Distinctions

Distinctions are important. Especially when lending your support to flawed countries, organisations or lavishing praise on flawed people. 

It's important for clarity - "I'm for this; although I recognise that." It's intellectually honest; it's mature; a sign of sober moral reasoning. It’s the recognition that some things are, well, nuanced. 

No where has "distinction" been stretched to its absolute breaking point, than in the case of Ukraine. It is universally agreed that a country’s sovereignty was violated, that it is right to mobilise resources to care for people who were displaced as a result, and that of course, we all shudder at the senseless taking of life, due to this conflict. 

Insert distinction here: We must now come to grips with the fact that governments, world leaders, corporations, eager to be on the "right side of history," may have devoted resources, billions of dollars, unwavering support to a highly corrupt nation. Which is bad enough, if their efforts didn’t also include insulating a potential dictator with celebrity.

 

In one year Zelensky has:

• arrested his political opponents, creating one party police state.  
• forcibly shut down media stations that were critical of him.
• sent his police into churches, monasteries, convents, and is set to outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Currently he’s seizing money, property, arresting and torturing clergy accused of being Russian sympathisers.

The argument that, “well, it’s war!” and “Putin is evil!” So extreme, often unsettling measures, to smoke-out dissent is understandable even necessary, is a slippery slope with jagged rocks at the bottom, that we’ve ridden down before e.g. the internment of over 125 thousand Japanese Americans during World War II.

There seems to be an expectation by those who consider themselves democratic, that Zelensky will convert to a Western style, peace-time leader once the smoke clears. Allowing freedom, including freedom to disagree, even with your own government, to be permissible in Ukraine. Yet, their only evidence that this might occur, is his virtual hobnobbing with other leaders and  celebrities, appearing via screen at music and movie award shows. Side note: we’ve truly entered a new era of warfare when a president has time, during a war to give a speech at a Hollywood awards ceremony, but I digress…

This is not how things work on that side of the globe. Men, with absolute power, do not relinquish that power nor do they place the levers of accountability e.g. voting, elections, at least fair ones, in the hands of their citizens or through creating constitutional legislation. And Zelensky is of this world!

And when he, inevitably, doesn’t adopt a Western orientation to governing, this will be a monster of the West's making - activists, celebrities, former and active politicians and the rest. They will never admit they were wrong; however, the internet is forever.

Their silence on Zelensky’s questionable actions, reveals another troubling distinction, that many people do not have a problem with authoritarianism, they just prefer Zelensky's authoritarianism over Putin's. Consider the oppositional meltdown of those with left-leaning political and cultural views (incl. the EU), to Elon Musk uncovering the gross bias in censorship of speech by the former Twitter regime. He went from beloved to hated, for trying to institute a fairer virtual public square. 

The only distinction left to make, is whether we decide to be like those who ignore what is happening. Or we at least exhibit the courage and maturity to say "I'm for this; although I recognise that!"