A Catastrophic Implosion Awaits Not Just Russia But Us, From This Ukraine War.

I woke this morning to a grey light that slipped catlike through my bedroom window blinds. It was fire fog caused by the conflagrations that have burned now for two months in the forests of Quebec.

Here, however, nothing is combustible after yesterday's deluge, where it felt like a month's precipitation dropped from the sky in less than 90 minutes.

 I encountered that sudden and unexpected angry rain on my daily 9km walk. I amble every day for a couple of hours, hoping to stave off the fibrosis growing at a petty pace in my lungs that slowly rots my future prospects for an easy old age.

On flooded roadways, cars impatiently smashed through the water- making waves that crashed against me, walking wet across the pavement homeward. Downtown, the homeless sheltered under store awnings and puffed on damp cigarettes.

A woman pressed herself in almost a lover's embrace up against the wall of a building to shield herself from the sheets of water that fell from above. Her begging cup was curbside and it overflowed with rain rather than coins for meals or drinks. Everything was wet, and my shoes; the bottom soles as thin as the skin on a geriatric's shins took on water.

The day before, in the brilliant sun, there was a cash prize competition for artists to sketch the city. I saw one of them at work. Their easel blocked the pavement, and six feet in front of it, a homeless man, legs crossed, hand out, asked passers-by for spare change. Now that would be something worthwhile to sketch-the despair of end-stage neoliberalism. But the pastel drawing was forward in kitsch and bright colours, and short on realism or self-awareness.

It was a bit like the news coverage of this weekend's mutiny, coup or drunken debacle against Putin by his "Sejanus," Yevgeny Prigozhin. There was a desire from experts for hire to indulge in wishful thinking that Russia was on the verge of a no harm done to others collapse, where evil smites evil until only our benevolent capitalism remained triumphant and ready to return a  Macdonald's Restaurant to the entrance of  Red Square.

I don't know what happened. I suspect even Putin and Prigozhin don't know if they won or lost in that gambit. I don't see it as some large stratagem where those two were working in tandem to get Prigozhin's Dirty Dozen Army To Belarus, as it is geographically closer for an all-out assault on Kyiv. The problem is we have personified Russia and its society as evil as the Nazis. Maybe they are, but school shootings are less there than in the USA. History will have to make sense of this because our analysis now goes first through a prism of loathing.

I would like to ask K in Russia what she thinks of this putsch against Putin. Yet I dare not ask because she is rightly spooked against the tightening noose of authoritarianism. I've known her for close to 30 years, and we are back to communicating as if it was Soviet times. Her kid, who is not mine but I feel some responsibility for the girl. I put enough money into keeping her alive when she was a baby to think I've got skin in the game. I want to see her kept alive, free of harm, and happy until old age. However she is in her late teens and tragedy awaits her and her generation the way a good life awaits teenagers of top income earners in the West.. She has developed PTSD like most Russian teenagers because of the world she must now live in. I know it is the same for Ukrainian young people, especially those who can't avoid the draft and are sent to the front lines. The West refuses to understand the vice of history ordinary Russians like ordinary Ukrainians live in and have always lived in. We are too busy pretending to be antifascists with tweets and petitions to comprehend the blood spilt from our hypocrisy.

During the news coverage of Operation Valkyrie 2.0, I thought of Alexander. When I knew him,  I never called him Sasha. I never liked or trusted him enough. A Russian raised in the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. Alexander was in Moscow defending democracy in 1991 and 1993. But by 2005, he was in my opinion an outright Nazi. I guess for him extreme right-wing politics only seemed a natural turn of events. Corruption and earning extra income by being an informer seemed to run in his family. His stepfather was a university professor who took backhanders from the mafia bosses to ensure their children got top marks in his class. Someone, once,  whispered into my ear, that Alexander's stepfather had informed on people during Brezhnev's days. Who knows what is the truth there and what is invention? I do know I was never that hungry, fearful or bereft of integrity that I needed to grass on my neighbours or co-workers.

Our splendid war for European civilisation has some resemblance to 1914-1918. We are neither losing the conflict nor winning it. But the death count grows for other people's sons and daughters in this horrific stalemate. As this war grinds on, its folly becomes as immense as the submersible Titan crammed with billionaires descending to an ocean floor never reached because its fate was instead to suffer a catastrophic implosion.

As always, thank you for reading my sub stack posts because I really need your help this month. I’ve got 5 days to make my rent and it is a tightrope. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. This month is proving to be real scramble to get next months together. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John