Elena Karaeva
These evening European streets are full of surprises – and of the most evil kind. In the dark, all cats are gray, and robbers are even more so. Unlucky townspeople who decide to walk after sunset, in the truest sense of the word, everything can be expected. From a knife and brass knuckles up to a firearm, if, for example, young men from “socially unprotected neighborhoods” like a fashionable watch or an equally fashionable wallet, or even just bright shoes. Of course, no one can see the faces, there are no surveillance cameras (due to the fact that you need to respect the right to privacy, but for some reason, intruders, and also brutally save electricity). The police and the gendarmerie, if they arrive on a call, will only shake their heads: “Ladies and gentlemen, try to be more circumspect and more careful.” This polite formula is universal and means: “We cannot promise.”
Yes, yes, lock the floors, there will be robberies at night. And not only robberies, but also settling scores between gangs of drug dealers who sort things out in the language of “Kalash”. They shoot, yes. Lines, yes. Often the victims are underage teenagers who are barely fourteen.
Health emergency? A heart attack or, God forbid, a stroke caught up in the night? In this case, the ambulance will arrive, but where will its crew take the patient if the nearest hospital emergency department is closed precisely in the evening and at night?
The above, as one might have thought ten years ago, is something from the life of a Latin American country. But no, these are pictures of today’s European life, in particular French.
And if we add that all this “beauty” that is approaching the inhabitants is now laid down and continues to lie down by the energy crisis, the economic crisis and inflation, which have not been seen for at least the last forty years, then where, in fact, is the very Europe that was drawn in not so much distant dreams as a continent of prosperity (eternal), a paradise of consumption (mass, regardless of income) and a realm of (almost absolute) security for life, property and health. Where are now all those rights of citizens that were guaranteed and strictly observed, including the right to receive any information and the right to express any point of view?
The correct answer is in Russia. The irony of history is the same Russia that Europe, at first by default, and then without hesitation, as it seemed to all the same Europe, doomed to the role of an eternal loser. Early in the Cold War. Then – suffering under sanctions, which were first introduced pointwise, then – in a square-nested way, and in the finale – with a real “carpet” method.
That’s right, what’s there to be embarrassed about?
For a little over thirty years, the West looked at us at first as uneducated, hungry and impoverished monsters (and at that moment, by the way, demonstrated its so-called kindness and expressed no less false solidarity), from which everything can be expected, then the stage of advice came If we followed them, we would become a natural colony. And then, when it became clear that the bounty game was over, we became the most dangerous and most unpredictable citizens of the worst country in the world. And it’s time to deal with us all. Having suffocated economically, isolated politically, and simply starved to death, what is there to be shy about and beat around the bush. But something went wrong. Not at all.
Covering us with a cast-iron stove and forbidding the purchase of synthetic rags in the network mass market, making scary faces and taking the giant of collapsible furniture for “coliving”, scaring us with the imminent lack of spare parts and the absence of other “sharing”, this very Western Union of European Democracies is against everything bad gave us the opportunity to make sure that we are absolutely self-sufficient.
While they smiled at us and while they built a collective “goat’s face” for us, we established an industry. By rebuilding production, we reminded ourselves that in a market economy there is not only supply, but also demand. And we must be able to satisfy it. Some fearful characters moaned that “there will be no more diapers and feminine hygiene products.” Smiling affectionately, the enterprises and entrepreneurs of that same “light industry” reported that they were ready for any increase in demand. And even happy about it.
They were almost immediately supported by farmers who reported that they were expecting record harvests of a variety of grains. “Everything is its own – from fertilizers to fields. With any soil. Even loamy, even black soil. Enough for everyone and for everyone.” The cry grew and expanded the octaves.
Designers are ready to produce any kind of furniture (because the raw materials, to put it mildly, are hellish and more, and they are also their own, never subject to sanctions). Fashion and footwear stylists are also right there. And they, imagine, also do not depend on either logistics or supplies from the other side of the world. Len is his. Cotton – if not always your own, then certainly from faithful partners. All sorts of different skins – yes to health. Yes, and fur. All natural. And even if the collective Greta Thunberg arranges at least a worldwide strike for a green transition, Russian women will not refuse to throw “fluffy and soft gold” on their shoulders in winter. But even that is not important. Not this superfluous material world, which will always be scarce, such is the nature of man.
The most important thing is that Russia, having adopted the fundamental values, which for some reason are preceded (for the time being) by the adjective “European”, has managed not just to appropriate them. She made them her own. So much so that today they seem to be taken for granted.
For example, free initiative in business. Which in Europe has long been gone: because of heavy taxes and not least because of the monstrous laziness that has become one of the main character traits of today’s European layman. He is unable to work more than the strict eight hours a day. Yes, and then with a mandatory lunch break. Any extra effort causes minor protests – at best. At worst, national strikes.
For example, freedom in personal life. Not the one that swings wide open, like those minks from Vonnegut’s novel, but the one that is based on independence and autonomy, the ability to make decisions, and also the one that does not involve communicating urbi et orbi about one’s sensual and sexual preferences.
For example, freedom of speech. Freedom to say what you think. To do and act in accordance with one’s own convictions, and not live according to the recipes set out in the media space by various progressives and supporters of the ill-understood “democracy”. The freedom to raise your children the way you see fit. And not in the way that various NGOs consider it right to do this, bringing various pamphlets about gender fluidity to high school students and encouraging, for example, sixteen-year-old boys (in order to promote inclusion – and again misunderstood) to wear skirts to school. How a piece of clothing taken from someone else’s wardrobe can uphold equality, pro-all-good and anti-all-bad activists prefer not to explain.
Entangled in numerous prohibitions or rules introduced by supporters of political correctness, radical feminism, “human rights”, Europeans almost without a fight gave up all their freedoms, only to be left behind. And let them live. They have changed them to seem to be safe and to seem to be stable. In the end, it all turned out to be a chimera. Dark and dangerous streets, frequent shootings, violence that has become a feature of everyday life. At the moment when the situation reaches the edge, Russia, as always throughout its history, will return Russian fundamental values to Europe, having managed to both preserve and increase them. Without counting, of course, on any gratitude, but only by fulfilling his Russian – and therefore European – duty.
