Loosing Contradiction on the World - Quirky Canonicity

Including its question and answer session, this video is a whole hour and 18 minutes, but I don't regret taking the time for a historian who better than most seems to know what is going on here in this part of the world. VE Day deserved my time for a reflection to help me further clarify my own ideas on what is at stake with the war here in Ukraine. I have heard Snyder before on his judgment that the most successful part of the strategy of the Putin regime is its propaganda, which seems to be harming Europe and the West more than the great suffering its war machine is inflicting upon the people of Ukraine. Lies are at the heart of Putin's strategy or as Snyder alternately refers to the tactic: "loosing contradiction on the world".

Snyder makes the point that the Russian people, unless they have lost a son or close relative in the fighting here, have no other source of information about the war in Ukraine but Russian TV propaganda. I am beginning to believe that the same is true of the Russian Orthodox Church. They too seem taken in by the distortions meant to distract from Russia's egregious violations of international law. Again and again in the last week we have statements from Patriarch Kirill, then parroted and amplified by Italian news sources, all to the effect that the Pope is on Russia's side in this fight.... Sad! When the Pope has called for respect for international law, he has called for respect of borders and the sovereignty of Ukraine, violated by the annexation of Crimea and violated again and again by pumping men and arms into the Donbas.

Maybe the contradiction will become evident when the war crimes case is tried before the international court of justice in The Hague. Meantime, maybe people should give more credence to the victims of torture, to the Christians who have died at the hands of the Russian Orthodox Army (here).

Loosing contradiction on the world: I guess you have to have a poker face if you want to do it and get by.