Tiers état

In Russian, there’s a famous proverb about two main problems of the society (society that “we”, meaning unsung heroes of the setting, live in, as Joker would have said): у России две беды, дураки и дороги (Russia has two main banes, fools and roads). Sometimes in a semi-joking manner it could be expanded as follows: … с одной из них можно справиться при помощи асфальтоукладочного катка, но проблемы с дорогами останутся (One of them could be remedied with an asphalt paver machine, but hey, road problems will remain). I prefer to count myself among the members of tiers état, the rarest, i.e., the (often invisible) group of neither fools nor paver operators. The said tiers état transcends territorial borders of Russia, of course, just like Jews, for most of their history, weren’t strictly associated with what now is called Israel.

(One also could recall Armenians — their diaspora surpasses population of the Armenia proper, as a direct consequence of Armenian quotes from Hitler times and later not especially glorified days.)

Speaking about reaction on Putin’s so-called interview (more like a novelized history lecture meets business agreements act), I recall, involuntarily, The Killing Star by Pellegrino & Zebrowski and reason of the Judgement Day that comes, according to novel, approximately on the Tricentennial (2076). It’s almost as if in most of the Western MSM do reside… ice-worlders under disguise. (Oh, definitely, there’s a method in, e.g., Stoltenberg’s MADness business, and lucrative the latter is, but, tbh, history seldom reruns the same show. Attempts to maim Russian petroleum & gas exports forming economical framework by old school Cold War 1.0 means from Reagan’s war chest already have shown this; on the contrary, EU economies, especially German, are the ones who catched flu. The strategy doesn’t move because they’ve fastened it in place to better find out why it doesn’t move.)

“Just a TV show!” Jonathan stepped forward, certain that he had heard wrong.

“By a fantasy you revealed your hopes to us,” the enemy said coldly and loudly, clearly implying that Jonathan’s refutal was absurd. “By a fantasy it started. You would not have needed the Enterprise to have become dangerous. Much less would have been enough.”

… Jonathan stood before the tank, shaking his head, cradling his broken fist.

“Fuck this,” he said to no one in particular. “Don’t tell me I clawed my way out from VR addiction just to learn that aliens blew up the Earth because of an old Michael Jackson song and Star Trek.”

Western war rooms have a serious, life-threatening surplus of old war horse experts who are too lazy to learn something new instead of Sovietology textbooks from 1980s or Red Storm Rising.

As Max Planck said, a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up.