take, for example, Z’s Easter Day speech.
Today our prayer is for all Ukrainians who are waiting for this dawn and will definitely see it. They will wait for peace, truth and God, who will return to the scorched earth, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his Easter address.
"As we overcome a common path and experience common pain, we are all united today by one common prayer. We pray for all our warriors who are celebrating Easter in the trenches and on the positions. We pray for our warriors of light, who restrain demons in all directions. We pray for those who keep another commandment in their lives: to defend Ukraine. We pray that they all come back alive," he said.
"We pray for all our civilians who work hard every day to strengthen our state and ensure that it successfully overcomes evil. We pray for those who live and work for this purpose. We pray for all our children, for all the boys and girls brave far beyond their years, whose childhood was stolen from them by Russia, but who, despite everything, have not forgotten how to smile and believe in miracles," he added.
"We pray for all our mothers and fathers who were robbed of a happy, peaceful aging, and who, despite everything, are holding on and taking care of us. We pray for all our cities and villages, that should feel the Lord's grace, not the constant terror of evil," Zelenskyy also said.
"The Bible teaches us to love our neighbor. And the present has shown us the true meaning of this word. When we support and help each other even hundreds of kilometers away from one another. We protect each other. We pray for each other. When we all have become closer to each other, we have become each other's neighbors," the president said.
"And our former neighbor, who was always making us take him for a brother, remains distant from us for centuries. They have broken all the commandments, coveted our house, and come to kill us. The world sees it. God knows it. And we believe that there is a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on the shoulder of God. Therefore, with such an ally, life will definitely prevail over death," Zelenskyy said.
"Today, we are praying for all Ukrainians who are waiting for this dawn and will certainly see it. They will find peace, truth, and God, who will return to the scorched land, the land scarred with craters and trenches. He will return with peace, tranquility, and flowers instead of mines in the fields. He will return with children's laughter instead of the roar of an air alarm," the president said.
"I believe in this every day, especially on this glorious day in this glorious place, the history of which reminds us that neither the Horde invasion, nor the Nazi occupation, nor the Russian terror will be able to wipe us off the face of the Earth," he said.
"May God grant eternal rest to all those who gave their lives for Ukraine and everlasting peace to their descendants, to all our children and grandchildren, and to all our future generations. They have the sacred right to know what a peaceful Easter in a peaceful Ukraine is," the president said.
Z’s speech reminded me of Mikhail Shevelev’s post.
Nobody likes professional politicians. Because they are squabbling, lying and hypocritical populists and demagogues. The demand for a messiah is invariably high - to be all white and definitively right. Everyone is waiting for the second coming, it is obvious. And indeed, it would be nice. Because the first one left us with a feeling of underconsumption.
The second coming? Or maybe the third.
Unfortunately, we are confronted with less soothing soundbites, the ones that keep us up at night, the ones we should never forget.
Let’s revisit two of them1.
“For two years in a row they say that there are brigades or units that have been at war for two years without rotation. There are units that have never been to the front at all. [There are] 900,000 [in the Armed Forces of Ukraine]. A conventional force of 300,000 are fighting, with rotation, so where are the other 600,000? Now an audit is being carried out and [these 600,000] have been found. I cannot divulge details now, but conditionally 8,000 soldiers have already been found who were simply seconded to the General Staff and did not contribute." — MP David Arakhama, Servant of the People Party leader (February 23, 2024)
And this one.
Looking on the bright side, Hakeem’s no-bullshit message makes sense. He didn’t mention god once!