Cat Show. 7/24/20
Friday Cat Show. July 24, 2020
VG: So there are tides. They are real. We live in the State that actually changes its territory by 2% depending on how high or low the tide is. Tides, as we know, lift all the boats. Very few can resist it. I have a feeling, there are intellectual tides as well. If NPR, NYT, New Yorker, or BBC keep on peddling one line, how many can resist? Consequently, what we should analyze can’t always be fact, but tides. Facts, like individual boats, do not matter, when there is a tide.
ALICE: But tides are natural phenomenon. They are as real as any fact. What you are talking about – is the man made pseudo events. I see where you are going with this. Total nihilism. What you are suggesting is that: “Russians sow discord everywhere” is a man-made tide. “Trump is a fascist and a tyrant” is a man-made tide. “Pandemic” is a man made tide. It does not work this way. Maybe, press exaggerates and spins here and there, but still, there is reality underneath the tide.
HOBBS: Well, what about the endless stories like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Or babies ripped out of incubators in Kuwait. Or Steele Dossier and other russophobic data? I suspect, there are always stories. Stories of kindness, nobility, cruelty, stupidity. There are Uighurs who are happy in China, and Uighurs who are frustrated. There are Ukrainians who ran away in horror from Ukraine, and those who are jumping with joy seeing another Bandera Monument erected at the place where his henchmen destroyed another Jewish schtettle. It all depends what the glitterati decides to magnify, what instructions they get from State Department or other Deep State institutions. And then the smooth machine begins to turn. Interviews, opinions, statements from the officials, and lo and behold, you have WMD on your hands. Or Russiagate, or Trump the fascist.
VG: Lately, I’ve been thinking of this great line from Sir Philip Sydney: “Poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie, is to affirm that to be true, which is false.” Indeed, the truths of the poets are always complex, dialectical, and contradictory. They describe, rather than affirm. As opposed to all sorts of communication activity, be it journalism, social science, or simply discussion, when the only thing people do is to affirm. But to affirm is to lie.
HOBBS: There is another important dimension here. Nobody listens to poets, except themselves. They don’t generate the buzz. As opposed to some stupid assertions, that can always be magnified and turn into a tide. Like the demented Madonna recently bragging that she refused to pay a million dollar fine from Russians for defending the gay rights during her performance there. Turns out, it was all lie. She never got any fines. But sure enough, so many crusaders had joined in, complaining about gay rights in Russia. And that’s how the tides are made. Assertion, interview on TV, pundits and specialists pitch in. How can a simple soul resist, when all the people of authority embrace it?
ALICE: Well, we are social creatures. We want to fit in. Look at you, Hobbs. You depend on Vladimir, and refuse to question him. If he says that Ukraine is run by crooks and nazi-thugs, if he quotes some former minister who acknowledges bribing EU officials to the tune of millions so that they would write good reports about Poroshenko and his policies, you believe him. But I believe others. Whom should I trust – a Yale Professor called Tim Snyder, the darling of NPR and all the Brooklyn insiders, or some corrupt politician, called David Zhvania? Another Georgian in Ukraine. Since when do I have to trust these opportunists?
Furthermore, can you imagine me quoting Vladimir’s opinion to all the liberal and progressive cats in the neighborhood? They would call me a Russian troll and refuse to talk to me. All my years of networking will be destroyed. It is not happening.
VG: Alice, I understand your years of networking, and your need to be loved by some progressives, but there are two issues. One is your conscience. You can’t go with accepted opinion if you know better. And then, there is the basic fact of “who benefits.” I don’t benefit from one or another outcome in Ukraine, from this or that reading of the events there. My job or popularity does not depend on it. I just happened to have knowledge of the area and plenty of honest friends who write to me in horror about what’s happening in their Ukraine, complaining that they don’t have a voice, that they are intimidated and bullied. All I care, is to give them a voice, and to give complexity to the picture. Tim Snyder, however, needs to pontificate about Tyranny, fascism, Trump and evil Putin, if he wants to be invited on NPR. Foreign Policy establishment types need to justify their aggressive policies and millions wasted, so they continue beating their drum of Ukraine –victim of Russian aggression, and getting more grants from Pentagon to study Russian aggression. So whom do you trust: disinterested observer, or the observer with a lot of vested interest?
ALICE: That’s a good argument, but since I’ve never been to the place, I prefer to trust the established opinion. The one expressed so beautifully by so talented liberal journalists and professors. I trust their opinion on other issues, why should I make an exception here? You Vladimir, you are just a malcontent, and you like to contradict.
HOBBS: Vladimir is a poet and a dialectician. He knows that truth is situational and elusive. What was true yesterday, becomes a lie today. Furthermore, when the truth becomes a public opinion, it gets debased and turned into a lie. I know that I am good cat, but I also know that it was me, not you, who infected Vladimir with poison ivy. That’s why I put up with him washing me. But look at my fur now. It is shiny and beautiful, and not dull and matted like yours. That’s dialectics for you.
ALICE: Nice try, Hobbs. Washing is bad for cats; that’s the ultimate truth, and you are not fooling me with your fake fur or fake arguments. I am not taking a bath. I know what I know.
