(Explanatory Note: In a post title, "The Avatar VI" means the sixth post about The Avatar whereas, within a post, "The Avatar VI" refers to The Avatar, Chapter VI. Apologies for any confusion.)
Simeon Ilyitch Makarov, premier of Great Russia, says kill the prisoners. His fellow conspirator, Ira Quick, thinks:
"I've had an inferno's worth of hours to agonize over the moral issues..." (p. 232)
Quick tells himself that he has agonized so what has this agony done for him? His thought continues:
"A time finally comes when the civilized man must attack alongside his ally of expediency or be left behind and have no voice at the peace conference." (ibid.)
Quick has previously thought of this ally of expediency as:
"...you barbarian tyrant." (XXV, p. 216)
Now Quick says:
"'Sir, let's sleep on it and then talk further, but at the moment I am inclined to believe that in principle you are right.'" (p. 232)
That means: "You are right." Everything before that is prevarication. James Blish wished that CS Lewis had written more fiction precisely because of his ability to show how people deceive themselves in just this sort of way.
Some other prevarications that I have heard:
"I used to be a person who was promiscuous."
That means: "I was promiscuous." Six unnecessary words serve only to delay the admission, if such it is.
A British theologian: "The truth is that I adore Jesus."
In a theological work, we expect a phrase like "The truth is..." to presage a theological truth. Instead, this writer's subjective state of mind is elevated to the level of "truth." His sentence means: "I adore Jesus." That is a psychological or biographical datum about him, not "The truth..."
11 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
One of the many evil things Lenin did was founding a regime which so debased and degraded Russia that Soviet and post-Soviet leaders naturally thought of simply killing inconvenient people. Putin thinks exactly as did Lenin and Makarov!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
Sure Lenin was evil, but so were many of the Tsars.
Think Ivan the Terrible.
I suppose one could claim that the last few Tsars were sufficiently influence by the European enlightenment to be much less bad than an Ivan the Terrible, but could Lenin have succeeded in his evil without the precedents of Russian history?
Kaor, Jim!
Yes, I do say the last Tsars, whatever their faults, were vastly better than the monster Lenin. And the Constitution of 1906 plus the reforms of Peter Stolypin were setting Russia on much better paths.
Ad astra! Sean
I don't think this word, "monster," is very helpful.
Kaor, Paul!
I disagree. Because we do have real monsters, and some of them rose to power in countries like Russia or China.
Some leftists still cling to the myth of the "noble" Lenin. They are wrong to do that.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Jim!
These comments about the last Russian Tsars reminded me of a passage from the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO (Harper & Row, 1973 and 1974) which has stuck with me. On pages 144-45 of the hardcover edition Solzhenitsyn wrote: "There is an interesting story about Alexander II, the Tsar surrounded by revolutionaries, who were to make seven attempts on his life. He once visited the House of Preliminary Detention on Shpalernaya--the uncle of the Big House--where he ordered them to lock him up in solitary-confinement cell No. 227. He stayed in it for more than an hour, attempting thereby to sense the state of mind of those he had imprisoned there." The author continued: "One cannot but admit that for a monarch this was evidence of moral aspiration, to feel the need and make the effort to take a spiritual view of the matter."
Simply put, it's next to impossible to imagine the brutal fanatic Lenin and his Soviet/post-Soviet successors "...wanting to slip into a prisoner's skin even for one hour, or feeling compelled to sit and meditate in solitary confinement" (also from page 145).
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
You are wrong to do this, to focus so much attention on one man, Lenin. Leftist philosophy is never about the personal qualities of a single individual. Many people were trying to do good things and to liberate society in Russia. Unfortunately, they were were overwhelmed and defeated and succeeded by despots. Stalin killed Old Bolsheviks. But we have been through the argument about the Russian Revolution at least twice before and I am not going to get into it again. In fact, I have been trying to avoid it all this time but you keep focusing on one man, Lenin.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I keep "focusing" on Lenin because I'm furious at how that evil man began the process of degrading and debasing a once great nation. The people who were actually doing good things for Russia were men like Stolypin, not Lenin and his Bolsheviks. Lenin & Co. began as tyrants and were never anything but tyrants. "Leftist philosophy" was just camouflage for them.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Please stop being furious with a dead man. It doesn't help! Bolsheviks were doing good things. Their professed philosophy was not just camouflage. State power was seized only when the Bolsheviks had won a majority in the soviets. But, as I keep saying, I really do not want to embark on this argument all over again.
Kaor, Paul!
Then we are never going to agree.
Ad astra! Sea
I don't think we're trying to! But ideally we would inform each other of what we know and understand about that period and would learn something from that.
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