In remembrance of Alexei Navalny
Anne Applebaum's profile of Russian civic courage illuminates American civic cowardice
“Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.”
Anne Applebaum, Why Russia Killed Navalny
The Atlantic, Feb. 16, 2024
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/navalny-death-russia-prison/677485/
*****
Imagine the sonnet below the frenzied reckoning of a distraught prison guard, on discovering dead Alexei Navalry, a citizen of immense courage, dedicated to the proposition that the truth will set you free.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45090/sonnet-29-when-in-disgrace-with-fortune-and-mens-eyes
*****
Now, in our shared age of maniacal dictatorial urge, insistent on civic subservience and ungodly revenge, again peruse those lines, imagining them the hellish realization of the Trump enabler of your choice - suddenly awakened, on witnessing the death of our venerable Republic, forever to bear unpurgeable sins of overweening pride, unmanageable anger, civic cowardice and political treachery self-enabled.
That vision offers no satisfaction, right?
Voting is the only means to civic salvation.
*****
Here’s your morning shot of Blackjack:
https://www.defendyourvotingrights.org/play-card-game/
played with a Card Deck of 54+ Trump Enablers (including 20 new ones!):
https://www.defendyourvotingrights.org/54-enablers-of-voter-suppression/