Quagmire

Meanwhile the president of a television channel running afoul of the reigning demimonde appeals to that same President Kuchma after going through ten days of "unfortunate accidents," the kind that always seems to happen to those found inconvenient by the parties with the power to make such accidents happen. Make no mistake about it, in this country even relatively independent journalism takes courage, more on the air than in print, for with people so poor that many have to choose between a daily newspaper and their daily bread, the print media just is not what it used to be, and the authorities can afford to ignore more. But with the media in which social discourse takes place under siege, the discourse that alone can enable this country to pull itself up by its bootstraps simply cannot take place.

In other words, as one song from my salad days put it, "The government takes all the money and eats it or something/ And the rich get richer and the poor get nothing." Meanwhile, nobody in power seems to be thinking much about bringing the country itself out of the woods. As another old song says, "Ain't we got fun?"