Pravles Redneckoff 🇷🇺 Z

Thursday, September 12th, 2019, 13:30

Marriott hotel, Parkring 12A, 1st district of Vienna

"This shouldn't be a big problem," Lisa says. "Today you can direct a society's politics from any corner of the world where there is Internet. I could be living here in Vienna, most of the time, and revolutionize Ukraine from the safety of my flat."

"What about Timur?" Buba says.

"What about him?" Lisa says.

"Imagine you succeed in building your movement," Buba says. "Men don't like to be outshone by their wives."

"Who says I have to be a public face of the movement?" Lisa says. "What I want is change, not fame or money. You know and I know that the most influential person in an organization doesn't necessarily have the highest rank."

"You want to pull the strings of puppets behind the scenes," Buba says.

"Maybe," Lisa says. "And there is the possibility that after the whole thing gets going, I hand off the leading role to someone else. Like Steve Jobs and John Sculley. And after that, I become a stay-at-home mom."

Buba smiles.

"You really think you could do that?" Buba says. "Raise kids as a housewife, after having rescued Ukraine?"

"I don't lust after power," Lisa says. "I'd prefer if someone else managed to do it. But there hasn't been anyone in the past 30 years."

A waiter comes. They order coffee and Apfelstrudel for Buba.

"There is another problem with your approach," Buba says. "And this one is fundamental."

This means the objections before were not deal-breakers, Lisa thinks. Good.

"You basically want to create and promote a new ideology," Buba says. "You have this worldview, this vision which you call the true Christianity. But you need people who can take those ideas and package them into forms which are appealing to the electorate. All these journalists, PR people, social media experts who can do this. At its core, your movement or your party needs to have intellectuals."

"Correct," Lisa says. "I don't see what the problem is."

"The problem is that intellectuals tend to hate religion in general, and Christianity in particular," Buba says.

"It's not Christianity per se they hate," Lisa says.

"Please elaborate," Buba says.

"If mainstream Christians do something incredibly stupid, you can't blame intellectuals for hating them," Lisa says. "In Russia they declared the last Russian czar a saint, for example."

"Why is that stupid?" Buba says.

"That last czar was not an innocent by-stander," Lisa says. "He had the means to avoid a catastrophe. But because he was too stupid or too passive, he lost that fight. Declaring him a saint is like canonizing Joe Biden."

"Some Russians have nostalgia for the pre-revolutionary Russia," Buba says. "Who knows, maybe those churches tried to pander to that sentiment. In this case it wasn't stupid at all, it was a wise political move."

"You forget that many Russians – especially the statistically-minded intellectuals – remember that under Nicholas II. the average life expectancy was around thirty years for men and a little bit more for women. These are the results of his governance," Lisa says. "When the church declares Nicholas II a saint, it shows the middle finger to half the Russian population. Is that beneficial for Russian society?"

"How is the alleged stupidity of the Russian church relevant to Ukraine?" Buba says.

"Because it's not just a Russian problem," Lisa says. "Take any church you want. If an active person–"

"Like you?" Buba says.

"Yes, like me, joins it, the system will do everything to channel the energy into meaningless activities – away from something that can change the society for the better," Lisa says. "Like attending all those services. Don't get me wrong – standing for a few hours may be good for my legs, but how does this help the society? Or how does it make me a better person?"

"So what would be a meaningful Christian activity for intellectuals?" Buba says.

"Do what Jesus and his apostles did," Lisa says. "Adjusted to our time, of course."

"Try to cure the sick?" Buba says.

"Not exactly. Jesus knew that Israel was screwed. So, he thought – what was the cause of this state of affairs?" Lisa says. "His answer was – the old mindset, codified in the rules of the Old Testament. Jesus thought – if Israel is to survive, then Jews as a nation have to adopt a radically different set of values."

"The question for him was – how do I spread those ideas? How do I plant them into the heads of many people?" Lisa says. "So he recruited the apostles who turned his ideas into stories. Clear now?"

"Not at all," Buba says. "What do the apostles have to do with modern intellectuals?"

"The apostles were intellectuals, at least compared to Jesus who may have been illiterate," Lisa say. "They took his ideas on how to make Israel great again and spread them using available means. Back then it was stories and letters, today the apostles would be YouTubers, podcasters, and bloggers."

"Isn't that a bit of a stretch to compare a holy person to a public speaker?" Buba says.

"Jesus had a vision in his mind," Lisa says. "This vision was so compelling that apostles were willing to give up their lives for it. But to make people live according to those ideas, you need to take Jesus's vision out of his psyche and encode it it in text, so that when another person reads this text, Jesus's vision comes to live in their psyche with the same force as in Jesus'."

"That's almost an impossible task to achieve," Buba says.

"Hard, but not impossible," Lisa says. "Writers and moviemakers do it all the time, with varying degrees of success. Now imagine someone created something as moving as 'Star Wars', but about saving Ukraine in the 21st century."

"I have a hard time imagining it," Buba says. "You have to be a genius to do something like this."

"Right, Buba, right," Lisa says. "You need to dedicate your life to it. You need to do illogical things, like working on that art instead of just earning money. You may need to spend years working for free on this monumental book, always being at risk of simply getting older. Because you never know whether or not you are talented enough."

"You need to be a saint to do all this," Buba says.

"Or a true Christian," Lisa says. "You see how this kind of sanctity is different from canonizing the likes of Joe Biden?"

"But the prospect of living such a hard life won't seem attractive to many people, don't you think?" Buba says.

"Who said it was easy to be a true Christian?" Lisa says.

"I was under the impression that Jesus loves you and forgives you whatever you do," Buba says. "Excuse me for such simplistic explanation."

"That's what makes Christianity faggoty," Lisa says. "A person who identifies as Christian puts a cross on and doesn't risk anything. A true Christian sacrifices pleasure for growth, giving up realistic material comfort for the unlikely chance to become Jesus-like and save his society from destruction. It's hard to be a true Christian."

"You may be right," Buba says. "If you think about it, Jesus did put his life at risk."

"Yeah, especially if we assume he was a human," Lisa says. "And I forgot that there is another motivation for intellectuals: If you do succeed in your propaganda, you will have access to power no money can buy. A power over the souls of other people. And you can do it in a purely meritocratic manner, through hard and inspired work. A paradise on earth. I think that may be attractive to pro-socially minded intellectuals. It gives propaganda the sanctity it deserves."

Buba looks at her for a while.

"If I judge by the quality of your thoughts, you must have practiced what you preach," Buba says.

Buba scratches his head.

"This is a big project," Buba says. "All those NGOs rely on armies of grant parasites to manipulate Ukrainian politics. I am not sure I can mobilize enough of a budget for this."

"Most of the people I am affiliated with are fighting against Russia, not for Ukraine," Buba says. "They only care about Ukraine as a means of weakening Russia. If Ukraine disappeared tomorrow, they won't cry. They will turn to Moldova, Georgia, Belarus, or Armenia as their next battering ram against Russia. They don't care about Ukraine and about Ukrainians."

"It took Strelkov 52 motivated people to start a civil war", Lisa says. "Who says the same number of motivated men and women can't stop it?"

Buba looks at Lisa attentively with a poker face Lisa cannot read.

"Are you well?" Buba says. "Sometimes deeply traumatized people are very self-sacrificial. It is easier to save Ukraine than to save yourself. I ask again, as a friend: Are you well?"

"Yes, sure," Lisa says. "Why do you ask? I think I refuted all your objections well."

"Life is not a trial at court," Buba says. "It doesn't revolve around logic. Imagine you came to a psychiatrist and told him what you told me. That you were the second coming of Jesus."