Thug Life (cont'd)
Europe says no to Ukraine's greasy clowns
Egalitarian politics is ever a mixture of leveling up and leveling down. Attempts to focus exclusively on one poll will fail, because they’re both important.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is solidly in the leveling-down camp. He and his lieutenants have kept Ukraine outside Europe’s pale for more than a year.
Pales for centuries have been enforced in various European countries for political reasons, notably in Ireland (the Pale of Dublin), France (the Pale of Calais) and later Russia (the Pale of Settlement).
The term 'pale' (черта́ осе́длости) means literally the area enclosed by such fence and figuratively 'the area that is enclosed and safe.' To be beyond it means being outside the area accepted as 'home.'
Zelensky in late August said his country’s ‘home’ is in Europe.
"I have told many European leaders that they should tell Ukrainians what steps we need to take for EU membership,” Zelensky said in an interview with Euronews.
The president views critics as obstacles to his higher popularity rating. His rejection of mere civility ― a minimal, occasionally contemptuous adherence to culturally contingent rules of respectful behavior ― keeps Ukraine beyond Europe’s pale.
Even worse, dialectical discourse under Zelensky is dead. There is no difference between parrhesia and isegoria in Ukraine, since reality is no longer expressed in rational categories.
Under Zelensky, Ukraine is a sham democracy, a primitive post-soviet feudal autocracy that is not underpinned by elections or coordinated work of institutions, but by popular uprisings. Absent them, even the illusion of tolerance would not exist.
European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen should ‘level up’ with Zelensky during their meeting on October 6 in Brussels.
'If there is a pale, decent people stay inside it,' a line from John Harington's lyric poem The History of Polindor and Flostella printed in 1657.
cf. Open letter to Arakhamia from European Parliament deputies
cf. Thug Life (May 6, 2020)