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Jan. 17th, 2026 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebris"In the old Soviet Union, I lived under five (because it has been a long life) thoroughly unelected rulers: Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev.
The first was a cruel, uncouth, cunning psychopath who liked to present himself, Urbi et Orbi, as an artless smiley simpleton, rustic hayseed, aw-shucks country bumpkin, deceptively gullible happy-go-lucky clown, strategically minded carnival barker.
The second - a laid-back bon vivant, none too bright or inquisitive if intuitively sly and ruthless sybarite by nature, still retaining the basic remnant instincts of a once-handsome youthful Lothario, in the first half of his interminable Kremlin tenure, and then (almost without a requisite transition) a pitiful multi-stroke-addled zombie.
The third - the bespectacled, soft-spoken, bespoke-suit-wearing, single malt-sipping, tennis-loving, bad poetry-writing cerebral monster, former head of the world's largest and deadliest secret police, the truly ominous and sinister ascetic Savonarola of long-dead ideology of proletarian world dominance who, luckily (indeed) for the peace on the planet and humankind's very continued existence, kicked the old bucket, on account of kidney insufficiency, just a little over one year into his GenSec-ship.
The fourth, the most desperate of choices on rapidly expiring regime's part, happened to have been the first one's erstwhile trusted lifelong sidekick and card partner - and was a de-facto mental and physical boiled vegetable (a head of cauliflower, say) by the time the world got to get a glimpse of him.
And the fifth one, the only recognizably *human* person among the lot - though still inevitably a prisoner of the barbaric ideology that had shaped them all and, in the course of the twentieth century's seven decades, had devoured untold millions of innocent people's lives all across the senselessly vast country's eleven time zones (and beyond) - finally, if primarily of dire economic necessity, dared to lift the half-soldered cast-iron lid off the pressure cooker of Soviet life, only to be instantly knocked off his feet by a near-lethal head of putrid, toxic steam bursting forth therefrom.
Five former rulers of my "first life." Why did I remember them just now? Because ten minutes ago, I saw in the morning news on my laptop, in snowed-under Montreal, how the bravely, abjectly smiling leader of Venezuela's freedom movement, a strong woman, no matter what one might think of the soundness of her judgment in this case, "re-gifted" her Nobel Peace prize to the delighted five-year-old child with impulse-control issues behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office - an eighty-year-old moral degenerate and all-around dipshit, sworn enemy of democracy everywhere, twice elevated to the world's sole superpower's presidency in free and fair elections (freaking boggles the mind, I know) - and it occurred to me just then that none of the five aforesaid Soviet dictators on my personal memory were nearly, remotely as needy, pathetic, and downright cringeworthy as this supposed leader of the free world.
Not nearly and not remotely. All five - even the poor insensate, incognizant Chernenko - had much more personal dignity about them. "History, in the end, becomes a form of irony," to quote the eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr."
Mikhail Iossel
The first was a cruel, uncouth, cunning psychopath who liked to present himself, Urbi et Orbi, as an artless smiley simpleton, rustic hayseed, aw-shucks country bumpkin, deceptively gullible happy-go-lucky clown, strategically minded carnival barker.
The second - a laid-back bon vivant, none too bright or inquisitive if intuitively sly and ruthless sybarite by nature, still retaining the basic remnant instincts of a once-handsome youthful Lothario, in the first half of his interminable Kremlin tenure, and then (almost without a requisite transition) a pitiful multi-stroke-addled zombie.
The third - the bespectacled, soft-spoken, bespoke-suit-wearing, single malt-sipping, tennis-loving, bad poetry-writing cerebral monster, former head of the world's largest and deadliest secret police, the truly ominous and sinister ascetic Savonarola of long-dead ideology of proletarian world dominance who, luckily (indeed) for the peace on the planet and humankind's very continued existence, kicked the old bucket, on account of kidney insufficiency, just a little over one year into his GenSec-ship.
The fourth, the most desperate of choices on rapidly expiring regime's part, happened to have been the first one's erstwhile trusted lifelong sidekick and card partner - and was a de-facto mental and physical boiled vegetable (a head of cauliflower, say) by the time the world got to get a glimpse of him.
And the fifth one, the only recognizably *human* person among the lot - though still inevitably a prisoner of the barbaric ideology that had shaped them all and, in the course of the twentieth century's seven decades, had devoured untold millions of innocent people's lives all across the senselessly vast country's eleven time zones (and beyond) - finally, if primarily of dire economic necessity, dared to lift the half-soldered cast-iron lid off the pressure cooker of Soviet life, only to be instantly knocked off his feet by a near-lethal head of putrid, toxic steam bursting forth therefrom.
Five former rulers of my "first life." Why did I remember them just now? Because ten minutes ago, I saw in the morning news on my laptop, in snowed-under Montreal, how the bravely, abjectly smiling leader of Venezuela's freedom movement, a strong woman, no matter what one might think of the soundness of her judgment in this case, "re-gifted" her Nobel Peace prize to the delighted five-year-old child with impulse-control issues behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office - an eighty-year-old moral degenerate and all-around dipshit, sworn enemy of democracy everywhere, twice elevated to the world's sole superpower's presidency in free and fair elections (freaking boggles the mind, I know) - and it occurred to me just then that none of the five aforesaid Soviet dictators on my personal memory were nearly, remotely as needy, pathetic, and downright cringeworthy as this supposed leader of the free world.
Not nearly and not remotely. All five - even the poor insensate, incognizant Chernenko - had much more personal dignity about them. "History, in the end, becomes a form of irony," to quote the eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr."
Mikhail Iossel
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Jan. 16th, 2026 10:58 pmnebrisI am starting to see here and there, 2A leftists beginning to mobilize. On one hand, I am Very 2A...on the other, I know trump's looking for the slightest excuse for invoking the Insurrection Act.
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Jan. 16th, 2026 05:26 amnebrisFor the first time since 9/11, I am scared on a 'global level'. This Greenland madness of Trump has the possibility to go a truly terrifying place; open hostilities between the United States and NATO/the European Union. That's a war that would utterly ruin us economically and isolate us politically...in this modern interconnected world, that spells national death.
On the face of it, the above seems an insane idea, but remember, Donald Trump is fuckin' nuts...
Now, I do some have hope that some kind of bullshit agreement will be hashed that is presented as giving Trump 'a win', which is all he really wants anyway, even more than money. Ultimately, money is just how The Grift keeps score.
However, even if all this drama is resolved in a non-catastrophic fashion, trust in the United States had been broken, even if Trump choked on a chicken nugget ten minutes after you've read this. Even if the Dems sweep the midterms. Even if Jasmine Crockett got elected President in '28.
Our European allies can never be sure we won't get another Fascist lunatic in the White House and will now have to act accordingly. Trump has fatally poisoned the American Empire.
Of course, my darkest fear is that he knows he's finished, and hated, and might decide to burn the whole gaddam shithouse to the ground while he can still watch it happen. His last Big Win is everyone else losing.
On the face of it, the above seems an insane idea, but remember, Donald Trump is fuckin' nuts...
Now, I do some have hope that some kind of bullshit agreement will be hashed that is presented as giving Trump 'a win', which is all he really wants anyway, even more than money. Ultimately, money is just how The Grift keeps score.
However, even if all this drama is resolved in a non-catastrophic fashion, trust in the United States had been broken, even if Trump choked on a chicken nugget ten minutes after you've read this. Even if the Dems sweep the midterms. Even if Jasmine Crockett got elected President in '28.
Our European allies can never be sure we won't get another Fascist lunatic in the White House and will now have to act accordingly. Trump has fatally poisoned the American Empire.
Of course, my darkest fear is that he knows he's finished, and hated, and might decide to burn the whole gaddam shithouse to the ground while he can still watch it happen. His last Big Win is everyone else losing.