The limelight of the week 15th of the Mean War went on in Berlin, at the well-known Berliner Ensemble theatre. One and a half-hour public self-justification by recent Chancellor of Germany frau Merkel about many things regarding her actions, or her non-actions, in connection with the Mean War and her buddy in the Kremlin.
So one rules one’s big and mighty country for sixteen years, which is compatible with four terms in the US President office, or three terms of the President of France. It is an epoch for a country’s influence on the world stage. From that perspective, the American Constitution is much healthier than the German one, as it forbids such non-stop rule-ship for the same person in the highest office.
One is repeatedly called the most powerful woman in the world, and one starts to believe it. Or one never doubted it, perhaps? During those sixteen years, one gets the closest among all the world’s leaders to the man in the Kremlin and chooses to provide him and his country a mind-blowing economic security, but what’s far more important, effectively throws one’s own country, with many more countries affected because of pure geography, under the Kremlin feet.
Only, there is no such thing as pure geography, and it never was one. A person at the top office of the country which is a major European player is expected to know that. But who cares, if the Nord Stream is so cheap and comfy? One is seemingly convinced that her carrot-policy for the Kremlin bears is working, and that it is the only correct policy one can apply. And oh yes, Russia and its leader should not be isolated, under any circumstances. Any.
One is a master of the highest office. Her party is astoundingly servile towards her, and she rules in a true DDR style, just a bit covered with a Western clothes, metaphorically so. Literally it is an old , good DDR dreadful fashion ever.
Anyway, then one liberates herself from politics on her own schedule, which is a bit premature from her friend’s in the Kremlin point of view, because there were just a few metres for his Nord Stream-2 getting final licences and assuring it to start to operate. Why did she go? Her friend in the Kremlin was very, very frustrated. She did not explain herself. She took a pause, like in a Schiller’s drama. Now we know, first-hand: she did not like to be forced to go as the result of her party losing elections. As an L’Imperatrice largesse, she had an absolute priority to depart the scene on her own calling.
The man in Sochi with very brief visits to his largely empty giant office in the Kremlin did not take it well. From his self-made Emperor’s point of view, it was an outrageous let down. He was so patient all previous eight years with that irritating Ukraine, all for the sake of dearest to him, personally, Nord Stream-2. And now what?.. I’ll show you what, the man confronted the world from his Kremlin office on February 23d, 2022. And he did.
And what did the most powerful woman in the world do in the face of the barbarian, unprovoked aggression? She was reading a thick books in her retreat, she serenely declares now, three and a half months into the Mean War. From this first after the beginning of the Mean War interview of the former long-term Chancellor of Germany Mme Merkel, we have learned that she is ‘very happy’ in her retirement, and were shared by serene-her about her whereabouts in her after-office time. We also become privy to the stubborn self-justification of Merkel’s leisure trip to Florence at the moment of the horror of Bucha, having been invited to visit Bucha personally by president Zelensky. She stubbornly reminded the audience that she was not a Chancellor any longer at the time of the Bucha massacre, and that that Italian trip was essential to her in the process of dislocating from politics. Bloody incredible, to be extremely polite.
Power corrupts. Big power corrupts morally, most of the time. The degree of the inner arrogance demonstrated by Mme Merkel on the stage of the Berliner Ensemble theatre in early June 2022 was self-revealing. Who actually cares on her inner needs in a process of dislocating from politics at the time of the terrible war in the middle of Europe, except some German journalists who have made their almost-eternal Mme Chancellor their sole subject-matter, and some part of the German public who affiliates themselves with her, largely because she occupied the top office for so long, and brought that so cheap gas from you-know-where, to her country to prosper to the huge proportion. At what price? Well, don’t be so harsh.
On the record: the most powerful woman in the world, a leader of a key-country during 16 years, the international public figure who is personally responsible politically, economically, morally ( pardon) for 16 years of appeasing the Kremlin boss disproportionately, for whatever reason, did not utter a word during three and a half months of the Mean War, in a deafening defeat of a term ‘morality’. In cases like that, reason does not matter. Deed does. Or absence of deed. Stand does. Or absence of stand. It is just that an absence of stand is pretty loudly speaking stand, anyway.
Mme Merkel did make a very brief note on terrible, terrible war and her solidarity with Ukraine just once, three and half months into the Hell, a day before her justify-myself show staged at the Berliner Ensemble. By her recent appearance of a boringly typical teflon kind of a politician, Mme Merkel has evoked some observations into her life and career.
It is not only the previous 16 years in the Chancellor’s chair that prompted such velvet-gloved arrogance. It is all the previous life of the person who was brought to that chair in that scheme of the century, her views, her convictions, her behaviour, and the origin of it all that has made a person, don’t mention, a woman, such a 200% teflon-proved.
Yes, she said some of the politically correct phrases with regard to the Mean War, three and half months from its beginning, and the public in the Berlin theatre hall bursted into the ovation, in the same servile way like her party used to revere Mme Chancellor in a typical German mode of behaviour of recognition of a person in a position.
In her self-justifying show, Merkel also stamped out quite a telling sentence. Perhaps, she does not realise how nakedly telling it is. Refusing to take even a part of blame for tirelessly making for years the most comfortable conditions for her buddy in the Kremlin, Mme Merkel insisted: “And diplomacy was not wrong if it does not succeed”. End of quote.
Those DDR pioneers, those DDR komsomol leaders ( and the leader she was against all her efforts to deny it), they organically, genuinely do not understand that the postulate about diplomacy as about the art of possible means that if diplomacy does not succeed, it is not a diplomacy. It is an effort, an intention, not a conducted act of achieving a result. Perhaps, they had to add some Kant’s logic mini-course in that Karl Marx University in the DDR Leipzig, the Mme Merkel’s alma-mater. It would help. But Kant was not popular in those years in the DDR, as he was not in the USSR. Very much to the contrary.
“ I have nothing to apologise for” – the most powerful woman in the world has stated now in that deeply DDR-sed defiance of intentionally blind and deaf arrogant power-addicted mannequins, so well known to everyone who lived through those realities.
This defiance and all that shameful show at the Berliner Ensemble stage looked exactly as the same in its character shameless ongoing self-justifications by another German hero of the Kremlin friendship, another former Chancellor, Herr Schroeder.
When two of the recent German Chancellors are behaving the way they are, with all the baggage of their dubious close friendships with the Kremlin boss, it is not a random case of individuals. It is a phenomenon which has marked the Mean War. This behaviour has marked the terrible unjustifiable aggression with utter shame resulting from the convictions and actions of those self-justifying cold power-hungry hypocrites.
To refresh our memory, it was Mme Merkel who as recently, as in November 2019 reviewed the realities of life in the DDR in a stunning phrase: “ Life in the DDR was sometimes almost comfortable in a certain way, because there were some things one simply couldn’t influence”.
I do not know whom she meant as her audience for this rubbish, putting it diplomatically, but for anyone who lived through the DDR and any other totalitarianism of the time, this note of ‘a comfortability’, with whatever ironic connotation, immediately sends a definite signal of the belonging of the person who says it to the certain part of totalitarian system, the part that benefited from it, the part which has been morally corrupt and which blossomed being on the wrong side. And now these people have the nerve to exercise public self-justifications of various sorts. This is basically what former German Chancellors are busy with during at their retirement.
This part of the society were the DDR privileged ones, whose family enjoyed a Soviet-made luxury Volga car, and one more car, in the empire of ‘an equal poverty’ which the DDR was. That family has become so unbelievably lucky after Mme Merkel’s papa, a clergyman, all of the sudden moved with his family from the Western to Eastern Germany under the pretext of receiving a parish. Extremely tight connections of Mme Merkel’s father with the Soviet regime and the KGB, and his many decades-long activities originated from that relationship is an established and well documented fact. It certainly has placed the life of his family and its members in a special dimension.
Of course, it is so nice when one ‘cannot influence’ one’s year of a post-graduation in the Moscow University, one’s special training for a several months in Rostov and Donetsk in the 1970s – what on earth they were training that daughter of the red pastor for in those places, during those months there? Language-courses, as it is officially claimed? For the person who was the best in her class in Russian? Sure thing. This is not even to start to remember and reconstruct the way to power which was orchestrated and paved for that person in the crazy time when her future friend in the Kremlin was hysterically nervous in Dresden burning all and every document in his KGB station there and frantically calling to the HQ at home, in vain.
They all were similarly nervous at the time, in Moscow too. Foreign correspondents were offered any file from the KGB archives, including operative ones, meaning for the active agents, for a few thousands dollars. The most expensive ones fetched just $ 10 000. There was a vivid trade period, indeed. At the time, many KGB officers who were just yesterday ever arrogant mini power-houses have reduced themselves to nervous drinking. Just as Russian deputy secretary of the Security Council Mr Medvedev who will be remembered for his sole function of keeping the presidential seat warm for his boss during a random term, does, reportedly, nowadays. With a good reason.
So, at the Berliner Ensemble theatre, during the week 15th of the Mean War, the limelight of the Merkel show featured only one thing: shadows. There were shadows of conscience, shadows of compassion, shadows of empathy, shadows of common sense. And most importantly, because of its long-lasting effect, shadows of decency. All these shadows were in an abundance. And nothing more had a presence at that stage. This is what has marked the 15th week of the Mean War to me.
Additionally to that Shadows-in-the-Limelight disgusting show, the 15th week of the Mean War ended with hilarious news from that hilarious parliament of Russian Federation where they have registered a bill introduced by one of the United Russia party MP, on denunciation of the recognition by the same body the independence of Lithuania back in 1991. Thus, they argue, the membership of Lithuania in NATO becomes illegitimate.
One wonders, what took them so long for this genius move? Lithuania irritates them not only because they do not practise shadow-kind of politics a’la Merkel. But this is not the matter. The matter is Kaliningrad which Russia sees as their most important strategic power-point in the Baltic and North European region. The introduction of this bill and everything that will follow from it is the beginning for their proactive moves in that direction. The man in the Kremlin and the team behind the attack against Ukraine have been obviously emboldened by the shadow-theatre performances of the leaders of the key-countries of the West. They are on the offensive now. They have their drive. And the Kaliningrad matter might rise as another acute international conflict in the foreseeable future.
The most astounding phenomenon of this awful Mean War is it showed us in a tangible close-up detail that people do not learn even from the most terrible lessons of the recent enough past. It seems to be a desperate defect of our human nature in general.
During Week 15 of the war, there was another crucial moment which went overseen, for some reason. Anticipation of summer vacation, perhaps? During nightly attacks, one of Russian missiles flew critically close to the huge Juzhnaja nuclear power plant in Ukraine. There is all recorded documentation of the incident. After three and a half months of the war, the international public is so accustomed to military incidents there that this hugely important fact went practically unnoticed. Just imagine what could have happened because of this unbelievable clumsiness of Russian troops and their military machine. Was the Kremlin reprimanded for factually risking and being very close to the second Chernobyl would be made in the result of a military crime? You know the answer.
The Week 15th in its different aspects has reminded us of the truism which is a daily reality for millions of people in Ukraine who do not feel very encouraged by how we, the civilised West, are handling this tragedy: War is a war is a war. Mean War is mean and more mean. In all and every sense of it. And – we are nodding to that. That is the problem.