Or a herd simulation of civil society
As a frail woman, I am potentially prepared to respect our military and security ministries and agencies. Actually, the word combination sounds impressive. It has strength and structure. However, the specifics of the female Weltanschauung leave that consumer impression on all initial emotions. I think this is why I am always angered by any such powerful structure publicly flexing its muscle. It reminds me of X-rated movies — something between erotica and pornography. You watch them all you want, yet the effect is achieved somewhere on a different plane. Now that we see on the political podium certain competent authorities and the legislative potential, I try to use my female intellect to figure out precisely what they are demonstrating: a clever face, long hands, or anus?
On the one hand, I understand that all those tapes made public by Oleksandr Moroz are not the point. On the other, I don’t really care whether or not they are genuine, because there is no corpus delicti in the words, whether or not actually spoken; anyone, president or hobo, has a right to voice his likes and dislikes. Of course, expletives are not something you can enjoy listening to, but not all of us can formulate our ideas aesthetically. In any case, we heard no four-letter words during the election campaign and the right to belong to the chosen few is vested in one and all, personal vocabulary notwithstanding. What, then, have we ended up with? The author of the planned [audio] session indirectly accuses the President of disliking Georgians and Jews. The chief executive knows each and everyone of them in parliament by name, is actively interested in their hundred percent friendship, and as a magnanimous gesture, okays the issue of a topnotch sex bomb from the government reserve for temporary use by a lawmaker. I bet that all the other Georgians, Muscovites, and Ukrainians without seats in Parliament envy the said legislator after listening to the tape, for they must have their own conception of the innermost reasons for the severe competition for such seats. They are also aware that, while the cultural intellectuals are raking their brains trying to stimulate an impotent parliament, the competent authorities do not wait for those intellectuals’ competent decision but are extremely busy sexually stimulating the constructive opposition. In a word, nothing criminal about the whole affair. Things like this happen everywhere. A typical story from the life of a roadside bar.
Actually, I don’t understand what so enrages the deputies. Is it what the president allegedly said or that the technology of state administration is like that? Or maybe they are too naive and did not know that the relationships among those in the highest of offices offer every prerequisite for precisely such situations? Did they really believe that people stepping into such offices did not bring their own teams, demanding from them unquestioning obedience, discipline, and accountability? They most certainly did. And they used criteria answering their own comfortable world outlooks, demanding effective performance, depending on their mood and circumstances, going through the motions of effective lawmaking. They would listen to flattery, ignoring lackey faces and postures, beaming from ear to ear, eagerly taking in every friendly gesture from their party bosses. They would take a dim view of whomever appeared more talented and efficient; they would avoid his company or try to make him dependent on them, so they could use his words and ideas as their own, and then say that they had an excellent team that could cope with any task. Perhaps people believed all the dirty allegations because they saw in them what makes up their own life, work, and relationships. All this mechanism is not anywhere but in their own hands. It is easy to handle and operates in the standard mode, yet the higher one’s rank, the more horrifying the consequences. Thus, the crime is not the words, but the system of relations and values, in which decency is assuming the status of an attribute, losing its essence as a value.
I do not even bother to ask myself whether I believe the tapes are genuine. And I do not care which officials are charged with what. There are, however, objective processes that require no proof. Their very existence is nothing but political pornography reflecting the interests of the participants in the process, so I do believe those seeing what is going on as just a struggle for access to the chief executive’s office. Regrettably, this access depends on how well one can impersonate genuine care for that number one VIP’s personal comfort and prestige. Too bad such skill is still in market demand, but that cannot be helped. It is just another contest which, like any other, requires classical techniques aimed at reducing the number of one’s opponents. The smaller the number of people discussing a problem, working out decisions, considering projects, the easier it is to predict the outcome and achieve the result desired. At the government level, this struggle is not to first blood but to the last man and the number one objective of any entourage, at any level, is building illusory power, creating an atmosphere in which every look, gesture, word, even intonation the big kahuna seems to activate a certain mechanism. Here the operator’s mood is determined by the information fed him, but not before it is skillfully sorted out, measured, and served, allowing for the recipient’s character, soft spots, and intellect. In this spectacle, one’s prestige might perhaps be affected by a newspaper cartoon, and the absence of obsequiousness and fear of one’s rank are tantamount to a national security risk and encroachment on one’s prerogative. Each and every member of the entourage is eager to have the greatest degree of influence on numero uno. Every minute, every second, with or without reason. If there is no reason, it must be engineered. And so they do, because a hungry people and devastated economy cannot create a situation, in which all those military and security ministries and agencies, and smart administrators come to the fore. Solving problems like hunger and a collapsing economy is not their cup of tea, because they are simply unable to take any creative stand here. Moreover, their complexes as a narrow intellectual specialty become too evident among free-thinking people capable of offering creative solutions to economic and political problems. Who needs such competition? No one but society, because deep inside this society has realized it needs a creative process and no simulation will satisfy it any longer. This society is suffocating, confined to a harem-like democracy, with only one power structure dominating the country, doing nothing but demonstrating its strength in whatever way.
Due to this simulation, power at any level gradually becomes transformed into its complete absence. The entourage’s manipulating skill reaches perfection, as evidenced by the absence of any top level reasonable response to any problem of nationwide importance. Small wonder, because they simply have no time think things over, let alone do anything productive. Such response becomes reflex and the nerve ends are purposefully irritated by the entourage whenever it wants the big boss to continue with his active passivity without any outward distractions. What other proof does one need to confirm the existence of all this? Tapes? Photos? Sworn testimonies? None of this is necessary, because the proof is this country’s and society’s material and ethic impoverishment, hungry children, complete judiciary impotence — they cannot even protect themselves, let alone the people, the latter being reduced to the status of a defendant standing in line for a municipal trial without having signed a single contract or violated a single law.
If there are people that still do not understand what part of that power structure has just been demonstrated on the podium of the political beauty contest, I will specify: a big fat posterior, which is nevertheless too small to sit in all chairs at the same time. Actually, you can call it anything you like: head, hand, even vermiform appendix — this will not change its essence, because the entire executive branch is one huge power structure with some nerve ends functioning reflexively jealously protecting as a sacred relic the uniform rules of interdepartmental struggle round bigger and smaller offices ranging from Kyiv to a remote settlement. The rules are uniform, as are the symptoms of decomposition and problems of relationships.
All this dirt has been picked by those in high offices, because simulating processes is easier and safer for one’s rank and position than showing intellect and individual qualities, acting in keeping with one’s own convictions.
Thus, before discussing the criminal nature of anyone’s actions, it is worth trying to figure out precisely what is criminal about the whole situation and how much everyone is responsible for making this situation a reality.
There is no denying the fact that changes are necessary, but such changes are possible only when changing the very quality of power, enhancing the clean handed intellectual and institutional competition of personalities. New relationships, new rules, new quality of power materialize with the realization, by people wielding this power, of the need for such inovations. All that has happened at the recent political picnic is only more proof that we are entering a new era where simulating potency is beginning to destroy the simulator, dumping it on the side of the road of history. This is a painful, odorous process in which everyone chooses his own destiny. Nor will we be able to just sit and watch television, because in many respects we are also simulating civil society, remaining actually a herd. Yet there is nothing tragic or hopeless about this, because the show goes on. We cannot change the surrounding world by changing our entourage or stage props. Everything will change by itself when people occupying different posts, sitting in different offices will do their jobs and live their lives looking at all this from the angle of a personal objective: changing themselves, so they can become part of the new world in which no one will be ashamed to live and mistaking one’s head for where one sits down will no longer be possible.
