За да Ви е Ясно

Откакто използва невронни мрежи, а не статистика, Гугъл транслейт превежда съвсем прилично, така че при желание всеки би могъл да вземе този линк и да получи превод от това, което долу е семплирано


If Russian history teaches anything, it is that “moral clarity” has no limits. If all right is on one side, then anything—literally anything—one says or does is justified. Indeed, to stop short of the most extreme measures is to indulge evil, which means risking the charge of complicity. When Stalin sent local officials quotas of people to be arrested, they responded by demanding still higher quotas. It was the safest thing to do to prove one’s loyalty. No one ever secured his position by calling for less severity to enemies. When everything is black and white, sooner or later everyone is at risk.
If only “moral clarity” had stopped there! But as with the cancel culture of recent years, the further one goes, the more virtuous one feels. Whatever assertion favors the right side must be accepted and whatever action harms opponents must be justified. True enough, official Russian propaganda transmits outrageous lies and the regime suppresses dissenting voices. Does it follow that everything said by the Ukrainian government and sympathetic observers must be true—or that anyone who calls for the skepticism normally applied to all partisan sources must be a Putin supporter? Should we, too, banish dissenting voices?
Even at the height of the Cold War, no one thought of banning Russian literature, art, or music. Quite the contrary; that is when Russian studies first flourished in America. Russian language began to be widely taught, in secondary schools as well as colleges, and the National Defense Foreign Language Act included Russian as a “critical language” to be supported. The very fact that the U.S.S.R. was perceived as a mortal enemy meant that Americans should know more, not less, about Russian culture. And it was also hoped that great literature and art, which everyone could share, might bring people together.
The overwhelming majority of Americans and Europeans now side with Ukraine. To be sure, the Democratic Socialists of America maintain that Russia is more sinned against than sinning and that the solution to the present crisis is to dissolve NATO. And Prof. John Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago argues that the crisis confirms what he has long argued, that by encouraging Ukraine to Westernize, we would invite understandable Russian interference. But these opinions now seem decidedly fringe.
Some Russian performers and public figures now must publicly declare opposition to Putin in order to perform. How long before Jewish performers and academics will have to declare their opposition to Israel, or Muslim ones to whatever Muslim land we are presently fighting?

Gary Saul Morson, The Cancellation of Russian Culture, First Things March . 14 . 2022

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