Eat, Sleep, Fight
Tough rules, clear and quick steps
I watched and listened to Z talking to Canadian students on YouTube yesterday morning.
At around 30’, he began mumbling about democracy.
"When you defend democracy, there can be no question that all your tools are democratic. Because democracy is an opportunity for dialogue, and the right to choose, and freedom. All this is correct. But when there is a war, there is no time for dialogue. Unfortunately. There is no time for discussion, because time is not counted in seconds, not in minutes, time is counted in people, in the number of survivors and the number of the dead."
The president said clear and tough rules, clear and quick steps without dialogue, talks - "this is no longer about democracy."
"I must state: In order to protect freedom and democracy in the state, sometimes you need to act quickly and undemocratically. But when the war ends, this will bring results," he said.
Democracy means different things to different people.
Since Independence — and I was here for that in 1991 — Ukraine has a remained a sham democracy, a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy not underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings (2000, 2004, 2014). Absent them, even the illusion of tolerance, much less official competency, would not exist.
Which brings me to this:
It’s not exactly, er, news that Ukraine’s top spy is incompetent, or worse.
Ukraine today is not unlike the Mohist equivalent of the trolley problem. Z has told us, “We must pull the lever,” but for the last two and a half years he has driven the country into a double-tracked curve in such a way that the rear wheel bogey jumped the rails and flattened the economy while simultaneously failing to prevent the grisly deaths of innocent civilians during a plague.
Looking on the bright side, this means that if you’re a good journalist in Ukraine, you don't have an Achilles' heel. Because you're just a piece of shit in the middle of the track that eventually is going to get run over. And if the trolley's going to be Z!Team, then you're going to derail it1.
Decrepitude at Ukraine’s State Security Service stopped being news since at least 20202, and that’s leaving out the Mylovanov bits.
Ukraine Goes Coup Coup. Get Z the hell away from the trolley car problem (November 27, 2021)
Clandestine Fuckery. Revoking Ukraine’s security cleareance (December 29, 2020)