It is quite unlikely that you do not know what is going on in Ukraine at the moment and notwithstanding that this is only the most recent of a long litany of horrors that neither belong uniquely to Russian military or even this particular moment in history, it is a terrible, terrible thing. We should of course be unsurprised that war brings such catastrophe and the brutal inhumanity of indiscriminate murder, torture and sexual violence as this has been the haunting shadow of human civilisation for as long as we have had societies.
What we should, perhaps, be surprised by is the extent to which a kleptocratic bureaucracy and integrated propaganda as media control system seeks to actively misrepresent their own acts, to obscure the facts they themselves have incurred, and to serially misdirect the people they claim to represent from the crimes that are being committed in their name. It is a standard measure of autocracy to deceive the long-suffering people they oppress but I do wonder what will happen when the truth eventually percolates to awareness, as it must, and theirbpeople discover just how utterly abhorrent the behaviour of their soldiers has been.
Not only are entire cities and towns being destroyed and countless lives being ruined but thousands have died, millions have fled and all of this to satisfy the power hungry greed of a leadership that can barely lead their own country with any degree of competency, let alone try to manage an even larger territory by conquest. Totalitarianism is truly a kind of irredeemable cancer upon humanity but I truly hope that this current metastasis can be treated, healed or extracted before it spreads.
The difference between totalitarianism and the most venal, disgusting, base monstrosity of inhuman cruelty? You tell me. It is probably only a matter of scale.
Daedelus Kite 