Putin-Joker and unsustainable world

We are reaping the fruits of the so-called "postmodernism", which, as if in a blender, mixed various ingredients, distorting the truth, calling outright lies "post-truth", erasing boundaries of good and bad, destroying limits of what is acceptable, emasculating the essence of universal human values.

As long as this happened at the level of art practice or personal experience of individuals, it was normal that everyone has the right to freedom of thought and speech, even if these thoughts and words were then embodied in things that were not very tolerable. We had Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, Anders Breivik with his "2083 European Declaration of Independence", Oslo bombings and mass shooting on the island of Utoya.

In the end, the Joker from the eponymous film by Todd Phillips became the symbol of the era, a mad rebel who took on a mission to decide the fate of others.

But it turned out that this is not an unhappy ending, it is only the beginning of the real apocalypse, initiated by the crazy dictator from Kremlin. Putin is a Joker on a global scale, and his "personal post-truth" is beyond any written or unwritten laws, rules, values, ultimately, even his beloved "scrap".

As long as the world speaks to the bunker grandfather in a language acceptable to normal people, Russia, led by him, will go further and further in its unpunished aggression. Norms and conventions of international law, agreements and memoranda, pacts and resolutions are "in the furnace". Putin's revisionism extends not only to the global order, it encroaches on a unipolar world, which will be dominated by totalitarianism, contempt for human rights and freedoms, and the right of force and the strong. His goal is not so much Ukraine, it just, unfortunately, turned out to be close at hand, he is targeted against democracy as a system that is unacceptable for dictatorships.

All crazy ideas from Ilyin to Dugin, all these mysteries of Eurasia, are the spewing of the Horde psychology that accumulated in imperial brains of Russian rulers for centuries. From Ivan Groznyi to wild Stalinism, reanimated by Putin and the Chekist gang. Boris Akunin, in a conversation with the editor-in-chief of The American Interest Jeffrey Gedmin and the correspondent of Le Figaro Laura Mandeville, convincingly argues that "this is not Putinism. This is a 500-year-old system of state governance, which is based on the monopoly of executive power and hypercentralization. I tend to think that any new leader or new government, even a democratic one at first, will soon reproduce the same matrix - unless the system is fundamentally changed."

We are now wondering what else Putin and his camarilla are capable of. For a nuclear strike? To repeat Stalin's crime with Dnipro HPP in Kakhovka? For the use of chemical weapons? What will you decide after Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Olenivka?

Naive questions, like how crazy maniac would behave under certain circumstances.  We don't have a comprehensive answer to any of these questions because there are no answers. Such questions contain more meanings than answers to them.

What various experts and specialists tell us concerns, I emphasize once again, an adequate responsible person-leader. And when it comes to Putin and his "deep people", it's useless to talk about normality.

Putin does not need diplomats, but paramedics, not ultimatums or conditions for negotiations, but a straitjacket. And even better - gallows after the international tribunal.

But the postmodern world seems incapable of such an option. Then everything falls on the shoulders of Ukraine and its Armed Forces. And, I believe, we will cope with this mission.

 About the author. Ihor Hulyk is a journalist, editor-in-chief of the Espresso. Zahid website.

 The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.