this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2025
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[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

And that stuff about Europe and homosexuality seems for me a kind of “the hungry doesn’t understand the full”, more of jokes and separation than of really thinking that’s true.

I'm talking about an underlying psychosexual current. Of course people don't believe in the literal truth of these kinds of things, it'd be like believing that dreams are literally true. But there's still a reason why you're having these particular kinds of dreams, and not different ones.

They followed their own laws. If a law was too cumbersome to make, they didn’t. It was an absolute monarchy, but if you compare today’s Russia’s judicial system to the imperial one - the latter seems very humane.

Do you think it's even constitutional for Putin to deputise people with presidential powers? That any court would challenge him? Law in Russia was, and is, subordinate to the powers that be.

Nah, not that. If we make this comparison, for them it’s the father’s right, and you are subordinate. It’s not about fear of punishment, it’s about enduring for endurance’s sake. Almost morality.

That's the attitude of those considered strong, yes. You either become them or you break and end up with a tattoo saying "slave" on your forehead or something.

People who you are maybe looking for here are not those who try to somehow explain the state’s justifications for this war.

I'm not talking about the state's justification, but about the justification of the cultural psyche. Russia, as a psyche, doesn't want to see Ukrainians with forehead tattoos, it wants Ukraine to be part of it. Part of the same ethos, with maybe slightly different dances, clothing, and they can continue pronouncing things with h instead of g as long as they admit they're Russians, that they accept, as you put it above, the father's authority. And the only way that psyche knows how to convince the son of the father's authority is by cruelty.

The virtuous suffering thing is often stupid, but sometimes a strength.

It's not. It destroys social cohesion, it breeds neurosis. With true courage, it doesn't matter whether you live or die for the cause, as long as the cause is virtuous. This Russian strength, though, it only can ever make sense if you're dying for it, living for it indeed is stupid, at the same time its strength in dying for it is not stronger than that of true courage. It's precisely why Russians don't know where the fuck that cart is racing. But go, it must. Why. Why not make camp and have a party.

The reason is simple: Without the people neurotic, distrustful, and accustomed to bowing to authority, the central authority would fall, because people would actually be able to organise bottom-up. The central authority knows that, and thus does nothing to combat it, the people, well, it's Russia's only way to greatness, isn't it? Any alternatives?

Which brings me to Navalny's balls of steel, returning to Russia: Yes, that's impressive. That's strong, "virtuous suffering". But it's also accepting the status quo. You can't be a revolutionary against a system by holding onto the ethos that fuels it.