One of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s persistent themes was the moral rebirth of the Russian people. Because of their terrible suffering under communism, he claimed, Russia underwent a spiritual cleansing and once the evil of communism ends it will show the way to the decadent West, as well.
The number of churches given back to the Russian Orthodox Church or newly built, as well as the prominent role clerics and communities of believers play under Vladimir Putin’s regime, probably would have warmed Solzhenitsyn’s Christian heart. But reading Russian social media comments about the popular uprising in Belarus you could easily get the impression that Christian values are completely absent from this society. Calls to send tanks against peaceful Belarusian protesters and to beat the hell out of the “libertarded MaiDowns” — i.e., liberals planning to create a Ukrainian-style Maidan, or revolution — predominate. In some ways, it’s a step back even from the nasty Soviet era, at least its Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev versions.
It is an eternal chicken-and-egg question — whether the people are shaped by their leaders or get the leader who reflects their values. Putin, being the product of the Soviet political police, is an embodiment of amorality. But other post-Soviet leaders resemble one another as if they have all come out of the same amoral mold. They are shameless kleptocrats living in luxury while their people are impoverished. They not only cling to power, not hesitating to repress any opponent but enrich and promote their offspring like some kind of monarchs. They lie, falsify elections and feed their trusting populace ersatz nationalism while ruining their nations’ chances for a free and prosperous future.
This may not be particularly surprising. Politicians tend to be self-centered and duplicitous. Moreover, while in international relations realpolitik has got a bad name, “realistic” self-interest typically prevails. That said, for all their faults Western democracies have tried to maintain a moral high ground at home as well as in world politics. That has certainly been the case since the catastrophe of World War II and the emergence of the United States as a world leader. Washington has endured a lot of criticism over the past seven decades, but America’s struggle for civil rights and protests against the war in Vietnam captured the world’s imagination. Even now, the US was both guilty of the killing of George Floyd and the impetus for Black Lives Matter rallies in so many countries around the world.
In this regard, the shameless moral turpitude of the American political scene since the election of Donald Trump is as astounding as it is unprecedented.
Donald J. Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin is well-known and a 1,000-page report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that was signed off unanimously by both Democrats and Republicans notes that the Trump election campaign in 2016 had some 100 contacts with Russian actors, including known intelligence operatives.
So like Putin, Trump has mobilized the support of the sanctimonious Evangelical Christians who spend a lot of time praying but pay little heed to basic Christian values. They seem to be oblivious of Trump’s non-stop lying and swindling, his conjugal infidelities, association with prostitutes (confirmed once again by the Senate report), abusive language, and hatred that emanates from the man.
They seem to be mainly concerned with abortion but their hypocrisy is mind-numbing, in light of the Trump Administration’s wanton cruelty to refugee children and dishonorable treatment of Dreamers.
American religious right is not the only group that has been openly displaying its amorality. The military has been complicit with Trump and is only now starting to wake up. The business community, including the tech industry, has continued to support Trump, enjoying its massive profits which have mainly been the result of unprecedented structural budget deficits at the height of the longest economic expansion on record.
The police in America are killing a large number of unarmed civilians they get paid to “serve and protect”. And the list goes on and on.
The amorality of America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic will live in infamy for generations. The government at all levels took the cue from the White House, leaving its most vulnerable citizens unprotected and sending first responders, medical professionals and essential personnel to battle the pandemic without adequate protection.
Apparently, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner figured that COVID-19 will impact only Democratic-leaning big cities and cosmopolitan coastal states, so that no urgent response was needed.
Amorality begins at home but extends around the world — and it is especially dangerous in the case of the United States because it remains the global leader and, as the saying goes, a fish rots from the head. Trump’s silence in the face of oppression and outright crimes is immoral enough, but his active and deliberate damage to the network of international alliances that previous American administrations have painstakingly built since the end of World War II is a threat to world peace.
The Trump Administration’s aggressively hostile stance to all international cooperation — unless it has a prospect of a Trump hotel at the end of the tunnel — its attacks on NATO, the EU and a variety of treaties are frighteningly reminiscent of the 1930s, when Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin succeeded in breaking up the fragile security system in Europe.
The Democrats tend to claim that none of this amorality is their doing, but we are all complicit — the way all Russians bear responsibility for their country’s aggression against Georgia and Ukraine and the way all Germans bore responsibility for Hitler’s crimes. Being ineffectual and impotent to resist evil is no excuse—especially since the Democratic Party controls the House of Representatives and has the power of the purse. The party has moved to the right and now basically stands where the Republicans stood before their current collapse into amorality.
True, America has been convulsed by Black Lives Matter protests but they are now in danger of turning into a version of Occupy Wall Street inanity.
This is the bad news. The good news is that Belarusians, just like Ukrainians before them, have risen up against their autocrat. They have staged a peaceful protest, confronting Lukashenka’s armed thugs with nothing but signs and flowers. They have shown remarkable unity and solidarity, and regardless of what happens next there is no way back to the amorality of the Lukashenka era.
There is no way back for a Ukraine, either. It will take time to defeat corruption, to free the occupied territories and to attain peace and prosperity. But Ukrainians in 2014 and Belarusians in 2020 showed that there is a way to beat off the epidemic of amorality.
