Bring me the horizon

End of September, sweetie darlings, how is the mood in your parts? We're all atwitter with indignation and determination here in the Thule. Some thoughts floating around:

Dear Russians, whatever your President has told you and tells you today, tomorrow, in the future, these are not breakaway regions let alone republics who decided their own fate, these are illegally and forcibly captured parts of Ukraine.

With all undue respect: WTF WTF WTF? We have to suffer because you were traumatized by the collapse of the Soviet Union? What the ever-loving fuck?! You should have that looked at by a trained professional instead of terrorizing the world with your fascist fantasy, you soulless genocidal megalomaniac humanoid. Want to send a message? Write an email. Jesus.

The good news, people? He is in his seventies and even if he doesn't find polonium in his tea or get the full experience of a defenestration he seems so fond of, he won’t live forever. The bad news? The new czar may well be just like the old czar. Like Agent Orange used to say, who knows, folks? Things have moved fast and unexpectedly in Russian history; they might again.

Fun fact, people: Finns have a verb, ryssiä, derived from the noun ryssä, a derogatory term for a Russian. To ryssiä means quite simply to fuck up, derived from the stereotypical notion that Russians simply can't do anything right. Whatever their grand design, just wait for it, it won't go to plan. Don't shoot the messenger! Look at a map and study some history and understand that Finns have had to fend off eastern advances and outright aggression since at least the year 1123.

Yes, everyone's a Kremlinologist now. Because of that long border. Does it worry Finns? Not as much as the notion that it might be moved or removed. So Finland has decided to join NATO and as the highly efficient and organized democracy it is has been taking steps to ensure that national, local and personal safety and resilience is second to none in all situations and contingencies. As they have been doing for decades.

But did you ever think you'd be freshening up on your shooting skills? Just because and why not? Use it or lose it. Could you do it, need be? I'm a mother. What do you think? But what do you think will happen to those young and not so young Russian men sent out to war? How long before they realize how disposable they are, how expendable? And combat changes a person. What sort of men will return home, when and if they ever do? The able-bodied workforce of a nation. That's how invested that man is in developing his country. He can't offer a future so he looks to the past. That's how interested he is in how his own people fare.

What he is openly partial to is Igor Rasteriaev's verse and notion that Russia has no borders, only the horizon. Finns know something about Russian overreach, and their neighboring Estonians know even better what Ukrainians mean when they talk about repression, relocation, deportation, genocide, Russia's determination to wipe out Ukrainians as a people, a culture, a language, an identity.

At the same time, now more than ever, we should take care and ensure that knowledge of and a connection to Russian language and culture isn't severed. You cannot understand what you cannot immerse yourself in. Putin may control domestic narrative but he cannot be allowed to own both language and culture. That's what he thinks and claims he is, a custodian, and you can partake if you play by his rules, do as he says. Well, that's a sure way to ryssiä national and international relations, so feel free to override him and sideline him and ignore him and keep connections alive. Enjoying, say, Russian literature or composers does not equal rooting for Putin unless you believe they belong to him. Which they don't.

Of course you can dig into history and fabricate a fantasy, or rewrite history and pass it off as fact; that’s how delusions work. You can criminalize thoughts and words and actions; that’s how dictators work. You can fool everyone for some time and some for all time but not everyone indefinitely; that’s the charlatan’s dilemma.